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in spite of the splendidly imaginative systems to which 

 they have given rise, have been on the whole a hindrance 

 to the progress of philosophy, and ought now to be 

 consciously thrust aside by those who wish to discover 

 philosophical truth. Science, originally, was entangled 

 in similar motives, and was thereby hindered in its 

 advances. It is, I maintain, from science, rather than 

 from ethics and religion, that philosophy should draw 

 its inspiration. 



But there are two different ways in which a philosophy 

 may seek to base itself upon science. It may emphasise 

 the most general results of science, and seek to give even 

 greater generality and unity to these results. Or it may 

 study the methods of science, and seek to apply these 

 methods, with the necessary adaptations, to its own 

 peculiar province. Much philosophy inspired by science 

 has gone astray through preoccupation with the results 

 momentarily supposed to have been achieved. It is not 

 results, but methods, that can be transferred with profit 

 from the sphere of the special sciences to the sphere of 

 philosophy. What I wish to bring to your notice is the 

 possibility and importance of applying to philosophical 

 problems certain broad principles of method which have 

 been found successful in the study of scientific questions. 



The opposition between a philosophy guided by 

 scientific method and a philosophy dominated by religious 

 and ethical ideas may be illustrated by two notions which 

 are very prevalent in the works of philosophers, namely 

 the notion of the universe, and the notion of good and 

 evil. A philosopher is expected to tell us something about 

 the nature of the universe as a whole, and to give grounds 

 for either optimism or pessimism. Both these expecta- 

 tions seem to me mistaken. I believe the conception 

 of "the universe " to be, as its etymology indicates, a 



