80 The Scientific Method. 



the recognition of this fundamental principle we find a corrective of 

 the tendency to solipsism which Dr. Abbot has endeavored to combat, 

 as well as a justification for a rational idealism, which, I think, is 

 the accepted philosophy of the present day. 



DB. ROBERT G. ECCLES: 



I agree almost perfectly with the last speaker, though I am no ideal- 

 ist. It seems to me that the principles which he has laid down and 

 indorsed are those which must underlie all scientific conceptions of 

 the nature of knowledge, but that their logical outcome is not solip- 

 sism or any extreme form of idealism, but the " transfigured realism " 

 of Mr. Herbert Spencer. I can not agree with Dr. Abbot that the true 

 test of scientific knowledge is the " consensus of the competent." 

 Who are " the competent " f Those whom the world has recognized 

 as " the competent " in past ages have been the persecutors of science ; 

 they have condemned the men who were actnally in the right to the 

 dungeon and the stake. The criterion set up by the lecturer seems to 

 me to be no true test of knowledge because it is itself in need of a test 

 whereby to establish its claims. Who shall decide who "the compe- 

 tent " are in any given instance ? We need another " consensus of the 

 competent " to decide who the competent are, and so on ad infinitum. 

 D^r. Abbot's test actually relegates the criterion of truth to the bar of 

 individual opinion, and is therefore not a scientific test at all. Each 

 man will decide for himself who are the competent according to his 

 own individual bias. The true test of the scientific value of opinions 

 is the agreement thereof with objective facts. That theory is true 

 and has scientific justification which agrees with all the facts to which 

 it relates, no matter if the promulgator be in a minority of one. Bruno 

 and Galileo are thus justified, though the theories they promulgated 

 were new to the world and were rejected by " the competent," or those 

 recognized as such, in their own time. 



DR. LEWIS G. JANES: 



To me, I must confess, Dr. Abbot's doctrine of the " consensus of 

 the competent" as the ultimate criterion of knowledge has always 

 seemed the strongest part of his system. Dr. Eccles's remarks appear 

 to me somewhat hypercritical. Dr. Abbot's rejection of the Spencerian 

 " unknowable " seems to me to be based on an imperfect comprehension 

 of that doctrine, and of the psycho-physiological principles and facts 

 upon which it is based. Admitting the arbitrary limitations of the 

 human faculties of sense-perception, whereby we have contact with 

 an external reality, this doctrine follows as a logical and inevitable 

 deduction. I sympathize strongly with Dr. Abbot, however, in his 



