The synthetic procedure, which is employed to such an extent 

 by the scientist and which is peculiarly his, is illustrated well by 

 the work, say, of Darwin. Darwin had before him certain pheno- 

 mena, which were the result of artificial selection and breeding. 

 Might net such a process, he argued, have been going on for 

 millenia on a much wider scale, in nature? But, first, there must 

 be something to take the place, in this long natural history, of the 

 hand of man, as evidenced in the artificial selection. Malthus, 

 working in a more limited realm, gave him the suggestion in the 

 economic phrase, the survival of the fittest. Thus, led by that 

 wonderful promoter of discovery, the "disciplined imagination", 

 to use Karl Pearson's phrase, Darwin was able to connect up a 

 small body of observed fact with a larger body of data. Here, there 

 is illustrated a process of synthesis, the net result of which was the 

 Theory of Evolution. Numerous illustrations of a similar character 

 might be drawn from the sciences of anthropology, astronomy, 

 physiology and physics. Such a synthetic method is of the highest 

 value, and none the less so, because the conclusions or theories that 

 result are not always capable of experimental verification. Of 

 course Hobbes knew nothing of Darwin's "Origin of Species", but 

 the theory of evolution has only been used above as a good illustra- 

 tion. In the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, in the 

 experiments, say, of Galilei, as he endeavoured to formulate the law 

 of falling bodies, there were examples of just such a method being 

 employed. 



This synthetic aspect of the method of science is illustrated also 

 by such work as that of Newton, for example, who was able to 

 coordinate into one general formula, the law of gravitation, the 

 uniform movements of all bodies, howsoever diverse, found within 

 the solar system. Here again, there is a linking up of different 

 bodies of data, and when men, at different times, have sought to 

 express all the phenomena, say, of light, its intensity, velocity, 

 reflection, refraction, etc., by one general theory, or when the 

 theory of light, the theory of electricity, the theory of heat are all 

 united under one conception, there, too, are illustrations, in an 

 even wider sense, of the operations of synthesis in the working of 

 the sciences. Analysis and synthesis constitute then the method, 

 which science uses in its description and explanation of facts, and 



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