Modern Science : A Criticism 



sense ? Cold to yourself, or to other people, or 

 to polar bears, or by the thermometer ? And so 

 on. Science therefore steps in with an air of 

 authority and sets him right. It says the tempera- 

 ture is 30<' Fahrenheit^ as if to settle the matter. 

 But does this really settle the matter } Temperature 

 — who knows what that is } What is the scientific 

 definition of it } I find (Clerk-Maxwell's Theory 

 of Heat, p. 2.) " the temperature of a body is a 

 quantity which indicates how hot or how cold the 

 body is." This sounds very much like saying, 

 " the colour of a body is a quantity which indicates 

 how blue, red, or yellow the body is." It does 

 not bring us much farther on our way. But 

 in the next paragraph Maxwell shows the object 

 of his definition (which of course is only preliminary) 

 by saying, " By the use, therefore, of the word 

 temperature, we fix in our minds the conviction 

 that it is possible not only to feel, but to measure^ 

 how hot a body is." That is to say he clearly 

 maintains that it is possible to find an absolute 

 standard of hotness or coldness — or rather of the 

 unknown thing called temperature — outside of 

 ourselves and independent of human sensation. 

 When the man said he was cold he was probably 

 just describing his own sensations, but here Science 

 indicates that it is in search of something which 

 has an independent existence of its own, and which 

 therefore when found we can measure exactly 

 and once for all. W^hat then is that thing } 

 What is temperature } say, what is it } 



We cudgel our brains in vain. Perhaps the 

 III 



