214 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



be universally verifiable by all competent inquir- 

 ers. A scientific datum should be quite imper- 

 sonal, and the statement of it should be quite 

 uncoloured by any emotion. This habitual occu- 

 pation is bound to react on the organism; it 

 does not in itself favour that subjectivity which is 

 characteristic of religious feeling. 



We have to remember also that the scientific 

 spirit has been slowly learning the great lesson, 

 driven home by positivism that its formula- 

 tions must be freed from the vague and verbal. 

 Science ever brandishes "William of Occam's 

 razor": "Entities are not to be multiplied beyond 

 necessity." 



Furthermore, it seems that some importance 

 must be attached not only to the sceptical habit, 

 which is distinctively scientific the testing, veri- 

 fying spirit but also to the agnostic frame of 

 mind. The scientific inquirer is aware of so 

 many enigmas, so many unsolved or half-solved 

 problems, that it is almost habitual to him to 

 say: "I do not know," "I do not understand." 

 He has learned to refrain from formulation when 

 the data are insufficient; he is accustomed to be 

 agnostic. Not that he folds his hands saying, 

 "We do not know and we shall never know," 

 his is an active agnosticism. But being accus- 

 tomed to patience, and having seen the solution 

 of much that his forefathers called insoluble, 



