Nature of the Universe 11 



world picture that is often presented in the name of 

 biological science. This remarkable situation lies in the 

 fact that many biologists — perhaps most biologists — 

 completely ignore the set of data acquired through the 

 fact that the man of science is himself a biological 

 specimen ; completely ignore the sensations, emotions, 

 desires, thoughts, and the like, which each of us dis- 

 covers in himself. There is a class of biologists, called 

 psychologists, who, in the past, have had the job of 

 dealing precisely with these inner or mental phe- 

 nomena. But even the psychologists have of late shown 

 a tendency to shirk this job; a tendency to devote 

 themselves exclusively to the outer view of living 

 things. And in the minds of many biologists, their sci- 

 ence is, as it were, defined as deahng only with things 

 that can be discovered without consulting one's own 

 private experiences as a biological specimen. Data 

 that are discovered in this latter way, things found by 

 the inner view, are simply omitted from consideration, 

 as if they formed no part of the universe. 



The reasons for this situation He partly in certain 

 theories, but mainly in practical considerations and in 

 certain technical difficulties. The data gathered from 

 self-examination by the biological specimen turn out 

 to be extremely difficult to deal with in a scientific way ; 

 extremely difficult to formulate and generalize about 

 and draw conclusions from. Men have despaired of 

 discovering the conditions and course and conse- 

 quences of these inner phenomena, have despaired of 

 treating them with exactitude and reducing them to a 

 system. And so they have decided to ignore them ; to 



