282 On the Subdivisions of Science 



Objects, of whatever orders, are nearer akin to one another than they 

 are to any relations. Whether, as some hold, space and time are forms 

 of thought; or whether, as I hold myself, they are forms of things, 

 that have become forms of thought through organized and inherited 

 experience of things; it is equally true that space and time are con- 

 trasted absolutely with the existences disclosed to us in space and time, 

 and that the sciences which deal exclusively with space and time are 

 separated by the profoundest of all distinctions from the sciences which 

 deal with the existences that space and time contain. Space is the 

 abstract of all relations of co-existence. Time is the abstract of all 

 relations of sequence. And dealing as they do entirely with relations 

 of co-existence and sequence, in their general or special forms, logic 

 and mathematics form a class of the sciences more widely unlike the 

 rest than any of the rest can be from one "another." 



Concrete science, or the science of the phenomenal con- 

 tents of space and time, i. e., the science of the o])jects of 

 nature, is physics in the widest sense ; as sjnionymous with 

 physics in this sense, or in the phice of it, I propose the 

 word pliysology, disting'uishing all its subdivisions by the 

 suffix "ology." Abstract science, or the science of space 

 and time, is metaphysics ; and this is to me the only legiti- 

 mate use of the word metaphysics, as a subdivision of 

 science at the present day. I suggest, but without insisting' 

 upon it at all, that all subdivisions of metaphysics might 

 receive the distinguishing termination "ics." Although this 

 may appear a bold and impractical)lc innovation, it is really 

 not so very difficult to carry out, as I shall, for illustration's 

 sake, show under the head of mathematics. If the sug- 

 gestion be adopted, the termination "ology" would mean 

 concrete science of, and "ics" abstract science of, whatever 

 the other portion of the word indicates; the termination 

 "ics" could then be also used to designate, with the appro- 

 priate w^ord taken from the concrete sciences, their abstract 

 science ; but I would not, perhaps, myself, carry it out in 

 all its possible details. 



I divide metaphysics into the two departments, mathe- 

 matics and logics, the first relating to space more or less 

 closely connected with time, dealing abstractly with magni- 



