41 6 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



cession of stories in which belief in mysterious purposes was given up for 

 behef in the reign of natural law. Relative backwardness of the social and 

 political science is accounted for because they deal with areas in which 

 people are least willing to give up their illusions about cosmic teleology 

 and accept the more useful mechanistic hypothesis. If the pragmatic test 

 proves anything, they claim, it proves that mechanism is more true. 



-s, -"^sy 4' rf*. 



TO WHAT EXTENT IS A SCIENCE 

 OF MAN POSSIBLE? * 



FREDERICK OSBORN 



Knowledge of man has been growing slowly over thousands of years. 

 But a science of man is something new under the sun. For though science 

 is knowledge, it is a special kind of knowledge. It is obtained by scientific 

 methods, usually involving a collaboration between theory and experi- 

 ment. Most science is based on the quantitative analysis of measured phe- 

 nomena. It differs from other knowledge chiefly in its quality of being 

 demonstrable. An experiment to have scientific value must be one that can 

 be repeated. Scientific phenomena can be measured and recorded over 

 and over again or related by theory to other phenomena that can be re- 

 peated. New knowledge of this sort becomes generally accepted when 

 it has been checked over by a sufficient number of people. The older type 

 of knowledge which is derived from personal observations and the con- 

 clusions of authorities is harder to check up on, is more subject to personal 

 bias and the mental fashions prevailing at any given time. Scientific knowl- 

 edge, on the other hand, is cumulative in its effect and has a known predic- 

 tive value. 



In a hundred thousand years, by his use of the old forms of knowledge, 

 man developed an environment suitable for a civilized life. He domesti- 

 cated animals, produced cereal crops, and through the great religions as- 

 pired at least to a noble concept of the dignity and character of life. 



Then, in a few brief generations, the new forms of knowledge which 

 we call science brought to men a marvelous control of their environment 

 — railroad, telegraph, telephone, electric light, motor car, submarine, aero- 

 plane, radio, television, reduction of labor needed on the farm, canned and 

 frozen foods, cheap goods by mass production, sanitation, medicine and 

 public health. Almost over night the natural and physical sciences have 

 brought these changes. 



* Reprinted by permission of the Scientific Monthly, American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science. Copyright 1939. 



