August 28, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



277 



ment of the century has been from the results 

 of the deliberate investigations of scientific 

 leaders in a large number of fields, rather 

 than to accept the conclusions of even so dis- 

 tinguished a body as the committee which has 

 framed the plan for the Congress. 



4. The ' ground plan ' is also set forth in its 

 logical scope and symmetry. There are five 

 classes of sciences; the divisions being based 

 upon the distinction, first between 'purposes' 

 and ' phenomena,' and then between such 

 purposes and phenomena as hold good for the 

 individual and those which are more than in- 

 dividual in quality. There is we learn a rad- 

 ical gulf between purposes and phenomena. 

 Purposes ' are not to be explained but to be 

 interpreted ' (sic, p. 677) ; they represent val- 

 ues which are to be appreciated, not described; 

 they are to be approached by teleological not 

 by causal methods (pp. 676-677). The stu- 

 dent of art, history, literature, politics, juris- 

 prudence, education, is, we are told, occupied 

 with matters of this sort. Just what will hap- 

 pen to those students of art, history, politics, 

 education, etc., who persist in considering 

 that their concern is with phenomena, with 

 their description and explanation, and who 

 are desirous of employing psychological meth- 

 ods in this description and explanation, we 

 are not told. Then ' phenomena and pur- 

 poses ' both subdivide themselves ; each 

 branches into those facts which are individual 

 or hold only for one subject, and those which 

 hold for every possible subject. The sciences 

 which deal with the individual phenomena 

 are the mental; those which deal with indi- 

 vidual purposes are the historical. The sci- 

 ences which deal with more than individual 

 phenomena are the physical; those which 

 deal with more than individual purposes are 

 the normative, viz., metaphysics, logic, 

 ethics and mathematics. Then we have a fifth 

 class of sciences: those which deal with the 

 relations between ' physical or mental, norma- 

 tive or historical facts on one side, and prac- 

 tical ends of ours on the other ' (p. 678). 



While it is somewhat confusing to discover in 

 this fifth classification that purposes and norms 

 turn out to be only facts, after all, and that 



even after we have gone through the sciences 

 ik'voted to norms and purposes there still re- 

 main practical ends to be dealt with, yet the 

 point that I here raise is not that of the ulti- 

 mate value or final truth of this classification. 

 The point is that it is a scheme characteristic 

 of one limited school of philosophical thought. 

 The real question at issue is the wisdom of 

 basing a world's congress of arts and sciences 

 upon any sectarian intellectual idea repre- 

 senting some particular a priori logic. Why 

 should the committee take it upon itself to de- 

 fine the constitution of the unity of human 

 knowledge, and to provide ready-made a plan 

 or map of the interrelation of all its parts? 

 Why is it not the business of the scientific 

 and philosophical workers called together from 

 all parts of the earth to consider, collate and 

 present their own ideas about the structure 

 and the divisions of the unity of human 

 knowledge? Is it not the business of such a 

 congress to further a consensus of judgment, 

 or at least of inquiry, regarding just the fea- 

 tures which the committee, according to the 

 Atlantic article, has seen fit to prejudge and 

 forestall 2 



One might also raise the question whether 

 any scheme has a right to arrogate to itself 

 the title of a ' ground plan ' of the unity of 

 human knowledge whose final result is to sep- 

 arate the psychological sciences from logic, es- 

 thetics and ethics, to separate all of these 

 from the historical sciences, and the histor- 

 ical sciences in turn from the sociological 

 sciences, and then to set up a fifth division 

 of practical sciences to furnish ' links ' for 

 what has thus been chopped up! It would 

 involve discussion of the merits of the partic- 

 ular plan proposed to argue that any plan 

 which terminates in such arbitrary divisions 

 has thereby experienced a reductio ail ahsur- 

 diim. But it is within the scope of the pres- 

 ent discussion to indicate that such divisions, 

 if they have any effect at all, can only operate 

 prejudicially to the freedom and complete- 

 ness of the intellectual discussions of the 

 congress. The essential trait of the scientific 

 life of to-day is its democracy, its give-and- 

 take, its live-and-let-live character. Scientific 



