COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



servation, and is a purely deductive science, 

 dealing merely with number and figure, or what 

 may be called the blank forms of phenomena. 

 It thus becomes more nearly allied to logic than 

 to the physical sciences ; and indeed the chief 

 difference between the two is that logic deals 

 with qualitative relations only, while mathema- 

 tics deals with relations that are quantitative. 1 

 On the other hand, molar physics, molecular 

 physics, and chemistry, dealing with abstract 

 laws of motion and force that are gained from 

 experience of concrete phenomena, and appeal- 

 ing at every step to the concrete processes of 

 observation and experiment, may be distin- 

 guished as abstract-concrete sciences. These 

 sciences analyze concrete phenomena, in order 

 to formulate the working of their factors. "In 

 every case it is the aim to decompose the phe- 

 nomenon, and formulate its components apart 

 from one another ; or some two or three apart 

 from the rest." The problem is to ascertain the 

 laws of molar motion, or molecular vibration, or 

 atomic rearrangement, not as these laws are actu- 

 ally realized to perception in any concrete ex- 

 ample, " but as they would be displayed in the 



i [The prominence given in modern logical discussion to 

 the non-quantitative portions of mathematical theory would 

 probably have led Fiske to modify this statement. Certainly, 

 there is mathematical science that does not deal with purely 

 quantitative relations.] 



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