348 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



sent the manifolds of experience. As a result of its development 

 from a time of less culture, it has by no means sufficient regularity 

 and completeness to accomplish its purpose adequately and con- 

 veniently. Rather, it is just as unsystematic as the events in the 

 lives of single peoples have been, and the necessity of expressing 

 the endlessly different particulars of daily life has only allowed it to 

 develop so that the correspondence between word and concept is 

 kept rather indefinite and changeable, according to need within 

 somewhat wide limits. Thus all work in those sciences which must 

 make vital use of these means, as especially psychology and sociology, 

 or philosophy in general, is made extremely difficult by the ceaseless 

 struggle with the indefiniteness and ambiguity of language. An 

 improvement of this condition can be effected only by introducing 

 signs in place of words for the representation of concepts, as the 

 progress of science allows it, 'and equipping these signs with the 

 manifold which from experience belongs to the concept. 



An intermediate position in this respect is taken by the sciences 

 which were indicated above as parts of energetics. In this realm 

 there is added to the concepts order, number, size, space, and time, 

 a new concept, that of energy, which finds application to every 

 single phenomenon in this whole field, just as do those more general 

 concepts. This is due to the fact that a certain quantity, which 

 is known to us most familiarly as mechanical work, on account of 

 its qualitative transformability and quantitative constancy, can 

 be shown to be a constituent of every physical phenomenon, that 

 is, every phenomenon which belongs to the field of .mechanics, 

 physics, and chemistry. In other words; one can perfectly character- 

 ize every physical event by indicating what amounts and kinds of 

 energy have been present in it and into what energies they have 

 been transformed. Accordingly, it is logical to designate the so- 

 called physical phenomena as energetical. 



That such a conception is possible is now generally admitted. 

 On the other hand, its expediency is frequently questioned, and there 

 is at present so much the more reason for this because a thorough 

 presentation of the physical sciences in the energetical sense has not 

 yet been made. If one applies to this question the criterion of the 

 scientific system given above, the completeness of the correspondence 

 between the representing manifold and that to be represented, there 

 is no doubt that all previous systematizations in the form of hypo- 

 theses which have been tried in these sciences are defective in this 

 respect. Formerly, for the purpose of representing experiences, 

 manifolds whose character corresponded to the character of the 

 manifold to be represented only in certain salient points without 

 consideration of any rigid agreement, indeed, even without definite 

 question as to such an agreement, have been employed. 



