134 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



physical scientist, he may say with Bacon, &quot; Deum semper excipimus &quot; ; * for, 

 as Newman has somewhere said, science is a-theistic, or non-theistic, in the 

 sense that God does not come within its immediate scope. But all physical 

 investigations lead up sooner or later to a point at which physical, empirically 

 verifiable antecedents begin to appear unable to account for all the facts. If, 

 at this point, the scientist chooses to contend that physical antecedents as, 

 for instance, atoms and motion are still sufficient to account for everything, 

 he is indeed at liberty to propound this mechanical conception as an ultimate 

 philosophy of the universe as Laplace appears to have done when he told 

 Napoleon that he had no need of the hypothesis of God in his Mecanique 

 Celeste ; a but he cannot contend that physically verifiable hypotheses are alone 

 &quot; legitimate,&quot; nor can he disallow hypotheses which postulate ultra-physical 

 causes, by the a priori assumption that such hypotheses are not &quot; scientific &quot;. 

 If no physical causes we can postulate are sufficient to explain the physical 

 universe as a whole, it is not only perfectly legitimate, it is even logically 

 necessary, and therefore &quot;scientific,&quot; for us to postulate causes which are 

 ultra-physical. Such hypotheses cannot be described as &quot; unscientific,&quot; or 

 &quot; scientifically inadmissible,&quot; 3 for there a re causes other than physical or 

 phenomenal, and laws other than mechanical or mathematical, of which we 

 can, nevertheless, have scientific knowledge. No doubt, the terms &quot; science &quot; 

 and &quot; scientific &quot; are often narrowly used nowadays as synonymous with 

 the exact sciences of mathematics, abstract mechanics, and physics conceived 

 and treated mechanically ; 4 and sometimes with the mischievous insinuation 

 that in these departments alone is to be found certain knowledge ; but when 

 we speak of &quot; the aim of science as such, and of the logical conditions 

 under which that aim can be realized,&quot; 5 it would be misleading to identify 

 science with physics, instead of understanding it in the philosophical sense 

 of all certain knowledge of things through their causes. Although, there 

 fore, when there is question of discovering the proximate causes of &quot; a parti 

 cular natural event,&quot; our hypothesis &quot;should be,&quot; as Mr. Joseph holds, &quot;of 

 such a nature that observable facts, if we could find them, might prove 

 . . . it &quot; by disproving all its rivals ; yet we cannot place this restriction on 

 the conception of certain wider and more fundamental explanatory theories 

 to which science leads, and to which we shall presently refer ; 7 nor does 

 Mr. Joseph appear to insist on such a restriction in these cases : 8 on the 

 contrary, in regard to such &quot; postulates,&quot; or &quot; fundamental assumptions,&quot; he 

 consents to &quot; enlarging . . . the liberty of the mind &quot; in a way we cannot 

 profess to understand, for he says &quot; the fundamental assumptions of a science 

 may be metaphysically untenable, and we enlarge it [the &quot; liberty of the 

 mind &quot;] to extend to all which these assumptions cover, however it may be 

 ultimately impossible to think the facts in terms of them &quot;. If a scientist 



1 De Principiis atque Originibus, ELLIS AND SPEDDING, iii., p. 80 ; apud JOSEPH, 

 op. cit., p. 429. 



2 Cf. JOSEPH, ibid. ; WARD, Naturalism and Agnosticism, i., pp. 3, 4, 45, 46, 

 64 ; POINCARE&quot;, op. cit., Introduction by Professor LARMOR, p. xiv. 



3 JOSEPH, ibid. 



4 Cf. WARD, op. cit., i., Lectures v., vi., and passim. 



5 JOSEPH, ibid, (italics ours). *&amp;gt;ibid. 1 infra, p. 137. 

 *Cf. op. cit., pp. 468, 476-7; infra. 9 ibid., p. 430, n. 2. 



