1 



VII. 



The Grammar of Science. 



r\N first glancing at the pages of Professor Karl Pearson's new 

 ^ book^ the biologist might be tempted to suppose that, apart 

 from the chapter on Life, there was little therein with any bearing 

 on his special studies. He might be inclined to regard it as a 

 mixture of physics and metaphysics. And such, indeed, it is in part. 

 I am not using the word metaphysics as a term of reproach. By 

 metaphysics I mean a discussion of the ultimate nature of the 

 phenomenal world and of the conscious Ego. Physics as such accepts 

 the phenomenal world as external to, and for its purposes indepen- 

 dent of, the mind of the investigator. It leaves to psychology the 

 analysis of the human mind, and to metaphysics the perhaps 

 insoluble question of the ultimate nature of the Ego and of the external 

 occasion of its perceptions. Professor Pearson does not enter into 

 the metaphysics of the Ego. He is content naively to accept the 

 investigating mind as he finds it. But he is not content to accept with 

 equal naivete the phenomenal world ; he enquires what it really is, 

 and how we come to perceive it and to reason about it. He is forced 

 to a position which is largely idealistic. The physical world is in 

 a sense the product of the percipient mind, and Mr. Pearson con- 

 tends that this is a fact which we must not only not lose sight of, 

 but must introduce into all our physical considerations. But biology 

 and geology are sciences which investigate peculiarly complex and 

 intricate manifestations in the physical and phenomenal world ; and 

 what Mr. Pearson says of physics therefore applies in large degree 

 to these sciences also. I propose, therefore, to endeavour to explain 

 Mr. Pearson's position, and to offer some criticisms thereon. 



In an introductory chapter Mr. Pearson vindicates the right of 

 Science to claim the whole sphere of the knowable as its province. 

 Over this we need not linger. That which follows, however, on 

 The Facts of Science, demands our closer attention. 



Here it is pointed out that, in the perception of a so-called 

 "external object," all we are justified in predicating is that we 

 experience certain sense-impressions which suggest the given per- 

 cept. Thus, a retinal impression may suggest the percept " book," 

 to the making of which there goes a good deal more than the simple 



1 The Grammar of Science:. By Karl Pearson, M.A., Sir Thomas Gresham's 

 Professor of Geometry. Contonporury Science Seyies. London ; Walter Scott, 1892. 



