6 THE ANATOMY OF SCIENCE 



ing rates of growth of present levels, or rates of 

 change of living languages, an estimate can 

 be made. 



I take it that the scientific method, of which 

 so much has been heard, is hardly more than 

 the native method of solving problems, a little 

 clarified from prejudice and a little cultivated 

 by training. A detective with his murder mys- 

 tery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new 

 compound, use little of the formal and logical 

 modes of reasoning. Through a series of intui- 

 tions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the 

 right explanation, and have a knack of seizing 

 it when it once comes within reach. I have no 

 patience with attempts to identify science with 

 measurement, which is but one of its tools, or 

 with any definition of the scientist which would 

 exclude a Darwin, a Pasteur or a Kekule. 



The scientist is a practical man and his are 

 practical aims. He does not seek the ultimate 

 but the proximate. He does not speak of the 

 last analysis but rather of the next approxima- 

 tion. His are not those beautiful structures so 

 dehcately designed that a single flaw may cause 

 the collapse of the whole. The scientist builds 

 slowly and with a gross but solid kind of ma- 

 sonry. If dissatisfied with any of his work, even 



