Taking certain complex data, they reduced these to less complex 

 facts which everyone, as they thought, would accept as self-evident. 

 Science makes an attempt then to describe the facts by the aid of 

 the fewest and simplest general formulae; and, when men like 

 KirchhofT, Mach, Ostwald, Jourdain, Karl Pearson and J. A. 

 Thomson, in modern times, emphasize the necessity of the economy 

 of thought in science, they do not ask that simplicity be sacrificed 

 to brevity. Again, it must be noted that, though in the early 

 period there was relatively little experiment, yet all the facts 

 described are not those which are given in mere observation. 

 Experiment is observation under control and, in the mechanics of 

 Archimedes, for example, there are definite illustrations of the use 

 of experiment. Even in this early period of science, it was seen that 

 hypotheses must be, if possible, verified, and, in this process of 

 verification, experiment found an essential place. The facts 

 described are then the result of both observation and experiment; 

 Science requires, therefore, a description of facts in clear and simple 

 language. 



But it has been said above that science not only endeavours 

 to make a description of facts, but, secondly, it posits, in its explana- 

 tions, that which is considered necessary for the facts to be what 

 they are. A complete and adequate definition of science, as it was 

 in its early period and, indeed, as will be seen, as it has been through- 

 out, must then include both these factors. Throughout this early 

 development men were attempting to describe observed facts, that 

 is indisputable, but it is just as evident that in their theories or 

 hypothetical explanations, as they have been called, the early 

 scientists were making predications in regard to that which was 

 suprasensible or transcendent. 



The vaults or domes of the heavens, believed by the early 

 astronomers to support the stars and the planets, the central fire of 

 the Pythagoreans, the eccentrics of Hipparchus and the epicycles 

 of Ptolemy, these, as well as the infinite space of Euclid's definitions, 

 were considered beyond the perception of these astronomers. It 

 will be remembered that Hipparchus classified into six different 

 magnitudes some ten hundred and eighty stars, giving to us, thereby, 

 a splendid example of the description of observed facts, according 

 to one characteristic, viz., that of intensity. It was a question of 



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