42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



With the latter discipline, science has nothing to do; with the former, 

 as we shall soon see, it has a great deal. 



II 



If, however, there are certain difficulties which we may, in the pres- 

 ent connection, rightly pass over, there is a further question which can 

 not thus be avoided. We are bound to characterize more closely the 

 scientific attitude, or the scientific point of view. Human experience 

 may be brought together in other than scientific ways; and while we 

 still need not seek for formal definition or final classification, we must 

 try at least to differentiate science from the appreciating disciplines 

 and from what we have called technology. We must find distinguishing 

 adjectives for the attitude itself, for the method which it implies, and 

 for the problem which it discovers. 



The history of science leaves no doubt of the answer to be given 

 to this threefold question. The attitude of science, to begin with 

 that, is before all things a disinterested attitude : witness the rise 

 and growth of astronomy, of chemistry, of physiology. Until man- 

 kind has learned to take experience in serious earnest "for its own 

 sake/' to subordinate personal ends to the pursuit of truth, there is 

 no science, but only something which at its worst is quackery and 

 pseudo-science, at its best common sense and rule of thumb; and con- 

 versely, so soon as a man starts out to examine some aspect of ex- 

 perience as if it were for itself important and knowledge of it were 

 intrinsically desirable, so soon does the germ of a science appear. For 

 the race, the learning of this lesson was difficult enough; and so, in 

 the large, the negative form of the adjective — dis-interested — may be 

 justified; science sets aside the oldest and what we might consider the 

 most natural interests of man. For the individual, on the other hand, 

 a positive term would be more suitable. The curiosity or, as Helm- 

 holtz named it, the Wissensdrang which marks the scientific tempera- 

 ment renders the "disinterested" work of science the most interesting 

 thing, as Helmholtz also said, that its possessor can find to do. The 

 adjective must be kept, partly for its historical associations, and partly 

 because the writer can not think of a positive word that should replace 

 it; but it must be understood, when the worker in science, the scien- 

 tifically-minded individual is in question, as meaning self-fulfilment 

 rather than self-renunciation. Otherwise, science would never have had 

 its martyrs. 



The scientific attitude, then, is disinterested; the point of view of 

 science is one that shall reveal the unvarnished fact; so much we are 

 plainly taught by the history of science. We gather from the same 

 source that the method of science is observation. All the "facts" of 

 science are gained by a disinterested observation; sometimes, by an 



