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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol, XXXVII. No. 947 



shows that a knowledge of qualities and 

 relations of quality, many of which do not 

 admit of a reduction to mathematical laws, 

 is an indispensable part of all the sciences 

 which deal with natural phenomena. 



Every particular science, and, if you 

 please, every form of experiment in each 

 one of them all, should be allowed to deter- 

 mine its own method in the details of its 

 observations, testing the alleged facts, and 

 obvious conclusions from the facts. There 

 is really no reason for assuming a sort of 

 holy mystery about scientific method in 

 general, or about any particular scientific 

 anethod. Method is any means of arriving 

 at the truth of reality. The greater truths 

 of science, as well as of religion, have 

 always been revealed to gifted — and for my 

 part I am willing to say, inspired — minds, 

 as flashes of intuition, fortunate guesses, 

 hypotheses which as yet awaited verifica- 

 tion but shone with that light which an- 

 nounces the clearer vision of the approach- 

 ing day. I have always had a sneaking 

 sympathy with that schoolboy who, when 

 he came home from school snivelling be- 

 cause he could not do the sums in mental 

 arithmetic set by his teacher, and his 

 mother reminded him that, of course, he 

 had been taught at home the correct answer 

 to them all, replied: "Yes, of course, I 

 know what the answer is, but I can't get 

 the method." 



While, then, we admit the right and 

 repose the obligation to any special form 

 of technique, as a matter for the particular 

 sciences to decide for themselves, we still 

 insist that the nature of the human mind 

 and of its development in the individual 

 and in the race is the source of all the 

 experience which determines the successes 

 and the failures in the use of every par- 

 ticular method in each of the particular 

 sciences. 



Still more definite but brief statements 



with regard to the doctrine of method 

 which the relativity of all knowledge makes 

 imperative would seem in place at this 

 point. If man is to take even his prelim- 

 inary measurement of things, of that which 

 is, how it is, and of that which is not, how 

 it is not, by sense-perception, he must use 

 trained senses with inexhaustible patience, 

 and with freedom from prejudice and pro- 

 fessional pride and ambition. Some years 

 ago the retiring president of the Associa- 

 tion of American Naturalists, in his ad- 

 dress at the annual banquet, related this 

 recent experience of his own. He had 

 written to a considerable number of the 

 leading biologists in the country, asking 

 that they should give him just the bare 

 facts as they had observed them, and with 

 no admixture of their own views in ex- 

 planation, upon a certain matter which he 

 was engaged in investigating. ' ' Even so, ' ' 

 said this scientific observer, "I could not 

 get the simple unsophisticated facts re- 

 ported. ' ' How many biologists and physi- 

 ologists in the world at the present time, 

 whatever confidence they may have in the 

 ability and sincerity as an observer of Dr. 

 Bastian, are sure he is giving them just an 

 unprejudiced statement of the facts in 

 proof of his theory of spontaneous gen- 

 eration ? 



The psychological study of sense-per- 

 ception, as strengthened by the anthropo- 

 logical study of man's progress in knowl- 

 edge, shows with undoubted clearness, not 

 only that the details of every man's sense- 

 perceptions are his very own and quite 

 unique, but also that the infiuenee of habit, 

 expectation and interest, contributes largely 

 to what the senses are bound to perceive. 

 But the true doctrine of scientific method 

 which follows from the study of man as a 

 measurer of things by his senses, logically 

 followed, does not land us in an absolute 

 distrust of the senses, in a gulf of scepti- 



