552 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1007 



a company of scientific men, when he 

 wishes to ask them a practical question 

 whose answer concerns them all. 



The only justification which I have for 

 addressing you is that the habits of a 

 student of philosophy, and, in particular, 

 of a student of logic, make him sensitive to 

 the value of a comparative scrutiny of the 

 methods, the conceptions and the problems 

 of various sciences. 



If the main topic of the evening is a 

 question relating to the practical value of 

 some new mode of cooperation, in which a 

 number of representatives of different de- 

 partments of scientific research are to be 

 asked to take part, the student of philos- 

 ophy may possibly serve as a sort of travel- 

 ing agent. For the kind of cooperation to 

 which I have been asked to invite your at- 

 tention wovdd involve, if it succeeded, cer- 

 tain journeys which some of you might 

 thereby be induced to make into the prov- 

 inces of your colleagues. Widely traveled 

 though all of you are, these journeys may 

 lead occasionally to novel incidents, and 

 may please or arouse you in new ways. 

 My business, I say, is to act this evening 

 merely as such a tourist agent, describing 

 and praising as I can the new kind and 

 combination of journeys to which my 

 agency proposes to invite you. 



Philosophy itself, in so far as it is a 

 legitimate calling at all, maj' in fact be 

 compared to a sort of Cook's bureau. Its 

 servants are taught to speak various lan- 

 guages — all of them ill — and to know little 

 of the inner life of the numerous foreign 

 lands to which they guide the feet, or check 

 the luggage of their fellow-men. 



But if new comparative studies of the 

 ideas of various and widely sundered prov- 

 inces of research are to be carried out at 

 all, Cook's agents, tedious as they often are, 

 have their part to play. Regard me, then, 

 if you wish to vary the name, as represent- 



ing this evening some bureau of university 

 travel. 



II. PRELIMINARY VIEW OP THE THEORETICAL. 

 PROBLEM OP THIS PAPER 



Speaking seriously, let me say that my 

 task, upon its theoretical side, involves 

 undertaking to present to you, in a per- 

 spective which may prove to be not wholly 

 familiar, an outline sketch of certain con- 

 ceptions and methods which actually be- 

 long to widely various sciences. These con- 

 ceptions and methods in some measure con- 

 cern you all, and, in our day, they are 

 undergoing various changes, and are being 

 applied to new problems. 



The problems of each science are its own 

 affair; but they also concern the whole 

 body of scientific workers. To look over a 

 somewhat wide range of scientific work, 

 not for the sake of contributing to the re- 

 searches of any one special science or 

 group of special sciences, but for the sake 

 of studying for their own sake some of the 

 most general ideas and methods that are 

 used by various scientific workers — this is, 

 at the present time, a legitimate undertak- 

 ing, and, in view of what has already been 

 done, and is now under way, is not a hope- 

 less undertaking. 



The perspective in which such a study 

 may place the problems of other people 

 may help them to understand one another 

 better. My task, on its theoretical side, is 

 limited this evening to a few such general 

 methodological remarks. These remarks 

 may then lead us back to our practical 

 question. 



ni. THE PROBLEM OP VITALISM 



The name vitalism is often given to those 

 doctrines which have used the hypothesis 

 that the phenomena of living organisms 

 are due to some process which is essentially 

 identical in its nature with the process ex- 



