228 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



Indifferent hypotheses will have a pernicious influ- 

 ence if by their use the deductions of science become 

 increasingly complex. Since hypotheses deal with con- 

 fessedly fictitious substances, it seems rather futile to 

 create things which add to the difficulty of a problem. 



Again we find our hypotheses are becoming so ab- 

 struse that they require a prolonged technical training 

 and specialization before they can be understood ; thus 

 the science itself is restricted to a few specialists and 

 loses much power. These abstruse hypotheses are 

 producing a breach even between theoretical and ex- 

 perimental science. So marked is the difference be- 

 tween these two aspects of the same science that they 

 have little in common and are frequently hostile. 



But the most inevitable and dangerous influence of 

 the free use of indifferent hypotheses is the breaking 

 down of the scientific method by carrying science into 

 fields where it has no business to be. I have tried to 

 show what the limitations of science are and why the 

 obliteration of its boundaries is prejudicial to it. In 

 what has gone before, the discussion has been limited 

 to excursions into what may be called pseudo-science. 

 Encouraged by lack of criticism, there is now a desire 

 to go much further and to claim that science is the 

 sovereign of all knowledge. Thus, the example given 

 in the last chapter of Sir Oliver Lodge's attempt to 

 include the phenomena of immortality in the field of 

 science is undoubtedly made possible by the steady ^ 



