Science of the Future : A Forecast 



are calculating the strength of bridges, we may 

 adopt what generalisations we like concerning 

 mechanical structure, as long as they give us actual 

 and practical results ; if we are predicting eclipses, 

 we may make use of any theory that will do. The 

 theory does not matter, as long as it hauls the prac- 

 tical result after it, just as it does not matter whether 

 your cable is of iron or hemp or silk, as long as 

 you can get your ship into dock with it. In this 

 sense our Modern Science is, I conceive, admirable. 

 For practical results and brief predictions it affords 

 a quantity of useful generalisations — shorthand 

 notes and conventional symbols and pocket 

 summaries of phenomena — which bear about the 

 same relation to the actual world that a map does 

 to the country it is supposed to represent. It 

 cannot be said to have any resemblance to the real 

 thing — but, when you understand the principle 

 on which it is formed, it is exceedingly useful for 

 finding your way about. As long as Science 

 therefore keeps the practical end in view, and 

 starting from sense seeks to return to sense again, 

 its intermediate theorising is perfectly legitimate ; 

 but the moment it credits its theory with a positive 

 and authoritative existence, as an actual repre- 

 sentation of facts — and endeavours to pass by means 

 of it into unverifiable and abstract regions, as of 

 invisible germs or atoms, or far distances of space, 

 or the remote past or future — it is simply throw- 

 ing its rope's end into the sky and trying to climb 

 up 1 That " the wish is father to the thought " 

 is in its wide sense profoundly true. In the indivi- 



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