524 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



quently summed up as the Biological Scie^tces, although 

 the term Biology itself is usually applied to a subdivision. 

 If we attempt to subdivide the Biological Sciences into 

 Precise and Synoptic groups, we do not obtain any prac- 

 tically valuable division. For, with the exception of 

 certain small portions of one or two branches, the whole 

 of the Biological Sciences would fall under the synoptic 

 category. It is true that certain powerful formulae have 

 reduced large parts of biological science from a rational 

 classification to science in the accurate sense of the 

 word ; but the description of organic phenomena by aid 

 of conceptual motions (p. 276) awaits long and laborious 

 investigation on the part of both physicist and biologist 

 before much progress will be reported. I shall therefore 

 return to the mode of subdivision we adopted in the case 

 of that branch of Abstract Science which deals with 

 " Special Relations." I shall subdivide Biological Sciences 

 into those which deal more especially with space or the 

 localisation of life, and those which deal more especially 

 with time or — as in the case of organic phenomena we 

 more generally term the discrimination by sequence — with 

 growth. In the first subdivision we shall have those 

 branches of science which deal with the Distribution of 

 Living Forms {Chorology) and study habits in relation to 

 environment {Ecology). These form the major portion of 

 what in the old sense was termed Natural History. 



Turning to the second subdivision of change or growth, 

 we notice that these may be either recurring or nori- 

 recurring. Recurring and non-recurring changes are terms 

 which of course have only reference to man's perceptual 

 experience. From that standpoint we treat the evolution 

 of complex from simple organisms as non-recurring, but 

 in the starry universe it is a legitimate inference from the 

 like known to the like unknown (p. 60) to conceive this 

 evolution to be going on whenever a planetary system 

 reaches the same stage of its development as the solar 

 system at present has reached. Thus the evolution of 

 life may really have recurred innumerable times, and so 

 our division is only a practical mode of classifying our 



