CHAPTER IV 

 THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 



The truth of science has ever had not merely the task of 

 evolving herself from the dull and uniform mist of ignorance, 

 but also that of repressing and dissolving the phantoms of the 

 imagination. FARADAY. 



IF we are compelled to revert to old and supposedly 

 discarded systems of thought when we attempt to 

 make new hypothetical systems, we should inquire 

 whether we are really advancing the theory of science 

 by that method. Is it true that Descartes reaches in 

 his wonderful clarity of expression the highest attain- 

 ment in speculative thought? Even in the then little 

 cultivated subjects of electricity and magnetism, his 

 imagination did not fail him and he drew a picture of 

 the field of force about a magnet which is strikingly 

 like those in modern treatises. And to explain elec- 

 trical attraction, he supposed bodies to contain little 

 filaments of his elementary matter which were crowded 

 out when the bodies were rubbed together. These fila- 

 ments attached themselves like lines of force to neigh- 

 boring bodies. When the rubbing was stopped they 

 retracted and so drew the electrified bodies together. 

 If we modernize this explanation, we have a fair state- 



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