Modern Science : A Criticism 



this instantaneous, untranslatable gravitation, 

 Science bangs its devoted head in vain. Flaving 

 created these absurdities by the method of " per- 

 sonification of abstractions " ^ or the " reification 

 of concepts," 2 it seriously and in all good faith 

 tries to understand them ; having dressed up its 

 own Mumbo Jumbo (which it once jeered at 

 religion for doing) it piously shuts its eyes and 

 endeavours to believe in it. 



The Atomic Theory affords a good example 

 of the " method of ignorance." When we try 

 to think about material objects generally — to 

 generalise about them — that is, to find some attribute 

 or attributes common to them, we are at first 

 puzzled. They present such an immense variety. 

 But after a time, by dint of stripping off or abstract- 

 ing all such attributes or qualities as we think we 

 perceive in one body and not in another — as for 

 example, redness, blueness, warmth, saltness, life, 

 intelligence, or v/hat not — we find an attribute 

 left, namely resistance to touch, which is common 

 to all material bodies. This quality in the body 

 we call " mass," and since it is only known by 

 motion, mass and motion become correlative 

 attributes which we find useful to class bodies by, 

 not because they represent the various bodies 

 particularly well, but because they are found in 

 all bodies ; just as you might class people by their 

 boots — not because boots are a very valuable 

 method of classification, but simply because every 



1 J. S. Mill. 



2 See Stallo's excellent Concepts of Modern Physics. 



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