DixiiiiBER 30, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



907 



value in too many cases; that even where 

 the observers have begun to realize that 

 exact science is creeping into the sociolog- 

 ical field they have not understood that a 

 thorough training in the new methods is 

 an essential preliminary for effective work, 

 even for the collection of material; that 

 these observers have rushed to measure or 

 count any living form they could hit on 

 without having planned ab initio the con- 

 ceptions and ideas that their observations 

 were intended to illustrate. 



Doctor Pearson is skeptical about the 

 right men or the right man, and he thinks 

 the securing of these men is the chief diffi- 

 culty in organizing any force for the scien- 

 tific interpretation of the great mass of 

 data now existing; but he says that when 

 the right man is found he must have been 

 rightly trained; that he is to be occupied 

 in drawing logical conclusions from other 

 persons' observation and data; that there- 

 fore he must, in the first place, be an adept 

 in scientific method, a first-class mathema- 

 tician and statistician and a trained cal- 

 culator and computator. Such a man will 

 be the man who has the courage to ' scrap, ' 

 and to do it relentlessly. Science wants 

 immensely the courageous pruner, but Doc- 

 tor Pearson feels that such a task is not an 

 enviable one. 



Such a work is also indorsed by Lord 

 Rayleigh, of the Royal Institution of Great 

 Britain ; and Dr. H. H. Turner, of the Uni- 

 versity Observatory at Oxford, in sym- 

 pathizing with Doctor Newcomb's sugges- 

 tion, does not hesitate to say that no one 

 will be found to doubt the necessity of a 

 far more extended discussion of results; 

 that in the days of Newton, perhaps, ob- 

 servations were scarcer than theories, and 

 it was advisable to set them going, but that 

 now there is no doubt whatever that there 

 is a crying necessity that we should organ- 

 ize the discussion of the masses "■'' aceumi'' 



Dr. G. H. Darwin is also in sympathy 

 with such work, while in this country Dr. 

 Fisher, of Yale; Dr. Pickering, of Har- 

 vard, and others are agreed that we must 

 utilize the vast collections of data and the 

 results of observation in a more scientific 

 way in order that the conditions of the 

 people in all sociological aspects shall be 

 more clearly defined. 



All these suggestions are stimulated by 

 what is known as the new political econ- 

 omy. Personally, I do not particularly 

 like that expression, but I do like the 

 phrase 'social economics,' because while 

 political economy deals with the accumula- 

 tion, distribution and exchange of wealth 

 — fields perfectly legitimate— and sociology 

 is the science of the relations of individuals 

 and institutions, social economies deals with 

 relations in industrial society; hence it 

 comprehends in a broad sense all that is 

 comprehended by political economy, as well 

 as those other elements of present-day 

 economics which relate to other passions 

 than the passion of wealth. We must 

 agree, however, with Buckle, that 'wealth 

 must accumulate before knowledge can be- 

 gin, ' and its corollary, that 'great ignor- 

 ance is the fruit of great poverty.' We 

 must also recognize Whewell's utterance, 

 that in all cases the arts are prior to the 

 related science. Art is the parent, not the 

 progeny, of science. The wants of the 

 world have developed science. The old 

 alchemists in their work preceded chemical 

 science. So the empirical investigations 

 and researches to discover remedial agen- 

 cies have bequeathed to the world great 

 stores of knowledge now systematized. 



We must also recognize that during the 

 past one hundred and twenty-five years or 

 so political economy, as a separate branch 

 of philosophy, has sprung into existence. 

 The age has been condu'^ive to its develop- 



