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Transactions Texas Academy of Science. 
to the discovery of a way to smelt iron, but the history of the past shows 
that few things are found in this way, the cultivation of socalled theo- 
retic science must be an end in itself. The alchemists succeeded in prov- 
science was possible if the end be gain and not increase of knowledge. 
The history of today reinforces the lesson. Germany owes her manu- 
facturing supremacy in greatest measure to her universities; there the 
theories which are her source of Avealth and power were elaborated with- 
out any thought of how they might be applied. 
The sciences which have contributed most largely in the past to 
the comfort and pleasures of man have been what from most points 
of view must be called the simpler sciences. Of these Geometry 
and Mechanics are the oldest and have made such progress that they 
already admit of an aritmetic formulation. By this is meant that the 
fundamental concepts of these sciences admit of such a characteriza- 
tion that they may be manipulated by the condensed algorith of math- 
ematics; so that the diffuse description of ordinary language is re- 
placed by a terse symbolism or shorthand which mechanically, so to 
speak, puts in evidence relationships not otherwise easily discernable. 
This was done for space thousands of years ago by men whose names 
even we are ignorant of; for force, by Archimedes, Galileo, and Newton; 
for light, heat, and electricity and the varied forms of energy, by a 
great galaxy of men that belong to the last two centuries. So great has 
been the progress along these lines that modern physics is largely a 
matter of differential equations, and whether we call the theory corpus- 
cular, undulatory or electromagnetic, these differential equations remain 
the same, and the names of the theories merely serve to indicate the 
discovery of new and hitherto unnoticed relationships. 
It was the brillant successes of physical science, no doubt, that led 
some enthusiasts to dream of an arithmetization of all science, and even 
of doing this with no other fundamental elements than matter and energy. 
While the dreams of these enthusiasts were doomed to disappointment 
and a dynamic explanation of psychic and social processes is no longer 
demanded, it is still believed that even the facts of consciousness and 
social development admit and demand an explanation in terms of a 
limited number of fundamental and social activities. And it is this 
demand that has given rise to a multitude of social sciences — the Science 
of Society, of History, of Economics, of Religion, and others too numer- 
ous to mention. It is clear that we are here considering the many 
aspects of a single thing — the varied activities of man as an individual 
and as a social being, and the question presents itself, in what sense can 
our study of such complex phenomena be properly characterized as 
scientific ? 
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