Septembee 24, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



409 



to results which satisfy our intellect as well 

 as our emotions. There may still be bifur- 

 cations in the second portion of the road. 

 Some may rest content with achieving some- 

 thing that supplies the material needs of 

 humanity, others may be inspired to search 

 for the deeper meaning of our existence. 



There remains therefore some justifica- 

 tion for the question why we persist in 

 studying science apart from the mere intel- 

 lectual pleasure it gives us. It was once a 

 popular fallacy to assume that the laws of 

 nature constituted an explanation of the 

 phenomena to which they applied, and peo- 

 ple then attached importance to the belief 

 that we could gauge the mind of the Creator 

 by means of the laws which govern the 

 material world, just as we might trace the 

 purpose of a human legislator in an act of 

 parliament. As this archaic interpretation 

 was abandoned, philosophers went, in ac- 

 cordance with what politicians call the 

 swing of the pendulum, to the other ex- 

 treme. We can explain nothing, they said 

 — ^in fact, we can know nothing — all we 

 can do is to record facts. This modesty 

 was impressive and it became popular. I 

 know, at any rate, one scientific man who 

 has acquired a great reputation for wisdom 

 by repeating sufficiently often that he 

 knows nothing, and, though his judgment 

 may be true, this frame of mind is not in- 

 spiring. As a corrective to the older vi- 

 sionary claims, which centered round the 

 meaning of the word "explain," the view 

 that the first task of science is to record 

 facts has no doubt had a good influence. 

 Kirehhoff laid it down definitely that the 

 object of science is to describe nature, but 

 he did not thereby mean that it should be 

 confined to recording detached observa- 

 tions: this would be the dullest and most 

 unscientific procedure. Description, in the 

 sense in which Kirehhoff uses it, consists 

 in forming a comprehensive statement 



gathering together what, till then, was only 

 a disconnected jumble of facts. Thus the 

 apparently quite irregular motions of the 

 planets, as observed from the earth, were 

 first collected in tabular form. This was a 

 necessary preliminary but was not in itself 

 a scientific investigation. Next came Kep- 

 ler, who by means of three laws summed up 

 the facts in their main outlines, and the de- 

 scription then took a more refined form, 

 substituting half a page of printing for 

 volumes of observations. Finally, Newton 

 succeeded in predicting the planetary move- 

 ments on the assumption of a gravitational 

 attraction between all elements of matter. 

 According to Kirehhoff, the chief merit of 

 this discovery would lie in its condensing 

 Kepler's three laws into one hypothesis. 

 This point of view is not necessarily op- 

 posed to that of Poincare, because it is 

 exactly the simplicity of Newton's explana- 

 tion that appeals most strongly to our 

 esthetic sense, but there is an important 

 difference in the manner of expression. 

 However beautiful an idea may be, it loses 

 its effect by being placed before us in an 

 unattractive form. This criticism also ap- 

 plies to Mach, according to whom the object 

 of science is to economize thought, just as 

 it is the object of a machine to economize 

 effort. Logically, this definition is justi- 

 fied and it may be the best that can be 

 given, if we prefer using a technical ex- 

 pression to confessing an emotional feel- 

 ing. But why should we do so ? Is it not 

 better to recognize that human intelligence 

 is affected by sentiment as much as by 

 reasoning? It is a mistake for scientific 

 men to dissociate themselves from the rest 

 of humanity, by placing their motives on 

 a different and, at the best, only super- 

 ficially higher, level. When an adventur- 

 ous spirit, for instance, desires to organize 

 an expedition to unknown regions of the 

 world, we try to induce our governments 



