124 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION F. 



selves as the best ascertained means of predicting or anticipating 

 experiences. A scientific law is a statement of condition and 

 consequence, or of the correlation of phenomena, such as enables 

 us to act or to get results in accordance with its formula, but 

 which cannot on that account claim to state in any definite way 

 the real nature of the things concerned. The efficiency of such 

 laws, as instruments of control, shows them to be partial expres- 

 sions of the nature of things, or to be not inconsistent with 

 reality, but they are one and all sym^bols or indices rather than 

 actual characterizations of reality. Similarly, it is being recog- 

 nized that each special science deals only with an abstract aspect 

 of things — an aspect " abstracted out of the full comprehensive- 

 ness of reality " ; and that, while the principles and laws of the 

 more abstract and general sciences are applicable in partial ex- 

 planation of more concrete spheres of experience, so that different 

 inquiries tend more and more in part to coincide and to inter- 

 penetrate each other, each science has nevertheless its own dis- 

 tinctive problems and concepts, its own plane of reality to 

 investigate — matter, life, consciousness, etc. — and that the dif- 

 ferences or peculiar nature of each sphere, though more or less 

 interpretable in terms of others, can in its essential character 

 be apprehended only 'by way of immediate acquaintance or actual 

 experience. 



This critical attitude towards the fundamental conceptions 

 and procedure of science is prominent in the w'ritings of such 

 thinkers as W. K. Clififord, Ernst Mach, Henri Poincare, and 

 Karl Pearson ; and amid much that is toO' special and detailed 

 for the mere philosopher adequately to follow, much less to esti- 

 mate, there is a general trend of thought that connects interest- 

 ingly and significantly with the problems and the standpoint of 

 contemporary philosophy. A brief statement of some of their 

 main theses will make the position clearer. 



Clifl:ord emphasizes that scientific thought is essentially the 

 application of past experience to new circumstances by means 

 of an observed order of events, and that its chief business, there- 

 fore, is to be the guide of action. Whatever be the particular 

 subject-matter of our knowledge, the character that makes it 

 scientific is that it enables us to act upon it with security and 

 confidence, to regulate our behaviour in accordance with this 

 knowledge.^ 



Mach shows that the (function of science is to give a descrip- 

 tion of the facts of experience in the most concise and compre- 

 hensive way, with the utmost economy of thought. By ascer- 

 taining the modes of the interdependence or interconnexion of 

 the several elements or aspects of experience, and by express- 

 ing these correlations in ever more general statements or 

 formulae, science is able increasingly to anticipate and thereby 

 to save or economize experience.^ 



^Lectures and Essays, "The Aims and Instruments of Scientific 

 Thought." 



''Science of Mechanics, especially Introduction and ch. iv., sect. iv. 



