47o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tc obtain a groivping of the subjects and speakers which would have 

 sufficient logical symmetry to enable the whole scheme to be under- 

 stood and carried into practical execution. These ends have been at- 

 tained, and having been attained the discussion of the logical merits 

 and demerits of the scheme may be left to those interested. I shall 

 only mention one feature of the classification which more than any 

 other may have struck the reader of the program as a departure from 

 a usage consecrated by time, and presumably convenient in practise. 

 In classifying books and in organizing academies of science it has been 

 common to group the mathematical and physical sciences together, put- 

 ting pure mathematics in the same class with physics. This practise 

 is very natural because of the close association in the development of 

 these two branches. The same men frequently took part in both, and 

 there was formerly a sharp division between the physical sciences which 

 need mathematics, and the biological sciences which do not. But in 

 the program, mathematics is put with philosophy under the division of 

 normative science. No one will contest the correctness of this course 

 in an ideal system, since philosophy and pure mathematics both have 

 the fundamental qualities designated by the term ' normative.' It 

 would also have been logically misleading if the organizers had at the 

 present time placed mathematics among the physical sciences, because 

 we should thereby be ignoring that mathematical methods and nomen- 

 clature are being introduced into a constantly increasing mass of bio- 

 logical science and that, as knowledge advances in precision, it must 

 continually become more and more mathematical in form. 



To recapitulate — the congress will hold only one meeting as a single 

 body; and its first act on the second day will be to divide itself into 

 seven grand divisions, in each of which will be treated the unity of 

 one of these divisions of knowledge. These ' divisions ' will next sepa- 

 rate into twenty-four departments in each of which will be treated the 

 fundamental conceptions and the progress of knowledge in these de- 

 partments during the nineteenth century. The congress will then be 

 divided into about 128 sections, in each of which the present problems 

 of the special science and its relations to other sciences will be treated. 

 The plan of the congress thus involves the preparation and reading of 

 some 300 principal addresses by eminent investigators from various 

 parts of the world on the unity, conceptions, history, relations and 

 problems of the main subdivisions of knowledge. 



It will be seen that one important point in which the congress devi- 

 ates from the familiar type is that it is not primarily a meeting for the 

 reading and discussion of scientific researches. The publication of new- 

 results is not aimed at, but rather the communication of ideas which 

 will result in stimulating research in the future. Breadth of treat- 

 ment is the characteristic of the plan. Still, there is one arrangement 



