THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 



through its knowledge of these Objective relations that Science 

 has so much theoretical hold over the inscrutable reals, that it is 

 able to predict the future ; but that same knowledge has clearly a 

 certain " intellectual " value quite apart from its value as a 

 collection of recettes pratiques. 



66. 



Even this amount of intellectual value seems to disappear in 

 the view of Science advocated by M. Le Boy.* For this writer 

 the laws of Science, when they are not conventional definitions, 

 are simply recettes pratiques, " not true but efficacious?' " not 

 concerning our knowledge so much as our actions" " rather 

 enabling us to capture the order of Nature, than revealing it to 

 us."j~ Moreover, these laws have reference to artificial facts 

 faits scientiftques created by the scientist out of the faits bruts 

 of perception. 



M. Le Boy's scientific fact seems to correspond to a large 

 extent with our " secondary construction " by which the 

 " primary fact " is apperceived. An " atom " and an " eclipse " 

 are examples given. Poincare adds an " electric current " as the 

 scientific fact constructed from the brute fact of a galvanometer 

 deflection; also ttfc "corrected reading "obtained by treatment of 

 a number of direct readings. We may add ourselves the " rigid 

 bar" by which the actual elastic lever is replaced in theory. 

 But there is this important difference between Le Boy's con- 

 ception and our own: the laws of science as conceived by 

 him seem hardly to touch the brute facts, which, not being 

 scientific, are outside Science.^ This is why the law is in so 

 many cases merely a rule of action. In our view, on the other 



* See the discussion reported at length in the Bulletin de la Societc 

 fran$aise de Philosophic, Mai, 1901. Le Roy's views are criticised by 

 Poincare in the essay reprinted in La Valeur de la Science, Ch. X. 



t Bulletin, p. 5. 



% Poincare, La Valeur de la Science, p. 221. Cf. Bulletin, p. 21, where 

 M. Le Roy says, " C'est ce qu'on ajoute au fait brut pour constituer le fait 

 scientifique qui est le plus important. ' 



