[Reprinted from THE POPULAB SCIENCE MONTHLY, August, 1911.] 



THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIEXCES 



BY DR. IRA WOODS HOWERTH 



THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 



THE sciences are divided by Spencer, Karl Pearson and others into 

 two great groups, the abstract sciences and the concrete science?. 

 The abstract sciences are those which deal with the modes under which 

 the phenomenal world is perceived. They have to do entirely with the 

 " relations of co-existence and sequence in their general or s; 

 forms." * Mathematics and logic are the two main branches of this 

 division of the sciences. 



It has been suggested by Comte, and insisted upon by Proft 

 Lester F. Ward, 2 that mathematics and logic are not true sciences, but 

 merely " forms " or conditions of science and aids to its stud}*. We 

 need not here concern ourselves with this question. Our inter' 

 rather in the classification of those sciences which deal with phenomena 

 themselves rather than with the modes under which they are perceived, 

 that is, the concrete sciences. 



The classification of the concrete sciences may proceed, of course, 

 from any one of a number of bases, as the chronological order of their 

 development, their logical relationships, the evolution of their subject 

 matter, etc. Bacon's classification is based upon three assumed faculties 

 of our understanding memory, imagination and reason; and Comte's 

 classification rests upon the order in which the subject matter of the 

 various sciences has been evolved. The latter is the basis of the c 

 fication we are about to propose. 



The first consideration, then, must be the order in which the great 

 natural groups of phenomena have manifested themselves in creation, 

 that is, in the great evolutionary process. 



Evolution has been described as that view of the universe which 

 assumes that a vast, uniform, uninterrupted process of development 

 obtains throughout all nature ; and that all natural phenomena without 

 exception, from the motions of the heavenly bodies and the fall of a 

 rolling stone to the growth of plants and the consciousness of men, 

 obey one and the same great law of causation. 3 Science, to be sure, has 



Spencer, ''The Classification of the Sciences," " Essays, " Vol. III., p. 10. 



2 See Ward, "Dynamic Sociology," Vol. I., p. 106; also "Applied Sociol- 

 ogy," p. 306. 



'Haeckel, "Freedom in Science and Teaching," Chap. I. (Humboldt edi- 

 tion, p. 10). 



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