94 Science Religion and Reality 



of thought, Physis would doubtless have been raised to the rank of 

 a god. Although the greatest among the Greek investigators of 

 nature never took the step of actually personifying physis, yet the 

 tendency to do so is distinguishable throughout large departments 

 of Greek thought. This tendency is, in a sense, a combination of 

 the religious, philosophic, and scientific standpoints. 



The word physis has an interesting later history among the 

 Greeks where we can hardly follow it. There is, however, one 

 incident in the history of the idea represented by the word which 

 had a deep influence on the subsequent development of thought. 

 When the Greek world became absorbed into the Roman Empire, 

 Greek thought gradually assumed a Latin dress. During this 

 process the philosophical term physis was mistranslated by the word 

 natura. The Latin word contains not so much the idea of 

 growth as of hirth. Emphasis was thus transferred from the idea 

 oi law to the idea oi origin. This we can clearly see if we contrast 

 two works in which these words are used. Thus we have a 

 work of about 400 B.C. falsely ascribed to Hippocrates entitled 

 Ilepl 9U(T£W<; avOpcoTcou, i.e., " On the way things happen in 

 man." It is a scientific attempt to explain a limited part of the 

 universe, to wit man's body, by a series of general ideas based on 

 observation. We can compare this with the approach of the Latin 

 philosopher Lucretius, who died about <,S ^-C- and wrote a work 

 " De rerum natural' i.e., " On the origin of things in general," a 

 philosophical thesis which seeks to explain the entire workings of 

 the universe on a particular hypothesis about its origin. 



In glancing at these two works we moderns can perceive that 

 we have before us two entirely different and perhaps incompatible 

 things. On the one hand, we see a work of pure science in which 

 the investigator is interested only in a particular problem and 

 explains it in terms which might obtain universal assent. On the 

 other hand, we see a work which we may describe as pertaining 

 to the nature of philosophy or religion — according to our manner 

 of approach — in which the writer is less interested in the solution 

 of any special problem than in finding a common element at the 

 back of all problems. 



The position gives us the key to many of the happenings in the 

 subsequent relations of science on the one hand and religion and 

 philosophy on the other. It is the business of the man of science 

 to investigate only such parts of nature as are in his particular field. 



