560 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



In fact, the eight chapters of this work which have 

 dealt with the various abstract views from which natural 

 phenomena have been considered in recent times, form 

 an elaborate refutation of the so-called Baconian, of the 

 enumerative or " all case," method. It was the light of 

 the idea which brought life and order into the " rudis 

 indigestaque moles " of badly collected facts, and in 

 many cases even led for the first time to their useful 

 and intelligent enmneration. But now we come to a 

 further important question. Allowing that in certain 

 large but nevertheless secluded spheres of science a few 

 general ideas have been found to apply and work 

 wonders of calculation, prediction, and useful applica- 

 tion, how about those complicated phenomena which 

 form our natural and social environment, and where so 

 far no scientific formula has proved powerful or com- 

 prehensive enough ? Are all these elaborate enumer- 

 ations and graphical representations in meteorology, in 

 sociology, commerce, industry, and finance, to which we 

 have instinctively and increasingly had recourse during 

 the whole of the century, of no value ? Is no useful 



smallest of fractions of actual 

 transactions is set down so that 

 investigation can use it. Litera- 

 ture has been called the ' fragment 

 of fragments,' and in the same way 

 statistics are the ' scrap of scraps.' 

 In real life scarcely any one knows 

 more than a small part of what his 

 neighbour is doing, and he scarcely 

 makes public any of that little, or 

 of what he does himself. A com- 

 plete record of commercial facts, 

 or even of one kind of such facts, 

 is the completest of dreams. You 

 might as well hope for an entire 

 record of human conversation." 



Stanley Jevous ( ' Principles of 

 Science,' Preface, p. vii), says : 

 " Within the last century a reaction 

 has been setting in against the 

 purely empirical procedure of 

 Francis Bacon, and physicists have 

 learnt to advocate the use of 

 hypotheses. I take the extreme 

 view of holding that Francis 

 Bacon, although he correctlj- in- 

 sisted upon constant reference to 

 experience, had no correct notions 

 as to the logical method by which, 

 from particular facts, we educe 

 laws of nature." 



