48 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



beinof? Whence did man come? And where does he 2^0 after 

 death? These are the problems of religion that differ from 

 magic in subject matter,* since magic relates to the specific 

 problems of everyday life— to health and sickness and the 

 supply of food and water. 



Bit by bit, in spite of mistakes and false starts, man suc- 

 ceeded in building up a series of associations among the facts 

 he knew that bore the only test having any value, that of 

 confirmation by direct observation or experiment. Through- 

 out the greater portion of recorded history, the material froin 

 which scientific conclusions were drawn was the observation 

 of naturally occurring facts. Astronomy was, of course, de- 

 rived purely from observation. Medicine in the sense of 

 anatomy and pathology was the observation of the structure 

 of the body and of disease. The experimental sciences were 

 almost non-existent before the seventeenth century, when 

 direct experiments were made to ascertain facts that could 

 not be observed without such experiments. As A\e have 

 already seen, it was the development of experimental science 

 that produced changes in the evolution of society that ^vere 

 so startling compared with those that had occurred previously. 



The method of science is the accumulation of facts, partly 

 by direct observation of naturally occurring phenomena- 

 aided, of course, by all the instrumental appliances that have 

 been developed to assist the use of the senses— and partly by 

 the production of new facts as the result of direct experiment. 

 These facts are then classified in such a way as to sho\\^ their 

 interrelations and coincidences and are built up into a body 

 of ideas that are considered valid by the experts in the sub- 

 ject. This body of ideas is itself the science of which they 

 form the material. Thus the science of physics consists of 

 a gToup of physical ideas accepted as valid by physicists; the 

 same is true for chemistry, for biology, and the other sciences. 

 These groups of ideas are undergoing constant change. As 

 new facts accumulate, they are integrated into the old ideas 



* Malinowski, loc. cit. 



