SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 289. 



scribes the tools of the trade ; the third outlines 

 and comments upon the content of the sciences, 

 or describes the materials to be worked upon. 

 Science "claims that the whole range of phe- 

 nomena, mental as well as physical — the entire 

 universe is its iield. It asserts that the scien- 

 tific method is the sole gateway to the whole 

 region of knowledge." The scientist is charac- 

 terized by a logical attitude, by a manner of 

 dealing with reality, which when carefully con- 

 trolled leads to truth, to a common and veri- 

 fiable possession of mankind. Science discour- 

 ages short cuts to knowledge and immortality. 

 Science admits and emphasizes its limitations ; 

 in an ultimate sense it does not explain but only 

 describes ; it has no relations with the super- 

 sensuous and is most suspicious of the meta- 

 physical. Science justifies its place in human 

 evolution by the efficient mental training it 

 provides,* by the light it brings to bear on 

 many problems of society ;t by its practical 

 benefits in extending control over natural re- 

 sources and in increasing human comfort ; by the 

 permanent gratification it yields to the intellec- 

 tual and sesthetical impulses. J 



Next we must recognize that all knowledge 

 is a reaction of our mental functions to the 

 stimuli of the environment. There is an es- 

 sential intervening psychological process be- 

 tween knowledge and reality. We ' construct ' 

 our universe, and ' two normal perceptive 



* " It is the Tvant of impersonal judgment, of scien- 

 tific method, and of accurate insight into facts, a want 

 largely due to a non-scientific training, lyhioh renders 

 clear thinking so rare, and random and irresponsible 

 judgment so common in the mass of our citizens to- 

 day." " Scientific thought is not an accompaniment 

 or condition of human progress, but human progress 

 itself." (Clifford.) 



t " Strange as it may seem, the laboratory experi- 

 ments of a biologist may have greater -weight than all 

 the theories of the state from Plato to Hegel !" "The 

 first demand of the state upon the individual is not 

 for self-sacrifice, but for self-development." "The 

 formation of a moral judgment * * '■' depends in the 

 first place on knowledge and method." 



j " If I were compelled to name the Englishmen 

 who during our generation have had the widest im- 

 aginations and exercised them most beneficially, I 

 think I should put the novelists and poets on one side 

 and say Michael Faraday and Charles Darwin." 



faculties construct practically the same uni- 

 verse,' and thus render the results of thinking 

 valid. A law of nature is " a resume in mental 

 shorthand, which replaces for us a lengthy de- 

 scription of the sequences among our sense- 

 impressions. Law in the scientific sense * * * 

 owes its existence to the creative power of his 

 [man's] intellect." " It economizes thought 

 by stating in conceptual shorthand that routine 

 of our perceptions which forms for us the uni- 

 verse of gravitating matter." With a just 

 comprehension of the fact that conceptual results 

 form an essential portion of the equipment of 

 science, which is by no means limited to per- 

 ceptual sense-experience, we may proceed to 

 develop the most profitable conceptions of those 

 general relations underlying the problems of 

 the special sciences. What are cause and 

 effect, and probability ? What is the scientific 

 interpretation of space and time, of motion and 

 matter and of their combinations in the phys- 

 ical and organic worlds ? With these tools 

 well sharpened and adjusted to their materials 

 the scientific artisans may be sent to their sev- 

 eral workshops to work with what success they 

 can command ; they devote themselves to 

 physics and chemistry and mechanics ; and they 

 find the most distinctly different material in the 

 realm of biology and in the several phenomena of 

 life and evolution. And it is because the 

 sciences are not ready-made matei'ial but repre- 

 sent the variety of human interest and the con- 

 ceptual reactions to perceptual experience that 

 their attempted classification has yielded so 

 diverse and on the whole so unsatisfactory re- 

 sults. 



Such, in brief, is the progress of thought in 

 Professor Pearson's 'Grammar.' Many will 

 differ with him in one and another of his posi- 

 tions. The metaphj'sician will be quick to 

 point out that Professor Pearson's horror of 

 metaphysics is itself the product of a metaphys- 

 ical assumption ; and if the more easy-going 

 scientist expresses his belief that all these mat- 

 ters, like sesthetic judgments, are matters of 

 taste, the logical reply is not far to seek. They 

 are matters of taste, of good taste and bad 

 taste ; of sound and critical analysis or of slip- 

 shod and loose assumptions. "To know re- 

 quires exertion, and it is intellectually easiest 



