THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. lo$ 

 65. 



Opposed to the thinkers who adopt the view of the value of 

 scientific concepts which has just been repudiated, are those 

 who have felt themselves forced to take up one of the various 

 positions included under the name of the descriptive view of 

 Science. Most of these positions have a relation to the wider 

 philosophical position of Humanism,* which makes them par- 

 ticularly interesting at the present moment. 



" The great Poincare," says Professor James,f misses 

 Humanism by a hair. He has demonstrated^ in a brilliant 

 manner the conventional character of Science, and has laid 

 special stress upon the manner in which one theory has 

 succeeded another in the same physical field. He appears to 

 accept what we may perhaps call the disintegrating results of 

 mathematical physics, regarding perceived things and events as 

 really due to the superposition of a great number of similar 

 elementary phenomena.! Moreover, he removes from the 

 Objective every element such as the secondary qualities 

 which cannot be proved to be " the same for all " by the use of 

 language. " Pas de discours. pas d'objectiviteV'IT If, then, 

 perception gives us no reality and the hypotheses of Science are 

 only conventions, what is there that remains ? We find that 

 while hypothesis may succeed hypothesis as, for example, 

 Maxwell's electro-magnetic theory of light succeeded Fresnel's 

 undulatory theory the differential equations remain the same, 

 the expression of veritable relations between, real terms which 

 Nature hides from us eternally, though Fresnel may think of 

 them as movements and Maxwell as electric currents** It is 



* See James, " Humanism and Truth," Mind, N.S., No. 52, p. '462. 

 t James, loc. cit. 



J In the essays reprinted in La Science et VHypothese, and the more 

 recent La Valeur de la Science. 



See, e.g., La Science et VHypothese, Ch. X. 

 || Op. cit., p. 187. 



IF La Valeur de la Science, p. 262. 

 ** La Science et VHypothhe, p. 190. 



