74 MODES OF RESEARCH IN GENETICS 



besides the compilation of large numbers of 

 individual instances, the concepts of averages, 

 approximation, and probability) may be entirely 

 right and justifiable. Indeed, a cautious person 

 is bound to be very chary about even suggesting 

 any criticism of it when he finds the following 

 statement made by so distinguished an authority 

 as Professor Royce.^ *'I am next led to say that 

 whether the natural world is a mechanism or not, 

 the statistical view of nature would be, and so 

 far as we know the facts, is applicable to suflSciently 

 complicated systems of things and events, not 

 as mere substitute for those more exact computa- 

 tions which our ignorance of mechanical laws 

 makes necessary, but as an expression of a very 

 positive, although only probable and approximate 

 knowledge whose type all of the organic and 

 social sciences, as well as most aspects of the 

 inorganic sciences, illustrate. There is, therefore, 

 good reason to say that not the mechanical but 

 the statistical form is the canonical form of 

 scientific theory, and that if we knew the natural 

 world millions of times more widely and minutely 

 than we do, the mortality tables and the com- 

 putations based upon a knowledge of averages, 

 would express our scientific knowledge about 

 individual events, much better than the nautical 

 almanac would do. For our mechanical theories 



1 Royce, J. "The Mechanical, the Historical and the Statistical." 

 Science, N. S., 1914. 



