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SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1420 



true that "hopeless causes do not always fail" 

 (in the temporary human sense), but that 

 wrongful causes or courses may prove profit- 

 able — for a time — and to those directly con- 

 cerned. It requires to be clearly kept in mind 

 in considering civilization as a science of hu- 

 man relations that in this respect the interests 

 of the individual and society may be diametri- 

 cally opposed to each other. But just as the 

 police powers control criminal propensities, so 

 the powers of organized knowledge and of 

 demonstrated experience hold in check the reck- 

 less intellectual speculations of the audacious 

 but uninformed. In its final analysis the only 

 cure of a fallacy is a demonstrated fact so 

 clearly stated and properly applied that the 

 truth must prevail and prove triumphant. 



This conclusion is summed up by President 

 David Starr Jordan in the remark that "The 

 final test of truth is its livableness, the degree 

 to which we trust our lives to it." However 

 much falsehood may prevail and prove an in- 

 dividual advantage — for a time — in the long 

 run it is only "by means of experience, person- 

 al and collective, that the human race main- 

 tains itself on earth." Such experience, 

 also in the words of Jordan, "concerns 

 itself chiefly with the relations of objects rather 

 than with their ultimate constitution or their 

 intimate nature," for "it gives the truth actu- 

 ally needed in actual life and it furnishes the 

 means for the acquisition of more complete 

 conceptions whenever in the intricacies of life 

 such better knowledge is needed." 



The principle here laid down is fundamental 

 to a science of human relations. When the 

 demand arises for practical knowledge, for safe 

 guidance in affairs of business or state, the 

 first essential need is a basis of agreed upon 

 facts, only too often wanting in the ease of 

 those who essay upon leadership in the 

 troubled waters of political, economic, or social 

 controversy. 



It is likewise with every question, great or 

 small, upon which mankind stands in need of 

 better knowledge to eliminate the prevailing 

 error and misapplication of human effort. 

 Only by organizing knowledge in the manner 

 Jiere suggested will it be possible to secure the 



future against the vast amount of erroneous 

 conclusions which now hamper progress in 

 practically every important direction in which 

 further progress is most essential for the good 

 of all mankind. No elaborate philosophical 

 treatise on the "Foundations of Knowledge" 

 or the "Human InteUeet" meets this need. If 

 typhus is at our door or sleeping sickness no 

 vague advice on preventive measures, however 

 weU meaning, meets our needs of the situa- 

 tion or the expectations of the public No 

 philosophical platitude, no pious phrases of 

 politics held the Indian in his struggle to sur- 

 vive in competition with an unlike civiliza- 

 tion in some respects inferior to the moral and 

 physical standards of primitive life. 



In very truth it is much easier to evolve 

 speculative theories about knowledge than to 

 ascertain the truth or the facts concerning 

 even the most commonplace matters of every- 

 day existence. Herein lies the confiict between 

 mathematics and statistics and the menace of 

 over-emphasis of the mathematical judgment in 

 matters which are largely questions of facts 

 and not of philosophical inference. Because 

 mathematics are useful — if not indispensable — 

 in astronomy or engineering it does not at all 

 follow that mathematical speculations can safe- 

 ly be applied to problems in biology or vital 

 and social statistics. The practical truths of 

 every-day life are relative and not absolute, 

 all more or less conditioned by the human judg- 

 ment, totally at variance with the ascertain- 

 ment of the truth of physics or chemistry. The 

 mode of reasoning most useful in sociology or 

 political science is essentially different from the 

 intellectual concept of accuracy in the trans- 

 mission of sound waves or the transformation 

 of energy applied to a steam engine or a tur- 

 bine. Hence I am at a loss to understand the 

 conclusion of Jevons that "As science pro- 

 gresses, its power of foresight rapidly increases 

 until the mathematician in his study seems to 

 acquire the power of anticipating matters and 

 predicting what will happen in stated circum- 

 stances before the eye of man has ever wit- 

 nessed the event." No matliematician gave 

 a forecast of the coming of the great 

 influenza epidemic of 1918-19, no weather 



