ORGANIZATION OF THE SCIENCES 



organic development is a progressive change 

 from homogeneity to heterogeneity of struc- 

 ture. And let us note how this discovery in 

 biologv has lately reacted upon all preceding 

 departments of investigation, strengthening the 

 nebular theory in astronomy and the theory of 

 the progressionists in geology ; and thus ulti- 

 mately reacting upon our philosophy by giving 

 us, for the first time, a scientific doctrine of the 

 evolution of the physical universe. 



Enough has been alleged to prove that the 

 Comtean view of the progress of science fails to 

 account for more than a limited portion of the 

 facts of that progress. Instead of the sciences 

 aiding each other, with few and unimportant ex- 

 ceptions, only in the hierarchical order in which 

 Comte has placed them, we perceive that they 

 have continually been aiding each other in all 

 directions at once. The more complex sciences 

 have all along been assisting the simpler ones, 

 and these have often been delayed in their 

 progress for want of the assistance which the 

 former have ultimately furnished. There has, 

 therefore, been no such thing as a progressive 

 evolution of the sciences in a linear order ; but 

 there has been a consentaneous evolution, in 

 which the advance of each science has been a 

 necessary condition of the advance of all the 

 others. 



It thus appears that Comte unduly simpli- 



vol. n 23 



