906 



SCIENCE.^ 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 284. 



Essai sur la classification des sciences. By Ed- 



MOND GOBLOT, Dooteur es lettres, Professeur 



au lycee de Toulouse, Ancien eleve de I'Ecole 



normal superieure. Paris, Felix Alcan, 



editeur. Bailliere et Cie. 1898. 



The excellence of this book, such as it has, 



lies rather in the way iu which the details of 



the system of classification adopted are worked 



out than in any fresh or important general 



view of classification itself, in this respect diflfer- 



ing widely from Spencer, whom the book aims 



largely to correct, and fi'om Comte, whom it 



aims to complete. For this reason it is not 



easy to give in a few words a fair outline of 



this latest serious attempt to classify the 



branches of human knowledge. 



One may say iu general of Professor Goblot 

 that his method is historical and critical. He 

 does not attack the problem at first hand, but 

 has continually in mind what has been done al- 

 ready in this field. 



The author tells us that be began his study 

 with the problem of immaterial wealth. This 

 led him to study political economy in general ; 

 whence he passed to sociology. He discovered 

 that sociology includes many things, logic 

 among the rest, and that it was desirable to 

 form a definite concept of, and to define if pos- 

 sible, this new science. This attempt led him 

 inevitably to a general classification of the in- 

 tellectual wealth of the race. 



Of the two well-known meanings of the word 

 science which we recognize in our" English 

 speech, a narrow meaning and a broad one, 

 Mons. Goblot always has in mind the broad 

 one, of which he regards the narrow meaning 

 as a special case. All general knowledge, cer- 

 tain or probable, belongs to science. Philosophy 

 is a part of science : even metaphysics, which, 

 he argues, is either science or nonsense. He 

 will have none of a chose en soi. So too there 

 is no valid philosophy of the unknowable. The 

 domain of science is the entire domain of human 

 intelligence and interest. Even the arts are 

 practical or applied sciences and must come 

 into the general scheme. 



Savants divide themselves into three groups 

 according as they specialize : ( 1 ) mathematics, 

 or ( 2 ) the physical and natural sciences, or ( 3 ) 

 the moral sciences. Between the last group 



and the two first groups there is a deep gulf, 

 partly on account of the almost exclusively lit- 

 erary training of historians, economists and 

 sociologists, and partly by their traditions and 

 habits of thought. The first two groups are 

 closely allied. 



Everything tends to show the present inferi- 

 ority of the moral sciences. Although they 

 have occupied the entire field of human interest 

 from early antiquitj^, they are still poor in re- 

 sults and have neither a fixed object, principle 

 or method. Just now they are making a show 

 of becoming positive, of freeing themselves from 

 metaphysics and taking rank among the sciences 

 of nature. Psychology is about where astron- 

 omy was in the time of Tycho Brahe. It has 

 already created for itself a method of observa- 

 tion and a technic and seems ready for a Kepler 

 and a Newton. So psychology essays to become 

 a true natural history of the human soul, and 

 sociology of human society. 



So we ai'e coming to have not three, but two 

 divisions of the sciences : ( 1 ) sciences of reason- 

 ing, deductive and abstract : and (2) sciences 

 of observation, inductive and concrete. 



Having maintained the radical opposition of 

 the sciences of demonstration to those of obser- 

 vation there are only two roads to a proof of 

 the fundamental unity of science : ( 1 ) the 

 sciences of demonstration (the mathematical 

 sciences) may be regarded as having passed 

 through au early concrete stage to their present 

 form : or ( 2 ) the sciences of nature, beginning 

 in the concrete, are now passing forward and 

 in part, have already progressed to the demon- 

 strative stage. Mechanics and mathematical 

 astronomy exemplify this tendencj'. 



Of the two contentions named above the latter 

 is, in point of fact, the one which the author 

 adopts. The sciences of fact tend constantly 

 to become more and more ideal until at last 

 they free themselves from their original em- 

 piricism, have for object pure concepts, and 

 proceed by abstract definitions and deductive 

 demonstrations. The demonstrative sciences 

 are the typical sciences : all other knowledge 

 is on the road to this goal. 



He does not think that our conception of the 

 universe will become more and more simple, 

 passing finally into one unique and supreme 



