1302 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



finance to demography, and with censuses, statistical societies, 

 journals, treatises, etc. : and in more recent times, the like mathe- 

 matical and statistical minds have ranged into (say rather under) 

 the strictly biological field, and given us their new specialism 

 accordingly — that of Biometrics, again with its earnest and able 

 workers, groupings, and publications accordingly. Nor has such 

 progress confined itself to each immediate field thus opened; for 

 since the experimental breeding initiative of Abbot Mendel in 

 Darwin's time was re-discovered and developed in our own, we have 

 the new and valuable specialism known as Mendelism, radiant with 

 interpretations of the appearance and disappearance of varieties, 

 if not yet even of species; and its new light upon heredity gives 

 impulse to animal and plant-breeding. It has, indeed, aroused these 

 great old arts from their empirical traditions and methods to 

 rational and successful applications of science, which are already 

 productive as regards stock, crops and gardens, and even interpreta- 

 tive and promising as regards eugenics. Biometrician and student of 

 heredity, breeder and eugenist, are thus increasingly coming to- 

 gether, and throwing fresh light into social science. 



Can we wonder then that such specific advances of biology, and 

 these in association with its preliminary sciences too, have seemed 

 to many of their workers, and their readers, as the very making of 

 the social science ; and this the more since it must be frankly con- 

 fessed that the would-be sociologists proper have as yet seldom such 

 clear scientific advances to boast of, much less such concrete results 

 in practice to show. 



Yet to this question there are two answers. First is that of noting 

 and clearly locating each and all the special fields above recognised. 

 Here appears the illumining usefulness of our preceding charting 

 of the sciences, of which the diagrammatic presentment provides 

 space for each and all of these new fields. So it may be sum- 

 marised in outline, and thus as not entering the special field of 

 sociology, though basal to it — as its "legitimate materialisms". 

 Mathematics (i) has long been potently aiding the physical sciences, 

 without superseding them; and next throwing light on biology with 

 biometrics, and yet more on sociology by statistics. (2) Mechanical, 

 physical, and chemical sciences are aU needed preliminaries to 

 biology and for physiology especially, and also offer increasing 

 contributions to social science. And so also (3) Biology — in all its 

 sub-sciences, especially the kinetic ones, physiological and ecological, 

 ontogenetic and phylogenetic — has long been making great contri- 

 butions to the social sciences, and indeed teems with suggestions 

 for more, so that a section is needed to indicate some of these 

 biological fundamentals to the social science, albeit in mere 

 outliae. 



It is easy to see on this diagrammatic stairway of knowledge the 



