4 WHAT IS SCIENCE? 



that the motive of our study is supposed to be intellectual 

 curiosity without any ulterior end ; and that our criterion 

 will be always the satisfaction of our intellectual needs 

 and not the interests of practical life. This procedure 

 would be necessary even if our ultimate concern were 

 rather with practical science. For it is only if we under- 

 stand the nature of pure science that we can interpret 

 with confidence the knowledge that it offers and apply 

 it rightly to practical problems. Science, like everything 

 else, has its limitations ; there are problems, even 

 practical problems, on which science can offer no advice 

 whatever. One of the greatest hindrances to the proper 

 application of science to the needs of the community lies 

 in a failure to realize those limitations ; if science is 

 sometimes ignored, it is often because it has been dis- 

 credited by an attempt to extend it to regions far beyond 

 its legitimate province. 



But it may be said, if the appreciation of pure science 

 must always be confined to a few serious students, what 

 is the use of such an attempt as this to make it intelligible 

 to the plain man ? The answer is simple : I only said 

 that the full appreciation must be so confined. Nobody 

 can appreciate good music to the full unless he has 

 trained himself by careful study, yet most of us can get 

 some value from a concert ; perhaps we get more actual 

 enjoyment than a skilled musician. It is just the same 

 with science. Indeed, there is little doubt that science 

 is the easiest of the branches of pure learning for the 

 amateur. It is quite common to find men of high 

 intellectual gifts and not without learning, who are 

 perfectly incapable of understanding what mathematics 

 or philosophy is all about, why anybody should ask such 

 absurd questions and how they think anyone is the 

 better for the answers they give. A similar complete 

 indifference to science is not common ; almost every 

 one can be made to understand what science is 



