March 17, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



281 



forecast of a coming storm depends upon 

 mathematics, no fall in prices or rise in wages 

 needs the aid of the mathematician to prognos- 

 ticate events depending largely on unforesee- 

 able contingencies, and finally, no mathema- 

 tician could have or did forecast the great war 

 and its duration and consequential loss of life 

 and property. But knowledge properly or- 

 ganized would aid enormously in developing 

 the prophetic judgment free from bias or the 

 influence of custom or tradition. Such organi- 

 zation should be the first instead of the last, 

 the most important instead of the most ne- 

 glected duty of the state. Without it the pres- 

 ent chaos and confusion must continue, while 

 the consequences must become more disastrous. 

 Properly organized knowledge on the multitude 

 of matters that concern the state and society 

 would within a single generation do more to 

 advance the cause. of true civilization of science 

 and himian progress than any other discovery 

 within the realms of possibility. 



Nothing that I have said should be con- 

 strued as opposed to original thought, to the 

 fullest uses of the imagination, lead the con- 

 elusions where they may. Such speculations 

 concern the individual and represent opinions 

 which may or may not be accepted as a guide 

 to action in the affairs of every-day life. I 

 am concerned with judgments of a public or 

 universal nature brought forward as a con- 

 tribution to truth, based upon the ascertained 

 and digested facts of human experience. I 

 agree entirely with Professor Dearborn that it 

 is wrong "to be forever putting facts into the 

 mind while never providing time to use them 

 in thought," and I also agree with his .view 

 that "rules for thinking are wholly unneces- 

 sary," just as I am convinced of the non-utility 

 of a knowledge of technical grammar in the art 

 of writing. But what belongs to the realm of 

 the imagination is a thing apart in the life of 

 a man who is conscious of his intellectual re- 

 sponsibility in matters of fact and particularly 

 when the facts represent collective experience 

 or conclusions drawn from assembled aggre- 

 gates usually in the nature of statistical data. 

 No man has a right or a privilege to say that 

 he knows what to him is onlv a matter of be- 



lief. On all questions of public policy, where 

 far-reaching consequences are involved in pres- 

 ent-day action, it is the first duty of the states- 

 man to make sure of his facts, to clearly differ- 

 entiate facts from opinion, and to act with 

 absolute impartiality upon the evidence. Ac- 

 curacy of judgment will be conditioned large- 

 ly by the state of organized knowledge and 

 its intelligent coordination to the end in view. 

 There is much lip service of coordination in 

 science and government, but a woeful lack of 

 it in practice. To the extent that knowledge is 

 better organized such coordination will be- 

 come more effective as a matter of course. 



Much of what is said here is implied in 

 learned philosophical discussions, failing, how- 

 ever, to emphasize the practical viewpoint as 

 illustrated in every-day experience. Thus the 

 really extraordinary essay on "The System of 

 the Sciences," by the late Professor Ostwald, 

 prepared for the inauguration of the Rice In- 

 stitute, must needs aid materially the cause of 

 a better method of systematizing knowledge, 

 although failing in the most important parti- 

 cular of outlining a method of classification 

 and arrangement by which the knowledge ex- 

 tant can be made more readily accessible. For 

 illustration, the suggestion that "the ordering 

 of facts and their relationship in each indi- 

 vidual science is the first and most important 

 function in its development" is explained as 

 "a discoverer of new facts may not content 

 himself with simply imparting these facts to 

 the world at large, but only after having recog- 

 nized and iixed them does there arise for him 

 the new great essentially scientific duty of 

 demonstrating the relationship borne by these 

 new facts to the existing order of knowledge 

 in a particular field and of thus rendering 

 them real organic parts of the entire science 

 in question." But this admirable principle is 

 not elucidated as it should have been by some 

 concrete illustration based on extended experi- 

 ence. For while it is perfectly true that "An 

 ordering process of this kind in each particular 

 science has always been the principle of all 

 progress," this conclusion is far from being 

 as clearly recognized as it should be. 



Science, in the words of Karl Pearson, 



