340 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



5. Mechanics. ^ 



6. Physics. > Energetics. 



7. Chemistry, J 



8. Physiology, j 



9. Psychology. > Biology. 

 10. Sociology. J 



This table is arbitrary in so far as the grades assumed can be 

 increased or diminished according to need. For example, mechanics 

 and physics could be taken together; or between physics and chem- 

 istry, physical chemistry could be inserted. Likewise between 

 physiology and psychology, anthropology might find a place; or the 

 first five sciences might be united under mathematics. How one 

 makes these divisions is entirely a practical question, which will be 

 answered at any time in accordance with the purposes of division; 

 and dispute concerning the matter is almost useless. 



I should like, however, to call attention to the three great groups 

 of mathematics, energetics, and biology (in the wider sense). They 

 represent the decisive regulative thought which humanity has 

 evolved, contributed up to this time, toward the scientific mastery of 

 its experiences. Arrangement is the fundamental thought of mathe- 

 matics. From mechanics to chemistry the concept of energy is the 

 most important; and for the last three sciences it is the concept of 

 life. Mathematics, energetics, and biology, therefore, embrace the 

 totality of the sciences. 



Before we enter upon the closer consideration of these sciences, it 

 will be well to anticipate another objection which can be raised on the 

 basis of the following fact. Besides the sciences named (and those 

 which lie between them) there are many others, as geology, history, 

 medicine, philology, which we find difficulty in arranging in the above 

 scheme, which must, however, be taken into consideration in some 

 way or other. They are often characterized by the fact that they 

 stand in relation with several of the sciences named, but even more 

 by the following circumstance. Their task is not, as is true of the 

 pure sciences above named, the discovery of general relationships, 

 but they relate rather to existing complex objects whose origin, 

 scope, extent, etc., in short, whose temporal and spatial relationships 

 they have to discover or to "explain." For this purpose they make 

 use of relations which are placed at their disposal by the first-named 

 pure sciences. These sciences, therefore, had better be called applied 

 sciences. However, in this connection we should not think only or 

 even chiefly of technical applications; rather the expression is used 

 to indicate that the reciprocal relations of the parts of an object are 

 to be called to mind by the application of the general rules found in 

 pure science. 



While in such a task the abstraction process of pure science is 



