2 THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 



comparative independence and isolation in which the great 

 English scientists of the eighteenth century worked tended to 

 keep them to the universal point of view which seems always to 

 have been an important part of the content of the notion of 

 *' philosophy," and hindered the division of labour which ends 

 in the development of the well differentiated lines of inquiry 

 and interpretation to which we apply nowadays the plural, 

 " sciences." Thus we may say (in the opinion of Mr. Merz)* 

 that the word " Science " did not reach its present meaning 

 among us until about the time ef the foundation of the British 

 Association (1831) and that its displacement of the older 

 " philosophy " was due partly to the fact that this term was 

 beginning to bear in England the special significance which it 

 had gained through the work of the great German meta- 

 physicians ; and partly to the dominant influence of France in 

 all the " sciences." In France the co-operation of investigators 

 under the patronage and with the assistance of the State had led 

 to just those results for which England during the eighteenth 

 century lacked the conditions, and the " Academie des 

 Sciences " had, practically since 1666, used the \^ord in its 

 present familiar sense. We may conclude, perhaps, that only 

 since about 1830 has European thought been fully, conscious 

 \of the existence of the antithesis to which the opening 

 paragraph drew attention. 



On^account, doubtless, of this imperfect apprehension of 

 the distinction between Science and Philosophy the adjectives 

 " scientific " and " philosophical " have followed in the develop- 

 ment of their application courses different from those of the 

 corresponding nouns. Thus, while there can be no doubt that 

 the word " Science " refers most commonly to a certain body of 

 knowledge, " scientific " refers more frequently to the method or 

 procedure by which this knowledge has been established. By 



* History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 1904, i,. 

 p. 89. 



