72 Scientific Truth and the Scientific Spirit 



working hypotheses of daily life, or which were employed, more or 

 less unconsciously, in the development of the most firmly founded 

 principles on which our present social order rests. This has caused 

 Science to be regarded as a thing apart, as the lore of an orack 

 vvhose pronouncements it is profanity to reject. One hears in 

 populär Speech such expressions as "Science says — " or, "accord- 

 ing to Science " or " Science teaches ..." and this indicates that 

 in the mind of the average man there is a more or less developed 

 cult of Science as an infallible entity, personality, or divinity, which, 

 like Minerva, has no earthly or human origin. It is perhaps not 

 the populär mind that is wholly to blame for this. When one 

 reviews the discussions and polemics of the last fifty years, which 

 have arisen from the conflict between conservative and advanced 

 thought, and, especially, advanced thought based on direct Observa- 

 tion and experiment, there has not been wanting a species of dog- 

 matism in not a few of the representatives of Science, that suggests 

 the claim of a degree of infallibility which the populär mind, super- 

 ficial as it is, and because of the achievements of Science, has been 

 and is inclined to accept. It is true, the clearest-minded amongst 

 the representatives of Science never by speech or silence encouraged 

 such a claim. Tyndall, Huxley, Kelvin, Helmholtz, Virchow and 

 Pasteur have, in set terms, again and again insisted that Science 

 is not infallible. Huxley, throughout his long Crusade for the 

 recognition of Science as a force making for progress, was specially 

 insistent on the possibility of error in Science. He it was who 

 defined Science as nothing but trained and organized common sense, 

 a definition that ought to acquit it of the charge of claiming 

 infallibiHty. 



In spite of these disclaimers, the taint of a reputation for in- 

 fallibility remains and it not infrequently draws from the super- 

 ficial, as well as from some who ought to know^ better, the criti- 

 cism that the judgments of Science are unstable and ought not to be 

 regarded as having any validity when they are opposed to the estab- 

 lished beliefs and the dogma of the day. Sometimes the expo- 

 nents of the older learning denounce Science as falsely so-called, or 

 term it Pseudo-Science. At one time that was the stock charge 

 against Science, and it had its effect on the unthinking. It still 



