520 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



the one case we have not only a rational classification of 

 facts, but we have been able to conceive a brief formula, 

 the law of gravitation, which accurately resumes these 

 facts. We have succeeded in constructing, by aid of ideal 

 particles, a conceptual mechanism which describes astro- 

 nomical changes. In the other case we may or may not 

 have reached a perfect classification of facts, but we 

 certainly have not been able to formulate our perceptual 

 experience in a mechanism, or conceptual motion, which 

 would enable us to precisely predict the future. The 

 Precise and the Synoptic Physical Sciences, respectively, 

 correspond very closely to the phenomena, of which we 

 have constructed a conceptual model by aid of elementary 

 corpuscles having ideal motions, and to the phenomena 

 which have not yet been reduced to such a conceptual 

 description. The process of analysing inorganic phenomena 

 by aid of ideal elementary motions forms the topic of 

 Applied Mathematics} This science is therefore a link 

 between the theory of pure motion as discussed in Abstract 

 Science and the motions of those ideal corpuscles which 

 most closely conceptualise the sequences of inorganic pheno- 

 mena as discussed in the precise branch of Concrete Science. 

 Where we have not yet succeeded in analysing com- 

 plex changes into ideal motions, or have only done so in 

 part — describing without quantitative calculation the 

 general results which might be expected to flow from 

 such motions — there we are dealing with the Synoptic 

 Physical Sciences. Thus Synoptic Physical Science is 

 rather Precise Physical Science in the making than quali- 

 tatively distinct from it. It embraces large classifications 

 of facts which we are continually striving to resume in 

 simple formulae or laws, and, as usual, these laws are laws 

 of motion. Thus considerable portions of the Synoptic 

 Physical Sciences are already precise, or in process of 

 becoming precise. This is notably the case with Chem- 

 istry, Geology, and Mineralogy. So much, indeed, is this 



1 "And as for the mixed Mathematics, I may only make this prediction, 

 that there cannot fail to be more kinds of them as nature grows further dis- 

 closed " — a prophecy of Bacon's which has been fully justified. 



