130 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



Investigator has no right to waive the responsi- 

 bility of determining "the principles and condi- 

 tions, the limits and relations, of the sciences." 

 If he cannot determine these, who can? Now it 

 may be that the definition quoted is an unfortu- 

 nate one, and the objection not without justifica- 

 tion, but the important point is this, that the 

 categories and systematizations of science should 

 be criticized, and this requires expert training. 

 It can only be done by a philosopher to whom 

 the scientific discipline is real, or by a scientific 

 investigator to whom the philosophical discipline 

 is real. But it has to be done. 



When a well-thought-out scientific exposition 

 disturbs the reader's preconceptions, or takes him 

 beyond his usual depth of analysis, he has his 

 revenge in dubbing it "metaphysical." But this 

 is an ignorant sneer, if metaphysics means "the 

 critical and systematic analysis of our concep- 

 tions." It is an intellectual discipline, an actively 

 sceptical inquiry, a criticism of categories and it 

 may be ranked beside Mathematics and Logic in 

 the general scheme of knowledge. 



(2) The various sciences supply partial pictures 

 of the world pictures taken from different points 

 of view. It is fojr_metaghysiGS_to_combine these 

 pictures, not as one makes a composite photo- 

 graph by placing one print on the top of another, 

 but rather as one combines two views in a stereo- 



