TEE VALUE OF SCIENCE 449 



Shall we thence conclude that the facts of daily life are the work 

 of the grammarians? 



You ask me: Is there a current? I try whether the mechanical 

 effect exists, I ascertain it and I answer: Yes, there is a current. You 

 understand at once that that means that the mechanical effect exists, 

 and that the chemical effect, that I have not investigated, exists like- 

 wise. Imagine now, supposing an impossibility, the law we believe 

 true not to be, and the chemical effect not to exist. Under this 

 hypothesis there will be two distinct facts, the one directly observed 

 and which is true, the other inferred and which is false. It may 

 strictly be said that we have created the second. So that error is the 

 part of man's personal collaboration in the creation of the scientific fact. 



But if we can say that the fact in question is false, is this not just 

 because it is not a free and arbitrary creation of our mind, a disguised 

 convention, in which case it would be neither true nor false. And in 

 fact it was verifiable; I had not made the verification, but I could have 

 made it. If I answered amiss, it was because I chose to reply too 

 quickly, without having asked nature, who alone knew the secret. 



When, after an experiment, I correct the accidental and systematic 

 errors to bring out the scientific fact, the case is the same ; the scientific 

 fact will never be anything but the crude fact translated into another 

 language. When I shall say: It is such an hour, that will be a short 

 way of saying: There is such a relation between the hour indicated by 

 my clock, and the hour it marked at the moment of the passing of 

 such a star and such another star across the meridian. And this con- 

 vention of language once adopted, when I shall be asked: Is it such 

 an hour? it will not depend upon me to answer yes or no. 



Let us pass to the stage before the last : the eclipse happened at the 

 hour given by the tables deduced from Newton's laws. This is still 

 a convention of language which is perfectly clear for those who know 

 celestial mechanics or simply for those who have the tables calculated 

 by the astronomers. I am asked: Did the eclipse happen at the hour 

 predicted? I look in the nautical almanac, I see that the eclipse was 

 announced for nine o'clock and I understand that the question means: 

 Did the eclipse happen at nine o'clock? There still we have nothing 

 to change in our conclusions. The scientific fact is only the crude 

 fact translated into a convenient language. 



It is true that at the last stage things change. Does the earth 

 rotate? Is this a verifiable fact? Could Galileo and the Grand In- 

 quisitor, to settle the matter, appeal to the witness of their senses? 

 On the contrary, they were in accord about the appearances, and, 

 whatever had been the accumulated experiences, they would have re- 

 mained in accord with regard to the appearances without ever agreeing 



vol. lxx. — 29 



