274 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



that no chemical element could ever change and in 

 the surprising case of radium we proved to be wrong. 



Let us return to the consideration of the empirical 

 or phenomenal view of science the view that it deals 

 only with sense-perceptions and the concepts framed 

 from them, and has no message about aught beyond. 

 How far is that view right ? or, since we are here and 

 now only historians, how far is that view accepted in 

 the present, and likely to persist in the future ? 



Probably most men of science who have thought 

 about the subject would agree that science itself was 

 thus limited ; that it could give of itself no certain 

 information about the nature of any external reality. 

 Its duty is to construct a consistent conceptual model, 

 and to examine by observation and experiment how far 

 that model conforms to sense-perceptions. But science, 

 though it should be kept clear of metaphysics, as 

 indeed our history abundantly shows, has much 

 metaphysical import. When we leave science and 

 take a metaphysical view, our science becomes one of 

 the most valuable, perhaps the most valuable, of our 

 sources of evidence. The empiricists are probably 

 right in restricting science to sense-perceptions and 

 mental concepts, but they are, perhaps, inconsistent 

 with their own doctrine in inferring from the evidence 

 of science that no other knowledge is possible, and 

 metaphysics an empty dream. 



In the earlier chapters of this book, we have found 



science treated as a branch of philosophy, with no 



Science and independent existence. Gradually we 



Philosophy. h ave traced its annexation of province 



after province from the realm of philosophy, its libera- 



