398 NATURAL SCIENCE. June. 



assemblage of chemical sciences ? Certainly not ! In chemistry 

 some portions are purely abstract, but others depend on observation 

 pure and simple, on experiment, application, and so on. By the side 

 of purely mathematical sections are others of speculative philosophy, 

 hardly to be considered science at all, and yet finding place in that 

 whole called chemistry. And it is really a whole which we cannot 

 disintegrate merely to preserve the abstract part of it for abstract 

 science and so maintain the prevalent convention. 



It is needless to labour the point. A subdivision of pure 

 science into concrete and abstract is inapplicable, because, however 

 interesting, it has nothing in common with the actual facts of the 

 case. 



It is the same with pure and applied science. Pure sciences 

 have developed and produced applied sciences ; thus chemistry has 

 produced analytical chemistry and metallurgy ; or they may receive 

 direct application in some other science {e.g. biological chemistry), or 

 in some art {e.g. agricultural chemistry). And chemistry itself was 

 originally an applied science ; for the chemistry of the Egyptians was 

 but a trade, while alchemy at first pursued a purely practical end. 

 Medicine is admittedly an applied science. Anthropology on the 

 contrary, although a daughter of medicine, is a pure science. It is 

 medicine also that has given rise to embryology, physiology, human 

 anatomy, and even comparative anatomy, and many other pure 

 sciences. Why, then, separate all these sciences from the mother 

 science ? Because it was and is still, an applied science ? No ! the 

 sciences are bound together by ties of origin, by ties of relationship, 

 — they are children one of another. 



The supposed divisions ought to give place to a more natural 

 classification, denoting, by generic terms, both the various families 

 of sciences, and the groups of minor sciences into which they have 

 split up. 



Before developing this idea further, we must ask — what is 

 philosophy and what is science ? An answer by definitions is of little 

 value. We simply ask if it is possible to draw a line of demarcation 

 between science and the philosophy of science. I think not. It 

 seems to me that any branch of speculation, at a given moment, is 

 capable of scientific verification ; and that any science, originally a 

 speculation, only passed by degrees into the region of the positive; 

 that in fact the sciences sprang from philosophy. 



On the other hand every science contains a set of observations 

 centreing round a subject, or pursuing a definite end ; they all tend 

 towards perfect knowledge and the comprehension of some enigma. 

 But as one never stops at facts, but rather seeks to explain them and 

 to unveil the mystery, so the sciences as they develop lead us back to 

 philosophy. Considered generally, science forms a means of investi- 

 gation of nature and natural phenomena, a sort of analysis, all serving 

 to form a basis for philosophic speculation. 



