86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the process rather than in the result, as a growing, expanding, changing 

 vision, blooming with youth as long as human life can use it, it can 

 hardly be said that his eyes have felt the touch of the spirit of modern 

 science. 



Wherever modern science has affected characteristic changes in the 

 trend of philosophic thought, the result has been achieved by lessening 

 the influence of that ancient legacy which may be conveniently referred 

 to as the doctrine of final causes. 



It must not be inferred, however, that the influence of this doctrine 

 has been confined to philosophy alone. It has been felt in every field of 

 human inquiry that presents a speculative aspect, an opportunity to 

 reach by means of the imagination into the unknown. The history of 

 science is one long record of struggle between just those types of mind 

 that Poincare has sketched. In none of the sciences, however, has the 

 conflict been more prolonged and bitter than in biology. There the 

 fight has been waged about the four great problems of evolution, indi- 

 vidual development, vitalism and adaptation. None more than these 

 offer speculative opportunity — abundantly accepted. None more con- 

 vincingly than these show the inexorable incompatibility of faith in 

 final causes and scientific progress. 



I present them, therefore, as my chief aids in developing, if I 

 may, a fruitful conception of the nature of scientific truth. Having 

 reached such a conception, we will proceed to discuss its relation to the 

 philosophic thought of the day. 



II 



Faith in final causes is not a necessary product of a particular 

 civilization, of civilization at all. Though it may persist in the midst 

 of sophistication, it is born of inexperience. Under one form or another, 

 it has existed among peoples of all sorts, wherever they have possessed 

 sufficient intelligence to hazard an interpretation of their universe of 

 experience. Of these peoples, the Greeks and Hebrews claim our especial 

 attention, since it is from them that the main streams of our philosophy 

 and science and religion flow. 



Compared with the sophistication of Aristotle's theories of life, the 

 cosmology of the Mosaic record is strikingly anthropomorphic and 

 naive. In spite of this naivete, however, there is no question of its 

 astounding control over the history of scientific thought; the more so, 

 since it is to the second and far cruder story of the creation, in fact, 

 in the second chapter of Genesis that the church chiefly pinned its faith 

 in its long struggle with the doctrine of evolution. The struggle has 

 been at times debased with bitterness and violence. One grows heart- 

 sick at the sad spectacle of a Galileo swearing away his scientific 

 probity as he groveled in fear of torture before the Inquisition. 



