WHAT SCIENCE DOES NOT EXPLAIN 389 



Aristotle: and it is added that false hopes have been 

 raised, and that matters which were once considered 

 settled have again passed into the melting-pot ! 



This kind of lamentation is not only (if I may use an 

 expressive term) " twaddle," but is injurious misrepresen- 

 tation, dangerous to the public welfare. The actual 

 attitude of the investigators and makers of new know- 

 ledge of nature is stated in a few words which I wrote 

 ten years ago: "The whole order of nature, including 

 living and lifeless matter — from man to gas — is a network 

 of mechanism, the main features and many details of 

 which have been made more or less obvious to the 

 wondering intelligence of mankind by the labour and 

 ingenuity of scientific investigators. But no sane man 

 has ever pretended, since science became a definite body 

 of doctrine, that we know or ever can hope to know or 

 conceive of the possibility of knowing, whence this 

 mechanism has come, why it is there, whither it is 

 going, and what there may or may not be beyond and 

 beside it which our senses are incapable of appreciating. 

 These things are not ' explained ' by science and never 

 can be." 



So much for those who reproach science with the non- 

 fulfilment of their own unwarranted and perfectly gratui- 

 tous expectations. 



When, however, having created in their readers' minds 

 an unreasonable sense of failure and a mistrust of 

 science, such writers go on to make use of the want of 

 confidence thus produced, in order to throw doubt 

 upon the real conquests, of science — the new knowledge 

 actually made and established by the investigators of 

 the last century — it becomes necessary to say a little 

 more. The public is told by these false-witnesses that 

 science has " dogmas," and that men of science are less 

 satisfied _than they were with the "dogmas" of the last 



