PSYCHOLOGY 41 



they serve to bring out the fact that one and the same item of human 

 experience may enter, as part of their subject-matter, into a large 

 number of sciences ; whence it follows that the sciences themselves can 

 not be distinguished, in any final accounting, by the specific character 

 of the "objects" with which they deal. 



What in fact differentiates science from science is, as an earlier 

 sentence has hinted, something that we may term objectively point of 

 view and subjectively attitude. Giving up the figure of the map, one 

 might conceive of the world of experience as contained in a great circle, 

 and of scientific men as viewing this world from various stations upon 

 the periphery. There are then, in theory, as many possible sciences as 

 there are distinguishable points of view about the circle. Every science 

 seeks to view the whole world of experience from its particular station ; 

 and every science deals, from that station again, with identically the 

 same subject-matter, namely, with human experience. The separate 

 sciences are, therefore, not at all like the countries on a map; they are 

 rather like the successive chapters of a book which discusses a complex 

 topic from various points of view. In this sense, they overlap ; they are 

 mutually complementary; no one of them in truth exhausts experi- 

 ence or completely describes the common subject-matter, though each 

 one, if ideally complete, would exhaust some aspect of experience. 



It is, then, from some such figure as that of the circle and the men 

 around it that a classification of the sciences must start. We must add, 

 however, both for the sake of clear thinking and to forestall criticism, 

 that the figure does not " work " — it loses its regular outline and at the 

 same time grows more complex — when we come down to details. Thus, 

 to say that the world of experience is a circle is to say that all the sci- 

 ences, at least in their ideal completion, are coextensive; and to say 

 that the sciences are views of the world obtained from standpoints about 

 the circle is to say that all the separate sciences are, as sciences, coequal ; 

 and both of these statements may fairly be challenged. Such matters 

 of detail, difficulties as they are to those who attempt a classification of 

 the sciences, 1 need not however detain us; the fundamental idea of our 

 figure is sound. The figure itself helps us even a little further ; for the 

 question how it comes about that men can take up their stations around 

 the circle, and so view human experience as if from without, is evidently 

 the problem of a theory of knowledge, of logic in the broader sense ; and 

 the question of the essential nature of the whole, of experience viewed 

 and experiencers viewing, is as evidently the problem of a metaphysics. 



1 Flint's essay on classification in "Philosophy as Scientia scientiarum" is 

 of very uneven merit, but contains much valid criticism and is useful as a gen- 

 eral survey of the field. Flint remarks that "the fundamental sciences are not 

 classed according to individual objects. Every object is complex and can only 

 be fully explained by the concurrent application of various sciences." 



