248 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1419 



■R-liile the latter is simply a convenient form of 

 guesswork opinion, often aided by a good mem- 

 ory and a sound intuition. Unfortunately the 

 truth is frequently unnecessary to the attain- 

 ment of the objects of every^day esistence, and 

 there is much to be said for the view given 

 expression to by M. Anatole France "that in 

 the majority of cases truth is likely to fall a 

 victim to the disdain or insults of mankind 

 and to perish in obscurity." For unhappily, 

 in the words of this brilliant Frenchman, "truth 

 is inert, is not capable of modification, is not 

 adapted to the machinations which would en- 

 able her to win her way into the hearts and 

 minds of man" while "falsehood on the other 

 hand possesses the most wonderful resources." 

 Yet in the long run truth does prevail, at least 

 in all large projects in the pursuit of knowl- 

 edge or profitable trade or long range under- 

 takings just as we build a different founda- 

 tion for a pyramid than for a cowshed. 



The science of forecasting has perhaps no- 

 where been more completely developed than in 

 the vast businss of insurance, and of no branch 

 of commercial enterprise can it be said with 

 less fear of successful contradiction than of 

 insurance that it rests its principles and poli- 

 cies upon the lasting and, in fact, indestructible 

 basis of truth. Likewise, it might be said that 

 the fame of Sir Francis Bacon rests largely 

 VTpon his conception of applied science as a 

 process of pure induction or the orderly meth- 

 od of arriving at trustworthy conclusions on 

 the basis of experiment and observation or of 

 natural laws having "the dual characteristic 

 of universality and reality." 



The inductive process of reasoning is essen- 

 tially one of fact gathering and of classifica- 

 tion and analysis. But systematic fact gather- 

 ing as a science is of comparatively recent 

 origin, while the urgency of organized knowl- 

 edge as a prerequisite to true scientific endeavor 

 is as yet, at least in the larger sense, only in 

 a stage of embryonic development. 



Fault has been found with Sir Francis Ba- 

 con for the barrenness of the results flowing 

 from his laborious observations and classifi- 

 cations. This, as said by Church, is due to the 

 fact that "he had a radicallv false and mech- 



anical conception, though in words he earnest- 

 ly disclaims it, of the way to deal with the 

 facts of nature." The fault was one of the 

 limitations of knowledge inherent in the age 

 in which he lived rather than of Bacon's the- 

 ory of the human understanding and of the 

 primitive conception of the comparative value 

 of collective phenomena or statistics, which 

 even to this day is far indeed from having 

 reached the status of a true science. Church 

 is also of the curious opinion that the cause 

 of Bacon's defect was a non-mathematical 

 mind; that he took no notice of the invention 

 of logarithms and that he' was impatient of 

 the subtleties of astronomical calculations. In 

 very truth, however, the source of Bacon's 

 transcending intellectual powers were condi- 

 tioned by this very limitation of his knowl- 

 edge, for as observed by Church in a sub- 

 sequent passage "with all his mistakes and 

 failures the principles on which his mode of 

 attaining a knowledge of nature was based 

 were the only true ones and they had never 

 before been propounded so sj'stematically, so 

 fully, and so earnestly." 



But Bacon suffered much more from the 

 shortcomings of his age and its follies than 

 from defects in his method of scientific reason- 

 ing. What to-day is known as Economics, 

 Sociology, and Statistics, was far from having 

 been recognized as an urgent need of a Science 

 of Progress in which the lessons of mankind's 

 experience are relied upon at least in com- 

 merce if not in government as controlling the 

 rational conduct of mankind. This concep- 

 tion, however vaguely perceived, rests upon the 

 larger truth, as pointed out by Herbert Spen- 

 cer, that "ultimately mankind will discover a 

 constant order even among the most involved 

 and obscure phenomena." It is with this pro- 

 cess that the present discussion is concerned; 

 the organization of knowledge as differentiated 

 from the mere gathering and accumulation of 

 facts regardless of their interrelation or inter- 

 dependence for useful purposes as the case 

 may be. 



The organization of knowledge for the pres- 

 ent purpose is meant to include all manner 

 of descriptive data; all obsei'vations whether 



