132 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



of the ancient science of mental construction 

 whose foundations were laid by Aristotle. Science 

 brings in great wealth of raw material, but the 

 architectural genius must be sought in Philosophy. 



LIMITATIONS OF THE SCIENTIFIC ACCOUNT OF 

 THINGS. The plain man's question is, Can you 

 give an account of this? What is this modern 

 modesty of science, that it does not pretend to 

 explain anything? Can you give an account of 

 these phenomena or can you not? Let us consider 

 the limitations of the scientific account of things. 



Science shows, often after much study, that a 

 certain collocation of antecedents and no other 

 will result in a certain collocation of consequents 

 and no other. But the consequents are often very 

 different from the antecedents, and we cannot 

 say that we know how they come about. Even 

 in an exact science like Chemistry this limitation 

 of scientific description is well illustrated. We 

 know that oxygen and hydrogen unite under 

 certain conditions to form something qualitatively 

 very different from either of them, viz. water, but 

 we do not know how it is that water results. 

 Even in more complex cases, we know the condi- 

 tions of the combination, and we have ingenious 

 theories as to how the elements involved change 

 partners and form new linkages, but we do not 

 really understand how the result should be as it is. 

 Still less can we predict what will ensue from the 



