18 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 



qualities which are not so readily orderable, for example, 

 the colors themselves, and especially those other qualita- 

 tive manifestations of experience, such as life, intelligence, 

 pleasure, and pain where all ordering seems more or less 

 artificial. This, at any rate, proves to be a more satisfactory 

 working distinction between the two fields. 



ANALYSIS VS. INTUITION 



Closely related to this distinction, but not to be confused 

 with it, is the point of view maintained particularly by Berg- 

 son in recent years. Science proceeds by the method of 

 analysis while philosophy uses the method of intuition. Ac- 

 cording to Bergson, "it is easy to see that the ordinary 

 function of positive science is analysis. Positive science 

 works, then, above all, with symbols. Even the most con- 

 crete of the natural sciences, those concerned with life, 

 confine themselves to the visible form of living beings, their 

 organs and anatomical elements. They make comparisons 

 between these forms, they reduce the more complex to the 

 more simple; in short, they study the workings of life in 

 what is, so to speak, only its visual symbol. If there exists 

 any means of possessing a reality absolutely instead of 

 knowing it relatively, of placing oneself within it instead 

 of looking at it from outside points of view, of having the 

 intuition instead of making the analysis : in short, of seizing 

 it without any expression, translation, or symbolic repre- 

 sentation — metaphysics is that means. Metaphysics, then, 

 is the science which claims to dispense with symbols." l The 

 opposition between science and metaphysics is further clar- 

 ified by showing that the one is conceptual, fixed, descrip- 

 tive, mediate knowledge, while the other is intuitive, mobile, 

 acquaintive, immediate knowledge. Science sees objects 

 from the outside, metaphysics from the inside. Thus sci- 

 entific knowledge is artificial, illusory, and dangerous, while 

 metaphysical knowledge is real, true, and reliable. Through 

 science one grasps the world by means of an empty, static 



1 Introduction to Metaphysics (New York: Putnam, 1912), pp. 8-9. 



