ORGANIZATION OF THE SCIENCES 



absence of those minute interferences which can- 

 not be altogether avoided." Conversely, when 

 we come to the concrete sciences, — astronomy, 

 geology, biology, psychology, and sociology, — 

 our business is no longer analysis but synthesis. 

 " Not to formulate the factors of phenomena is 

 now the object ; but to formulate the pheno- 

 mena resulting from these factors under the va- 

 rious conditions which the Universe presents." 

 Thus we have distinguished three orders of 

 sciences, — the abstract, the abstract-concrete, 

 and the concrete. Our task is next to arrange 

 the concrete sciences in some convenient and 

 justifiable order. Mr. Spencer has constructed 

 an elaborate tableau of these sciences, which is 

 at once elegant and accurate, but which, for or- 

 dinary purposes, may profitably be abridged and 

 condensed. Our principle of abridgment shall 

 be a simple one. Since, in the concrete sciences, 

 our object is to interpret the various orders of 

 phenomena synthetically, as actually manifested 

 throughout that portion of the universe which 

 is accessible to our researches, — we cannot do 

 better than arrange these sciences in the order 

 in which their subject-phenomena have begun to 

 be manifested in the course of universal Evolu- 

 tion. 1 First in order come the astronomical phe- 



1 See, in this connection, a very interesting letter by the 

 distinguished geologist M. Cotta, in La Philosophie Positive , 

 mai-juin, 1869 ; torn. iv. p. 486. 



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