86 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



the more complex orders of facts being dependent 

 on those that deal with less complex orders of 

 facts. It does not seem to us that the facts of 

 life can be re-stated in the formulae of chemistry 

 and physics, or that the biologist holds in his 

 hands the key to the problems of human society, 

 but it is certain that an understanding and also 

 a control of the organism has been greatly fur- 

 thered by chemical and physical inquiries, and 

 that the data of biology are full of suggestion 

 to the sociologist. Comte's insistence on the 

 inter-dependence and correlation of the sciences 

 was sound. 



The idea of a linear series, however, is falla- 

 cious if taken literally. It does not express an 

 historical fact that Biology evolved or evolves 

 from Chemistry and Physics; Astronomy can- 

 not be separated off as a fundamental science 

 from Physics and Chemistry, nor did it supply 

 the foundations of Physics; Mathematics may be 

 justly called the most fundamental of the sciences, 

 but it is abstract and not in line with Physics, 

 Chemistry, and Biology, which are descriptive. 

 The ranking of Psychology as a department of 

 Physiology (Biology) abandons the autonomy of 

 that very distinctive science quite gratuitously 

 and fallaciously, we venture to think. 



SPENCER'S CLASSIFICATION. Herbert Spencer 

 (1864) emphasized the distinction between the 



