THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



CHAPTER I 

 SCIENCE AS A SYMBOL AND A LAW 



Les theories contemporaines sont sur ce point d'accord avec 

 1'histoire ; elles consacrent la preponderance dans le domaine 

 scientifique, de 1'hypothese atomistique. HANNEQUIN. 



IT has grown to be an axiom in modern thought, 

 that the hope of discovering the laws of nature and 

 our relation to them by metaphysical reasoning is 

 impossible. The term metaphysical reasoning will be 

 used consistently to mean the method introduced by the 

 Greek philosophers who, however they might differ 

 in minor matters, were pretty well agreed in looking 

 upon what we call nature as something which could be 

 investigated subjectively ; that is, things are as we think 

 them to be. It is thus directly contrary to the physical 

 method, which maintains natural phenomena and laws 

 to be entirely objective and independent of our thought ; 

 according to this method no theory or fact can be 

 established unless it is completely verified by experi- 

 mental tests. 



So little in the long years since Plato and Aristotle 

 has been done by the metaphysical philosophers to add 



