30 PART I. THE PROBLEM. 



chologists, is more than questionable. Here we need only note 

 the almost insuperable obstacles, due to subject-matter and 

 stage of development which have to be encountered in trans- 

 ferring the traditional method of one science to another passing 

 through a different phase. Ordinarily this is facilitated through 

 one science imperceptibly developing out of a closely related 

 one; but where there is a comparatively abrupt commencement, 

 there, as in psychology and in the cultural sciences generally, 

 owing to the lack of a scientific method of a general character, 

 no manifest point of departure presents itself, and hence cen- 

 turies may be lost in groping for the method proper to the 

 new enquiry. 



The same difficulty, having its origin in identical causes, is 

 encountered in every attempt to skip several historic stages, 

 and it is for this reason that the development of science has 

 been so schematic from the simple to the complex and that 

 u the history of science presents us with no example of an 

 individual mind throwing itself far in advance of its contempo- 

 raries". 1 (Brewster, Life of Newton, 1875, p. 112.) Mathematics, 

 dealing at first with concrete and then with idealised data, 

 came first. Then followed Astronomy (where only the most 

 general facts were and are taken into consideration), Molar 

 Mechanics 2 (which is almost wholly a question of judiciously 

 defining the motions of visible masses of matter in space and 

 time), Ethereology (concerned often with imperceptible, but yet 

 relatively isolated, facts, such as gravity, heat, light, electricity, 

 magnetism, rays), Chemistry (where the combination of elements 

 introduces a new factor, complicated however by the existence 

 of inert elements refusing ttnsombine), Biology (which not only 

 treats of highly complex chemical compounds, but also of the 

 presence of intricate organic structures in the higher genera), 

 Psychology (which depends on introspection, on a high and 

 impartial standard of observation, and on a knowledge of the 

 organism's, the individual's, and the community's development 

 and needs), and the cultural sciences or specio-psy chics (which re- 



1 Note that it is Newton's distinguished biographer who is responsible 

 for this statement. 



2 "By far the most general phenomenon with which we are acquainted, 

 and that which occurs most constantly, in every enquiry into which we enter, 

 is motion, and its communication. Dynamics, then, or the science of force 

 and motion, is thus placed at the head of all the sciences; and, happily for 

 human knowledge, it is one in which the highest certainty is obtainable v 

 a certainty no way inferior to mathematical demonstration. As its axioms 

 are few, simple, and in the highest degree distinct and definite, so they have 

 at the same time an immediate relation to geometrical quantity, space, time, 

 and direction, and thus accommodate themselves with remarkable facility 

 to geometrical reasoning. Accordingly, their consequences may be pursued, 

 by arguments purely mathematical, to any extent, insomuch that the limit 

 of our knowledge of dynamics is determined only by that of pure mathe- 

 matics, which is the case in no other branch of physical science." (Sir John 

 Herschel, Discourse, [87.].) 



