SCIENTIFIC METHOD 33 



speak doubtfully ; if of nature then why not of other 

 matters. It was felt to be humiliating that man with his 

 intellectual powers should have to speak doubtfully ; 

 these scientific men, when pressed, are sure of nothing, 

 not even of those things of which we are most firmly 

 convinced, those which we can see, handle, and hear. 



The hostility displayed in the seventeenth century to 

 the freedom and sceptical character of scientific inquiry 

 into Nature has diminished in intensity with educational 

 advance, but it still persists. Even at the present time 

 scientific investigation is considered as needing to be 

 circumscribed, and its extension in certain fields of 

 natural phenomena is regarded as immoral. Scientific 

 men are still ridiculed because they refuse to give a 

 categorical answer of the yes or no type, the sort of 

 answer which the so-called practical man generally 

 demands to his plain question. But in the words of an 

 old writer, 'true knowledge is modest and wary, 'tis 

 ignorance that is so bold and presuming V 



The recognition of reason as the only ultimate 

 authority. 



The aim of the New Philosophy was to create an 

 intelligible scheme of natural phenomena, these being 

 set in orderly array from the point of view of their 

 sequence in time and of their causative connexions. 

 Every one of the presumed relationships between 

 phenomena was thus brought before the bar of reason, 

 and judgement was delivered upon it by this authority. 

 With alarm even those who were themselves intellectual 

 recognized that this newly set up authority of reason 

 endangered that of tradition. There is no question that 

 their fears were justified, for every scientific writer of the 

 1 Glanville, The Vanity of Dogmatising. 



S.L. D 



