48 SCIENCE (and common sense) 



a concept cannot but seem bizarre: it ignores enormous ("super- 

 ficial") diflFerences, and takes as its basis of classification qualities far 

 less obvious than those on which common sense founds its classifica- 

 tions. However bizarre, these concepts of science nevertheless satisfy 

 a final and decisive criterion: with them we find major elements of 

 order that the classificatory concepts of common sense fail to reveal. 

 Says Bronowski: 



It is not obviously silly to classify flowers by their colors; after all, 

 the bluer flowers do tend to be associated with colder climates and 

 greater heights. There is nothing wrong with the system in advance. 

 It simply does not work as conveniently and as instructively as Lin- 

 naeus's classification by family likenesses. 



Thus, Mill correctly observes, general classificatory conceptions 

 formed in advance of complete knowledge must always correspond to 

 Bacon's "notiones temere a rebus abstractae": 



Yet such premature conceptions we must be continually making up, 

 in our progress to something better. . . . That the conception we 

 have obtained is the one we want, can only be known when we have 

 done the work for the sake of which we wanted it; . . . 



Concepts and the anatomization of experience. Always the search 

 for order is guided by the scientist's feeling for the nature of what 

 Bronowski calls "the reality behind the appearances." This feeling 

 finds clearest expression in his explicative concepts— the "causes" he 

 thinks significant— but these profoundly influence his construction 

 and use of indicati\^e concepts. An immense advance in science may 

 thus have its roots in an alteration of point of view which produces 

 a new or newly modified group of indicative concepts. Inspired by 

 the Pythagorean faith tliat mathematics is the language of the book 

 of Nature, Galileo brought a new "set" to a realm of experience that 

 had defied all earlier efforts at conquest. Studying moving bodies, 

 Galileo proposed to ignore the weight, size, texture, color, and every- 

 thing else that makes each one a distinctive body, and to consider 

 instead only the mathematically describable motion of which all par- 

 take. 



"\^elocity," "acceleration," and some of Galileo's other key concepts 

 are typical quality-concepts, indicating one aspect with respect to 

 which many otherwise disparate objects may be compared, and so 

 related, with one another. However, the "qualities" with which 



