NATURE 



505 



THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 1905. 



THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 

 Philosophy as Scientia Scientiarum and a History of 

 Classifications of the Sciences. By Robert Flint, 

 D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E. Pp. x + 340. (Edinburgh 

 and London : William Blackwood and Sons, 1904.) 

 Price los. 6d. net. 

 "T^ HE relation of science to philosophy is, in theory, 

 filial. It is, perhaps, no contradiction of the 

 filial relationship that in practice it has an un- 

 fortunate tendency to run to mutual recrimination. 

 The man of science too often ignores the philosopher, 

 or despises him as an obscurantist who habitually 

 confounds abstraction with generalisation. To the 

 metaphysical philosopher, on the other hand, the 

 typical specialist in science is a variety of Jay- 

 labourer, dulled by the drudgery of occupational 

 routine. Amidst such conjugal plain-speaking on 

 both sides, it is no wonder that we hear much of 

 what is called the divorce of philosophy and science; 

 and yet there are many problems which for their 

 adequate treatment surely require the combined 

 resources of both science and philosophy. Is not the 

 problem of the classification of the sciences one of 

 these? Yet the comparative isolation of the scientific 

 and philosophic approaches to this subject is a con- 

 spicuous fact, well attested by some recent instances. 

 One of the most eminent of European men of science 

 quite recently brought forward, as an original con- 

 tribution, a scheme of classification which the 

 philosophical critics at once detected as almost 

 identical with that of Auguste Comte. Another very 

 eminent man of science not long ago published a 

 critical survej' of some of the best known schemes of 

 classification. His criticsm of Comte's scheme was 

 apparently based upon an allusion in the practical 

 treatise (the " Positive Polity "), the critic himself 

 being presumably in ignorance that Comte's treatment 

 of the subject can only be adequately studied in the 

 " Positive Philosophy," where indeed the general 

 theory of science is so elaborately worked out as to 

 extend over several volumes. 



Then again, there is that stupendous work, the 

 " International Catalogue of Scientific Literature," 

 itself a classification of the (natural) sciences in being. 

 For the taxonomic preparations antecedent to this, 

 the Royal Society was mainly responsible. It would 

 be interesting to know if the Royal Society, in 

 preparing its scheme, consulted either the Aris- 

 totelian Society (as the leading corporate re- 

 presentative of philosophy in England), or any 

 individual philosopher, known, like Herbert Spencer, 

 10 have made a special study of the classifica- 

 tion of the sciences. Had a precedent been wanting 

 for the explicit and formal cooperation of science and 

 philosophy, a not unworthy one might have been cited 

 ill the collaboration of VVhewell, sought and obtained 

 by Lyell, for the classification and nomenclature of 

 Tertiary geological strata. 



NO. 1848, VOL. 71] 



Prof. Flint's new book should serve as a mediating 

 influence between philosophical and scientific interests. 

 It brings together into one convenient source the 

 leading attempts made, from Plato to Karl Pearson, 

 towards a classification of the sciences. This, it 

 seems, is the first time in the history of the subject 

 that an exhaustive endeavour has been made to 

 collect these data. How invaluable a service Prof. 

 Flint has thus rendered to future investigators, can 

 be appreciated only by those who have tediously toiled 

 at the scattered literature of this subject. Its biblio- 

 graphy appears hitherto to have been left unorganised 

 — having escaped even the ubiquitous zeal of German 

 scholarship. As a special study, the classification of 

 the sciences has been singularly little cultivated in 

 Germany, though Wundt went too far when, first 

 taking up the subject himself, about a generation 

 ago, he declared that German sources were nil. 



In point of purely taxonomic requirement, the first 

 questions evoked by the problem of classification of 

 the sc4ences are : — (i) What order of phenomena is 

 it that falls to be classified? (2) Which (if any) 

 amongst existing sciences deal with this particular 

 order of phenomena? Can we, without leaving the 

 assured ground of scientific method, adequately 

 determine the first of these two questions? Does 

 science itself yield criteria for determining its own 

 order of phenomena? Science, to be sure, when self- 

 contemplative, is more often in a postprandial mood 

 than in a critical one. But when the man of science, 

 in a metaphysical moment, does critically turn his eye 

 inwards, and surveys the whole scientific domain, 

 does he not see a manifold complexity of very partially 

 analysed phenomena? Truth to tell, the evolution of 

 science itself — i.e. its rationalised history and its 

 methodology — considered as a department of scientific 

 research, is one that has scarcely begun to be 

 cultivated. It would be interesting, incidentally, to 

 inquire whether the establishment of a chair of the 

 " History of Science " in the College de France (due 

 to positivist advocacy) has been followed by any 

 similar initiative elsewhere ; while as to methodology, 

 what chance would even the most eminent amongst 

 men of science have as a candidate for a chair of 

 logic ? 



The few great men of science who have contributed 

 to these departments of study have done so as 

 philosophers rather than as men of science. Personal 

 and individual views on the history and the methods 

 of science — views of the first value and significance 

 — have time and again been emitted, but there has 

 scarcely yet been initiated in this field, that system 

 of cooperative, impersonal, detached research which 

 ensures continuity and consensus — the essential 

 criteria of science. Not far short of a hundred 

 systems of classification come within Prof. Flint's 

 sur\-ey. The great majority of these have been put 

 forward explicitly in the name of philosophy. 

 Perhaps less than a dozen may be counted as having 

 issued from professed men of science ; and of these, 

 each is, like the philosophical schemes, a personal . 

 and individual production, generated in comparative 



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