DESCRIPTIVE SCIENCE 145 



Water boils at 100° Centigrade, but it might just as well 

 have boiled at 200° or 50°; bodies attract each other ac- 

 cording to the inverse square law, but the inverse cube law 

 or some other law might have been found to hold; objects 

 expand when heated, but there is no reason why they 

 should not have contracted. Every fact is an isolated fact, 

 and receives nothing from other facts. Since everything 

 which occurs has an alternative, anything is possible in 

 nature. What one knows about nature does not enable 

 him to predict as to the character of the unexplored parts. 

 Science in this form has no anticipatory function. This 

 does not mean that nature may offer surprises; surprises 

 are impossible unless one has expectations, and descriptive 

 science justifies no expectations. It means rather that one 

 must take nature as he finds it, and that he must never 

 force laws or concepts on events. Symbols are determined 

 by events, not events by symbols. 



Such are the features of descriptive or empirical science. 

 Many would deny that such disciplines are properly sciences 

 at all. A science, they insist, must contain hypotheses, 

 theories, and conjectures; it must make predictions; it must 

 experiment; it must attempt to get behind or beneath phe- 

 nomena to discover their deeper features and their essential 

 connections. Certainly, if one means by descriptive science 

 a pure descriptive science, i.e., one which makes no reference 

 to hypotheses, predictions, experiments, and hidden aspects 

 of events, there are probably no such sciences in existence. 

 But this fact does not destroy the value of the characteriza- 

 tion presented in the preceding pages. For there are sciences 

 which approximate to this ideal character, and which de- 

 velop under the impetus of techniques which are directed 

 to the realization of precisely such an ideal character. 

 Though there may be no scientists who deny the inevitabil- 

 ity of hypotheses, predictions, and the like in science, there 

 are many who feel that hypotheses should be avoided where- 

 ever it is possible to do so and limited to a very minimum 

 where it is necessary to introduce them, who feel that 



