June 14, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



575 



4. SCIENCE AND FAIB JUDGMENT 



A further aspect of science, having spir- 

 itual value, is the habit of fairmindedness 

 induced by scientific reasoning. If scien- 

 tific thinking is but a waj' of looking at 

 things, the essential element of which is the 

 formation of impersonal judgments — the 

 reasoning in a way to reduce the personal 

 equation to a minimum; if in this respect 

 alone does the knowledge of science differ 

 from that of everyday life, science may 

 perform an important service by helping 

 us to impersonal judgments in other lines. 



To illustrate concretely, a teacher of 

 theological students, desirous of imparting 

 information regarding the origin of man, 

 might find an effective approach through 

 geology. There is little to arouse prejudice 

 in the study of weathering, erosion, deposi- 

 tion and glaciation. When, however, these 

 lessons have been learned, with their in- 

 evitable inference regarding the lapse of 

 time, one finds an easy passage to the prob- 

 lems of organic evolution and thence to the 

 question of man's origin. The same meth- 

 ods of reasoning are used throughout ; only, 

 in the last case, there is much to excite 

 prejudice and this prejudice might be 

 aroused by attacking the problem of man 

 without preliminaries. So great is the simi- 

 larity in the scientific method, wherever 

 used, that the viewpoint obtained in an im- 

 personal subject like geography, astron- 

 omy, or geology can be taken over bodily 

 to allied fields. And the interpretation of 

 phenomena remote from personal interest 

 induces a dispassionateness which is a good 

 point of departure for a journey into de- 

 batable territory. 



The whole theory of evolution may be 

 cited in further illustration. If this be 

 presented as an interpretation of the facts 

 of nature, to be accepted or rejected on the 

 same basis as one would the earth's spheric- 



ity or the Copernican theory of the solar 

 system, it is easy to show that the cases are 

 parallel, when viewed impersonally and as 

 scientific problems. Once into the subject, 

 one passes insensiblj- to the problems of so- 

 ciety, which are at bottom evolutionary 

 problems. Poverty and crime, eugenics 

 and euthenics, the organization of the state, 

 and the rights of the individual are de- 

 batable in no such simple terms as com- 

 parative anatomy and embryology, paleon- 

 tology or ecology; and because of this are 

 subjects for prejudiced controversy rather 

 than open-minded discussion. Take the 

 case of poverty. How can a man with the 

 scientific temper regard this as a question 

 to be decided wholly in terms of the con- 

 venience or profit of landlord or employer 

 of labor? The biologist might be influ- 

 enced by his preconceptions of heredity 

 and environment, but in so far as he shut 

 his eyes to the evidence and failed to con- 

 sider all the factors involved, he would be 

 false to his scientific spirit. 



Human beings suffer much from emo- 

 tionalism in public matters. We shall 

 doubtless continue to be guided by our 

 hearts rather than our heads, but it is to be 

 hoped we may come to use better judg- 

 ment. In public affairs, it is particularly 

 important that we think things out. At 

 the beginning of all clear thinking in these 

 matters are the facts of science, and the 

 method of science is needed at every turn. 

 If the question is upon religious revivals 

 of the old-fashioned sort, we need to know, 

 with such degree of scientific accuracy as 

 is possible, the history of these movements 

 in the past, and their psychological aspects 

 in the present, before we can determine 

 relative values. Now that democracy is 

 spreading, we need, as never before, to cor- 

 relate facts and weigh evidence in the dis- 

 passionate manner which is the ideal of 



