Modern Science : A Criticism 



sought to " explain " each stage by reference to 

 a lower stage — " blueness " by vibrations, and 

 vibrations by flying atoms — the human always 

 by the sub-human. Going out from humanity 

 dissatisfied, it has wandered through the animal 

 and vegetable kingdoms, through the regions of 

 Chemistry and Physics, into that of Mechanics. 

 ** Here at last, in Mechanics, is something outside 

 humanity, something exact in itself, something 

 substantial," it has said. ** Let us build again on 

 this as on a foundation, and in time we shall find 

 out what humanity is." This I say has been the 

 dream of Modern Science ; yet the fallacy of it 

 is obvious. We have not got outside the human, 

 but only to the outermost verge of it. Mass 

 and motion, which in this process are taken to 

 be real entities and the first progenitors of all 

 phenomena, are simply the last abstractions of 

 sensible experience, and our emptiest concepts. 

 The material explanation of the universe is simply 

 an attempt to account for phenomena by those 

 attributes which appear to us to be common to 

 them all — which is, as said before, like accounting 

 for men by their boots : — it may be possible to 

 get an exact formula this way, but its contents have 

 little or no meaning. 



The whole process of Science and the Comtian 

 classification of its branches — regarded thus as 

 an attempt to explain Man by Mechanics — is 

 a huge vicious circle. It professes to start with 

 something simple, exact, and invariable, and from 

 this point to mount step by step till it comes to 



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