July 5, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



13 



SOME UNSCIENTIFIC REFLECTIONS UPON 

 SCIENCE* 



Science has its limitations and often con- 

 fesses to them more or less directly, so that 

 there must be some justification even from 

 science for the heretical standpoint that I 

 am now taking. Like all limitations, too, 

 those of science are as much a source of 

 danger as of opportunity to science itself. 

 And also as for my being unscientific, it may 

 be well to reflect that in these days any 

 negative term can be looked upon as only 

 an extreme or limiting degree — in one di- 

 rection or the other — of that which it 

 denies, so that I have at least an even 

 chance of saying something scientifically 

 worth while. 



With regard to the limitations of science, 

 it is a commonplace of the day that for 

 accuracy and genuineness or purity science 

 must be (1) independent of life, the subjec- 

 tive interests, whether personal or social, 

 being perhaps science's most unsettling in- 

 fluences, (2) specialistic, the ' Jack of all 

 trades ' in science being anything but 

 persona grata among scientific men, and (3) 

 positivistic, all conceits about what is be- 

 yond actual experience and even all dogma 

 about what seems reall}' present to experi- 

 ence being most arrant heresy. But in 

 every one of these requirements or condi- 

 tions, that do indeed make science possible, 

 there lurk serious dangers, which I wish to 

 point out and emphasize. Not that they 

 have never been seen or heard of before, 

 but rather that certain things are some- 

 times so commonplace, so well known, as 

 to be unappreciated, if not forgotten alto- 

 gether. 



So, in the first place, the ideal of objec- 

 tivism for science tends, just in proportion 

 as it is realized, to bury science in the deep 



* This paper was read in part at the Baltimore 

 meeting of the American Psychological Association, 

 December, 1900, and in toto before the Research Club 

 of the University of Michigan, in May, 1901. 



grave of technique. Of course, if one be- 

 lieves in a resurrection, all may yet be well, 

 but many do not or at least would blush to 

 admit any such belief. And just what do 

 I mean by technique? I mean everything 

 that makes scientific work purely mechan- 

 ical, for pure mechanicalism is the inevita- 

 ble method of pure objectivism. Scientists 

 have their etiquette about preempted prob- 

 lems or fields of research, their notions 

 about originality as dependent on working 

 in a new field — hence the preemption to 

 prevent transgression or theft of originality, 

 their conceits about bibliographical infor- 

 mation, linguistic proficiency and technical 

 phraseology, their satisfaction over ' publi- 

 cation,' 'contribution,' 'production,' and 

 even ' research,' and a very humble defer- 

 ence of each to each among the different 

 branches of scientific enquiry ; and under 

 technique I would include all these things 

 as well as the more familiar matters 

 of method and apparatus and material. 

 Physicians, we are told, and not infre- 

 quently their patients, sufifer from a pro- 

 fessional ritual and etiquette, but they are 

 far from being alone in their misery. Sci- 

 entists are a close second. Of course to 

 deny that technique has its uses would be 

 absurd. The danger, however, not the 

 use of it, is what now concerns us. Tech- 

 nique is one of the enabling conditions of 

 science, but science that gets no further, 

 that is only 'pure' and 'objective' and 

 'inductive,' is not true science ; its much- 

 vaunted observation and experiment may 

 fill a good many pages and a good many 

 volumes, but material, even material in 

 books, and experiments, even carefully re- 

 ported experiments, are not science neces- 

 sarily. 



True science, as I conceive it, and I think 

 as all are conceiving it to-day with growing 

 clearness, is synthetic as well as analytic, 

 being interested in something more than a 

 decomposable object. It is activity, not 



