CHAPTER VI 

 SKEPTICISM AND IDOLATRY IN SCIENCE 



E egli questo un far loro oracolo una statua di legno, e a 

 quella correr per i responsi, quella temere, quella riverire, quella 

 adorare. GALILEO. 



THE intellectual habits of men have a very decided 

 effect on their characters, and it is evident that Galileo 

 had met with contemporaries who carried their devo- 

 tion to the hypothetical and dogmatic scientific method 

 of Aristotle to a state of idolatry, accepting on faith 

 that which should be submitted to experience. The 

 quotation, from his Dialogues on the Two Principal 

 ^Systems, which I have given expresses his opposition to 

 such idolatry in no uncertain language. It is fortunate 

 for me that I wrote this chapter as an essay with the 

 same title before I had read Galileo's comment, because 

 the quotation is so ben trovato that otherwise I should 

 have been accused of fitting an argument to a title. 



Men of science have two principal functions to per- 

 form: first to observe the phenomena of the world; 

 and when certain connections and differences are 

 found in these phenomena, to classify them under laws. 

 The conclusions, thus derived, have been used with 

 great success to enlarge our intellectual life; to modify 



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