CHAPTER XVIII 



THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 



It was pointed out in the preceding chapter that the 

 problem of the classification of the sciences occupies a pecu- 

 liar position among the speculative problems. Although it 

 is itself one of these problems, it is nevertheless synoptic in 

 character and thus, in a sense, determines the limits and 

 interrelations of all of the problems. As will be illustrated 

 by Peirce, a properly constructed classification of the 

 sciences must contain as one type of legitimate discipline a 

 study whose task is precisely the construction of such a 

 classificatory scheme. If the making of surveys and reviews 

 is a legitimate enterprise, it must have its place in a general 

 survey and review of legitimate enterprises. 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE PRORLEM 



The designation of the problem as the classification of the 

 sciences is somewhat misleading. Though there is such a 

 problem, it is obviously only a small part of a more extensive 

 problem of the same kind which is the classification of human 

 intellectual disciplines. The scientific method is not the 

 only way of knowing, and lines of demarcation between 

 science and philosophy, science and history, science and 

 technology, science and art, etc., are far from clear. It is 

 almost impossible to say, for example, where mathematics, 

 which is quite obviously a science, passes into logic, which 

 is just as obviously a philosophical discipline; it is difficult 

 to discern the line separating anthropology as a science from 

 anthropology as a historical study; it is hard to say whether 

 medicine is a pure or an applied science; it is absurd even to 

 attempt to state at what point a dissertation on a scientific 

 topic ceases to be a treatise on science and becomes an exam- 

 ple of literary art. Hence the problem of the classification 



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