Human sciences

“ Now the example of the physical and biological sciences shows that the human mind has the power to work out schemes which secure an adequate control over the material world and over animal and plant life by a series of observations and experiments which have been sufficiently thorough and detailed to discover series of facts and their causal connections which lead to the establishment of general chemical, physical, mechanical, and biological laws, and the same objective methods will lead to similar results in the field of social theory and practice. ”

“ Thus, free from fetters, and obeying pure reason, resting on all the sciences which can assist it, anatomy, physiology, psychology, and philology, the science of mankind will advance, like every other science, towards the conquest of that truth which is so much to be desired ”

“ The justification of all persons who have freed themselves from toil is now founded on experimental, positive science. The scientific theory is as follows:—
“For the study of the laws of life of human societies, there exists but one indubitable method,—the positive, experimental, critical method
“Only sociology, founded on biology, founded on all the positive sciences, can give us the laws of humanity. Humanity, or human communities, are the organisms already prepared, or still in process of formation, and which are subservient to all the laws of the evolution of organisms. ”

“ In the subjects of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemistry, vegetable and animal physiology, psychology and morality, and the more concrete subjects depending upon them, such as politics, trade, commerce, government, &c., our ideas have equally advanced, in consequence of scientific research; and to fully describe the mental progress resulting from discovery in nearly all branches of human knowledge would require a series of books to be written on the History of all the Sciences. ”

“ It is this which takes medicine out of the category of exact sciences, and puts it into that which includes politics, ethics, navigation and practical engineering, in all of which, though there are principles, and those principles quite within the scope of human reason, yet the application of these principles must, in the main, be left to each man's skill, presence of mind, and judgment, as to the case in hand. ”

“ And as the science of man is the-only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on experience and observation. ”

“ THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH I
The division of the sciences reflects the diversity of human interests; it represents the economical adaptation of organized thought to the conditions of reality; and it likewise recognizes the intrinsically and objectively distinct realms and aspects, in which and under which phenomena occur. It is obvious that the sciences were shaped by human needs; that physics and chemistry and geology and biology and psychology do not constitute independent departments of nature's régime, but only so many aspects of complex natural activities ”

“ The only immediate utility of all sciences, is to teach us, how to control and regulate future events by their causes. ”

“ From this brief analysis of concepts it is clear that science and scientific research are not superhuman beings, but an activity or condition of the human mind, distinguished from the ordinary thought of the individual only by system and method, and, [pg 006] commonly, by greater thoroughness and by the united effort of many. It is subject to all the limitations of the human mind. ”

“ At the present moment civilized society stands at a point in the development of the applications of science to human interests, at which the thing of the highest importance is the subjection of societal phenomena to scientific investigation, together with the elimination of metaphysics from this entire domain. ”

“ Prominent attention has been also devoted to those various sciences which help to a better understanding of the nature of man, to the bearings of science upon the questions of society and government, to scientific education, and to the conflicts which spring from the progressive nature of scientific knowledge. ”

“ What is all we know of mechanics, astronomy, and optics, but connections established by nature, and discovered by experience or observation, and consequences deduced from them? All the knowledge we have in agriculture, gardening, chymistry, and medicine, is built upon the same foundation. And if ever our philosophy concerning the human mind is carried so far as to deserve the name of science, which ought never to be despaired of, it must be by observing facts, reducing them to general rules, and drawing just conclusions from them. ”

“ That mental progress is advanced by scientific discovery is a common circumstance. Our ideas of facts, our knowledge of general principles, our views of man, of nature, and of the Universe; and even our modes of thought, have been gradually and profoundly changed by the new knowledge acquired by means of scientific research. This truth is capable of being most extensively illustrated by a multitude of facts in the whole of the sciences, and in the arts, manufactures, and other subjects dependent upon science. ”

“ All of this represents the slow evolution of science, each new discovery quickening the thought of the age in which it occurred, changing the attitude of the mind toward nature and life, and contributing to human comfort and human welfare. But the greatest accomplishment always in the development of science is its effect on the mental processes of humanity, stimulating thought and changing the attitude of mind toward life. ”

“ The definitions which those works furnish of the sciences, for the most part either do not fit them—some being too wide, some too narrow—or do not go deep enough into them, but define a science by its accidents, not its essentials; by some one of its properties which may, indeed, serve the purpose of a distinguishing mark, but which is of too little importance to have ever of itself led mankind to give the science a name and rank as a separate object of study. ”

“ Here we have the mere phenomena of the human speciality put forward as science, without any attempt to find their genera,—to trace them to that which is more known to nature, so as to connect them practically with the diversity and opposition, which the actual conditions of practice present. ”

“ Biology is thus the true basis of Sociology and the science of History. Founded on the science of Life, History will be competent to formulate clear and definite principles about the course of human progress, the development of society and the evolution of civilisation. ”

“ Now that science has entered into her kingdom and the vastness of her domain is willingly recognized,—for in a vital sense all that may be known by human ken, supported by evidence, presented in orderly arrangement, related to other knowledge, and developed by further study may be called science,—the busy problem is the infusion of the scientific method into all our ways of thinking, its application to all the various kinds of beliefs that affect our ideals, our working conceptions, and our actions. ”

“ We should say thus: all knowledge falls into two classes, the physical sciences and the mental sciences. In the circle of physical sciences we have the general sciences, like physics and chemistry, the particular sciences of special objects, like astronomy, geology, mineralogy, biology, and the formal sciences, like mathematics. In the circle of mental sciences we have correspondingly, as a general science, psychology, and as the particular sciences all those special mental and moral sciences which deal with man's inner life, like history or jurisprudence, logic or ethics, and all the rest. ”

“ It was by the adoption of the method of inductive enquiry which physical science was to make its own, and by basing enquiry on grounds which physical science could supply, that the moral sciences, ethics and politics, could alone make any real advance. ”

“ His name will long survive as that of one of the ablest thinkers the world has produced, a reasoner of exceptional ability, whose scope of research covered all fields and whose discoveries in practical science formed the first true introduction to mankind of this great field of human study, to-day the greatest of them all. ”

“ The science which, from such indicia as these, has succeeded in determining not only the class, but the very form and habits, of the animals which impressed them—no other traces remaining than those petrified footsteps, covered up and hidden for ages—presents subjects of study to the inquiring mind, which may well rank among the most valuable, as well as curious, of human research. ”

“ Having so fully examined, in the preceding instances, the nature of the progress of thought which science implies, both among the peculiar cultivators of science, and in that wider world of general culture which receives only an indirect influence from scientific discoveries, we shall not find it necessary to go into the same extent of detail with regard to the other provinces of human knowledge. ”

“ These five sciences, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, and sociology, we may consider the five fundamental sciences. This classification follows the order of the development of the sciences, and indicates their social relation and relative perfection. In order to reach effective knowledge, the sciences must be studied in the order named; sociology cannot be understood without knowledge of the anterior sciences. ”

“ Over and over again in the world's history men have been {94} interested in science, both in pure science and in applied science, in the culture sciences and in the practical sciences.
Apparently men forget that philosophy is science and ethics is science and metaphysics is scientific and logic is science and there is a science of language. Of course the protest that will be heard at once is that what we now mean by science is physical science. ”

“ It is now time for science to define, in some way, the limitations of human knowledge, and thus confine all research strictly within the sphere of the knowable. Is it not safe to assume that the finite mind is so conditioned that it cannot possibly perceive or comprehend ultimate antecedent causes? ”

“ On the other hand, there is a small but ever-increasing number of scientists, who push on through the world of form with which the mathematical sciences deal, onwards through the world of matter with which the physical sciences deal, and thence through the world of organic life with which the biological sciences deal, and finally attempt to explore in a scientific spirit and with scientific methods the world of mind and society with which the psychological and social sciences deal. ”

“ There is a science called the "science of the human mind," the object of which is to collect and systematize the phenomena of man's moral and intellectual nature. If this science accomplishes the end proposed, its method must be the very one which we ought to make use of. ”

“ Such research, reconciling by right methods of investigation intellectual activity with human conscience, would increase our knowledge and advance our well-being in accordance with the higher reason of the race. Only when thus guided by intelligence and conscience can biological research deserve the noble name of science. ”

“ These considerations, we are reminded by the partisans of humanity studies, point back to the educative value of history as corrective of the one-sidedness of the method of science. Science seeks explanation in the mechanical conditions of, and impulses received from, the environment, while history keeps its gaze fixed on human purposes, and studies the genesis of national actions through the previous stages of feelings, convictions, and conscious ideas. ”

“ Mathematics and physics and chemistry and biology and psychology, not to say also the social sciences, all depend upon the far-seeing mystical visions of the mind, if not of the eye, upon the subtle, logical constructions which their would-be scientific specialism, their desire to know all things narrowly, forces upon them. ”

“ In the second place, what is the proper business and procedure of science in its application to man? Here science adopts precisely the same views, and follows precisely the same method. Man objectises himself as "the human mind," and declares that the only fact, or at least that the sum total of all the facts appertaining to this object, is that it is visited by certain changes constituting its varieties of "feeling," "passion," "states of mind," or by whatever other name they may be called, and that the only legitimate business of science here is to observe these changes and classify them. ”

“ And this it does by taking generally the sciences, perhaps in a somewhat fragmentary way, and bringing their different results together—focussing them on some particular point on which it desires to build up some structure of comfort and advantage to mankind. ”

“ In our universities and centers of learning he will find the exponents of the science still discussing whether it can ever have any laws, and even whether it should be founded on fact or romance. Let him take down any volume of history from its shelf, and endeavor to find any scientific clue therein to the natural laws underlying and controlling the majestic process of life which has unfolded itself in our western civilization, or to the natural laws that have directed the development of other social systems contemporaneous with it, or anterior to it. ”

“ This which has directed all other knowledge, men have always called science in the strictest sense of the word. Such science has always been, up to the present time, in human societies which have left the savage state behind them. Since mankind has existed teachers have appeared in every nation to form science in this strict sense,—the science about what it is most necessary for men to know. The object of this science has always been the inquiry as to what was the destiny, and therefore the true welfare, of each man and of all men. ”