REPORT OF THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 21 



There is another point of view from which I have be,en some- 

 what interested to develop the implications of the doctrine of nerve 

 components, that of scientific methology in general. 



It is said that scientific explanation consists essentially in 

 such an organization of facts that they may be generalized or 

 included under certain laws or uniformities which permit a fore- 

 casting of future events. Now, without going into an exposition 

 at this time of the implied philosophy of nature, I think that a 

 little reflection will show that this statement, while true in a certain 

 limited sense, is very defective. 



What is the nature of this organization of facts from which 

 so great benefits are expected to flow ? Can it in last analysis be 

 anything other than the correlation of experience? All of the 

 "facts" with which we deal have grown up in experience; they 

 are in a literal sense the products of our experience. As men of 

 science we have nothing to do with "things-in-theniselves," only 

 with phenomena, out of which we have constructed by mental 

 process certain objective things which we regard as real — "con- 

 structs," or in common parlance, objects, facts, data. 



By these things which grew up in experience (we have in 

 most cases forgotten how) we measure up and evaluate all new 

 experience. If the new sense presentation is a yellow dog with 

 white feet we assimilate it at once with previous experience and 

 approve it as a valid fact. If, on the other hand, it is a green 

 dog with thirteen scarlet heads each with a forked tongue, we 

 are apt to ask. Am I awake or asleep? or, What was I drinking 

 last night? Such an experience may be vividly real to me, but if 

 awake and sane I do not accredit it as an object of sense, as a 

 fact of experience, unless I can correlate it with the body of fact 

 already approved. 



But scientific laws are merely "facts" of wider import, which 

 rest on a foundation of broader experience such that, when objecti- 

 fied, they remain not as concrete elementary experiences but as 

 general categories including many such elements. The scientific 

 generalization or law must therefore be approved or evaluated in 

 a way strictly analogous with that by which we test sense 

 impressions ; that is, to be acceptable it must fit in harmoniously 

 with the whole content of experience — "it must explain all the 

 facts." 



In the solution of any scientific problem that method is most 

 likely to lead directly to fruitful results, other things being equal, 

 which favors the correlation of the data all along the line so that 

 each correlation may become at once a datum for future research, 

 instead of reserving the major correlations until near the end of 



