Kahlenberg—Factors in Scientific Research. 1293 
and has opened the true path to the acquisition of real facts 
and laws. 
After all, the fundamental laws of nature are few and com¬ 
paratively simple, though the phenomena controlled by the 
laws are frequently extremely varied and complex. We recog¬ 
nize the far reaching character of the laws of mechanics, of the 
conservation of mass, of the conservation and transformation of 
energy, and of the proportions in which substances unite chemi¬ 
cally. We know that under these general laws there are special 
laws and principles governing limited groups of phenomena; 
thus, for instance, we have the laws of conduction of electricity, 
of electrolysis, of propagation of wave motion, of reproduction, 
which, however, are all subject to the few great general laws. 
Yet we must recognize that all these laws have been discovered 
by experimental study and observation. Yewton’s laws of 
motion were discovered only about two hundred years ago. The 
law of conservation of mass was discovered about a century ago, 
and the laws of conservation and transformation of energy were 
formulated as recently as the middle of the nineteenth century. 
We have, furthermore, acquired the far reaching and funda¬ 
mental ideas that certain chemical substances, the so-called ele¬ 
ments, can neither be decomposed nor synthesized, and that liv¬ 
ing beings always spring from living beings and cannot be pro¬ 
duced artificially from dead mineral material. These latter 
notions, too, have come to us only recently, that is, within the 
last century. The idea that complex living forms have gradu¬ 
ally evolved from simpler ones, and that, indeed, the principle 
of evolution applies to the universe itself is also of very recent 
origin. When we reflect that laws are simply general state¬ 
ments of fact, and that our most fundamental laws have been 
discovered within the last hundred years, it certainly must 
dawn upon us that there is great probability that the laws we 
have discovered are not the only ones of fundamental and far 
reaching character that obtain, and that some more general law 
may still await discovery. 
Each of our natural sciences has already accumulated a 
very respectable body of facts, to master which requires special 
