SECTION 4. THE SCIENTIFICALLY TRAINED INDIVIDUAL. 31 



quire extensive physical, biological, and psychological knowledge 

 for their comprehension). 1 Evidently a general science of pheno- 

 mena, or a philosophy, will remain an unrealisable hope until 

 most of the sciences are firmly established, and have ascertained 

 the majority of the most comprehensive truths in their respective 

 spheres, together with most of the principal verities common 

 to them.- At first sight our contention that scientific tradition 

 begins in confusion as to subject-matter and method, seems 

 belied by the clear line .of advance from the simple sciences to 

 the less simple ones which history chronicles. Further reflection, 

 however, attests that man has always attempted to grapple with 

 the subject-matter of most of the sciences, that is, that centuries 

 of effort have been wasted in those cases, e.g., in the biological 

 sciences, where the subject-matter investigated is of a laby- 

 rinthine order, and presupposes the existence of certain as yet 

 undeveloped sciences, e.g., chemistry. It is, therefore, an irre- 

 sistible conclusion that scientific advance is only possible from 

 the simple to the complex, that the complex will be erro- 

 neously interpreted so long as the less complex has not been 

 reduced to comparative simplicity, and that scientific advance 

 must . remain tiresomely slow until general scientific methods 

 have been discovered and are generally accepted, freeing the 

 individual from the trammels of empirical and misleading tradi- 

 tions and practices. 



A fruitful definition of science can only be attempted when 

 we restrict ourselves to asking What does science mean in our 

 day? Broadly speaking, it signifies for us moderns the deve- 

 loping and connecting of certain departments of knowledge, such 

 as theoretical and applied physics, biology, specio-psychics, and 

 cosmology, and this by traditional methods far more circumspect 

 than the ones commonly employed in practical life to-day. In 

 its higher reaches it means further, as a rule, the endeavour to 

 obtain a simple, unified, and incontrovertible view of nature 

 and of life, through guarded and exhaustive observation, through 

 subsequent bold and graded generalisation, and through verified 

 deduction of the same type. 3 When, therefore, we wax enthu- 



1 For a history of the classification of the sciences, see R. Flint, Philosophy 

 as Scientia Scientiarum, and for a comprehensive scheme of classification, 

 Conclusion 33. 



2 E.g., note the complete dependence on fact of the argument in Henri 

 Bergson's Donnees imm^diates. The neglect which overtakes philosophers 

 generally is primarily due to their reliance on crude observation and un- 

 sifted surmises. 



3 "Experience presents to us a chaos of innumerable events, together and 

 in succession. In this chaos, science has first to ascertain the facts; then, 

 to ascertain 'what follows what', i.e., what facts are invariably connected 

 together; and then, to account for those regular connections, to show how 

 or why they are so connected." (S. H. Mellone, An Introductory Text-Book 

 of Logic, 1905, p. 291.) "A science is, in all cases, a systematic body of know- 

 ledge relating to some particular subject-matter." (James Welton, A Manual 

 of Logic, 1896, vol. 1, p. 10.) 



