THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 59 



solid experimental results of Gilbert: " Quale flumen, talis renms. 

 Flumen est species immateriata virtutis in Sole inagneticae. 

 Quin igitur et remus de magnete quippiam habeat ? Quid si 

 ergo corpora planetarum 1 omnia sunt ingentes quidam rotundi 

 raagnetes ? De Terra (uno ex planetis, Copernico) non est 

 dubium. Probavit id Gulielmus Gilbertus."* 



It will be noted that Keppler's final conception of the 

 planetary system is formally less satisfactory than the earlier 

 one since it fails to suggest quantitative determinations by 

 which it could be verified. At the same time it will, I hope, 

 be agreed that when, at some moment between 1600 and 1609, 

 Keppler, wrestling with Brahe's records, forgot his pious pre- 

 possessions in his anxiety to understand the behaviour of Mars 

 for the sake of understanding it, he adopted for the first time an 

 attitude which was genuinely " scientific." The differentia of 

 Science, then, as a conative process whose aim is to render the 

 Objective intelligible, is the presence of no motive except the 

 desire to render it intelligible particularly in its quantitative 

 determinations. No philosophical leanings, not even the desire 

 of power over Nature for which Bacon was willing to be her 

 minister, can be admitted beyond the " margin " of the apper- 

 ceptive area in which the Objective facts .are central. The 

 scientific attitude is essentially that of the savants who, drinking 

 to the next great discovery, coupled with their toast the hope 

 that it might never be of any use to anybody. 



19. 



I need hardly say that Keppler does not provide us witli 

 the first example on record of the scientific attitude. Mach 

 holds that -the beginnings of Science are to be found in the 

 descriptive communications of the processes of the craft made 

 by older members of a guild to begirmers.t So Hoffding,J 



* Pars Quarta, Cap. LVII, p. 387. 



t Mach, Science of Mechanics, p. 4. 



j Hoffding, Hist, of Modern Philosophy, i, p. 161. 



