SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE. 219 



tion of attractive force ; that, if such a force exists, it is utterly incom- 

 petent to account for Kepler's laws, without taking into the reckoning 

 a great number of other considerations ; and, finally, that all we know 

 about the " force " of gravitation, or any other so-called " force," is 

 that it is a name for the hypothetical cause of an observed order of 

 facts. 



Thus, when the Duke of Argyll says, " Force, ascertained accord- 

 ing to some measure of its operation this is, indeed, one of the defini- 

 tions, but only one, of a scientific law " (p. 71), I reply that it is a defi- 

 nition which must be repudiated by every one who possesses an ade- 

 quate acquaintance with either the facts or the philosophy of science, 

 and relegated to the limbo of pseudo-scientific fallacies. If the human 

 mind had never entertained this notion of " force," nay, if it substi- 

 tuted bare, invariable succession for the ordinary notion of causation, 

 the idea of law, as the expression of a constantly observed order, 

 which generates a corresponding intensity of expectation in our minds, 

 would have exactly the same value, and play its part in real science, 

 exactly as it does now. 



It is needless to extend further the present excursus on the origin 

 and history of modern pseudo-science. Under such high patronage 

 as it has enjoyed, it has grown and flourished, until, nowadays, it is 

 becoming somewhat rampant. It has its weekly " Ephemerides," in 

 which every new pseudo-scientific mare's-nest is hailed and belauded 

 with the unconscious unfairness of ignorance ; and an army of "recon- 

 cilers," enlisted in its service, whose business seems to be to mix the 

 black of dogma and the white of science into the neutral tint of what 

 they call liberal theology. 



I remember that, not long after the publication of the " Vestiges,'' 

 a shrewd and sarcastic countryman of the author defined it as " cauld 

 kail made het again." A cynic might find amusement in the reflec- 

 tion that, at the present time, the principles and the methods of the 

 much-vilified Vestigiarian are being " made het again " ; and are not 

 only " echoed by the dome of St. Paul's," but thundered from the 

 castle of Inverary. But my turn of mind is not cynical, and I can but 

 regret the waste of time and energy bestowed on the endeavor to deal 

 with the most difficult problems of science, by those who have neither 

 undergone the discipline, nor possess the information which are indis- 

 pensable to the successful issue of such an enterprise. 



I have already had occasion to remark that the Duke of Argyll's 

 views of the conduct of controversy are different from mine ; and this 

 much-to-be-lamented discrepancy becomes yet more accentuated when 

 the duke reaches biological topics. Anything that was good enough 

 for Sir Charles Lyell, in his department of study, is certainly good 

 enough for me in mine ; and I by no means demur to being pedagogi- 

 cally instructed about a variety of matters with which it has been the 

 business of my life to try to acquaint myself. But the Duke of Argyll 



