—_. 
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THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3 
Science arose from our ordinary experience and commonsense outlook. 
The world of commonsense is a world of matter, of material stuff, of real 
separate things and their properties which act on each other and cause 
changes in each other. To the various things observable by the senses 
were added the imperceptible things—space and time, invisible forces, 
life and the soul. Even these were not enough, and the supernatural was 
added to the natural world. The original inventory was continually being 
enlarged, and thus a complex empirical world-view arose, full of latent 
contradictions, but with a solid basis of actual experience and facts 
behind it. 
Speaking generally, we may say that this is substantially still the 
commonsense view of the world and the background of our common 
practical beliefs. How has science dealt with this commonsense empirical 
world-view ? The fundamental procedure of science has been to rely on 
sense observation and experiment, and to base theory on fact. Thus the 
vast body of exact science arose, and all entities were discarded which 
were either inconsistent with observed facts or unnecessary for their strict 
interpretation. The atomic view of matter was established. Ether was 
given a status in the physical order, which is now again being questioned 
in the light of the conception of space-time. New entities like energy 
emerged ; old entities like forces disappeared; the principle of the 
uniformity of nature was established ; the laws of motion, of conservation, 
and of electro-magnetism were formulated ; and on their basis a closed 
mechanistic order of nature was constructed, forming a rigid deterministic 
scheme. Into this scheme it has been difficult, if not impossible, to fit 
entities like life and mind; and the scientific attitude has on the whole 
been to put them to a suspense account and to await developments. As 
to the supernatural, science is or has been agnostic, if not frankly sceptical. 
Such, in very general terms, was the scientific outlook of the nineteenth 
century, which has not yet completely passed away. It will be noticed 
that much of the fundamental outlook of commonsense has thus survived, 
though clarified and purified by a closer accord with facts. This scientific 
view retained unimpaired and indeed stressed with a new emphasis the 
things of commonsense, matter, time and space, as well as all material or 
physical entities which are capable of observation or experimental 
verification. Nineteenth-century science is, in fact, a system of purified, 
glorified commonsense. Its deterministic theory certainly gave a shock 
to the common man’s instinctive belief in free will ; in most other respects 
it conformed to the outlook of commonsense. It is true that its practical 
B 2 
