Scientific truth

“ Science and scientific truth is used in a way that warrants the apprehension that—if such is to be the use512 made of it—the progress of science may tend, first, to impair, and, next, to obliterate, the sense of responsibility on which the present and the future alike so solemnly rest. ”

“ It is essential at the outset to distinguish different degrees of truth as well as of substances. There is earth, air, and ether illustrative of successively higher degrees. There are scientific truths, civil truths, and spiritual truths. The truths of natural science are the lowest, for they appertain to the earth, matter, and material forms. If man lives in harmony with natural science, it will be conducive to health. Civil truths are of a higher order for they govern the relations of men. ”

“ The principles of nature and the modes of mental action are the same for all men. It necessarily follows from the essential nature of truth and the invariability of the chief methods of detecting it, that the criteria of truth in mental science, and the mental powers and processes by which truth is arrived at and detected in that science, are essentially the same as in the physiological, chemical, and physical ones. ”

“ It is also the business of science to find hypotheses and to build up theories that will explain its facts and connect them together systematically, according to some underlying law. But as I have just intimated it is the mark of true science that it never retains a theory merely because it is interesting. The truth is the only touchstone. Still, even the most conscientious scientific investigator may be misled by his imagination. ”

“ The scientific method can only be successfully used by those who are endowed with, or by discipline have acquired, what I am accustomed to call the scientific sense, by which phrase I mean the power of seeking truth through the intellect alone, uninfluenced by the emotions. For the tendency of truth, the scientific sense has no hopes and no fears, except so far as it may help to find the truth. ”

“ On the contrary, we shall be led to believe that the nature of truth is in all subjects the same, and that its discovery involves, in all cases, the like 5 conditions. On one subject of human speculation after another, man’s knowledge assumes that exact and substantial character which leads us to term it Science; and in all these cases, whether inert matter or living bodies, whether permanent relations or successive occurrences, be the subject of our attention, we can point out certain universal characters which belong to truth, certain general laws which have regulated its progress among men. ”

“ We analyse experience with a view to discovering its implications, and we analyse our various scientific and unscientific theories of the contents of the world-system for the same purpose. Also, once having determined what are the formal characteristics of an all-embracing, systematic whole of experienced fact, we criticise our various concepts and theories by reference to these characteristics as an ultimate standard of reality and truth. ”

“ To him, as to all true philosophers, the main value of a fact was its position and suggestiveness in the general sequence of scientific truth. ”

“ But yet a progress of thought upon such subjects,—an advance from the obscure to the clear, and from errour to truth,—may be traced in the world at large, and among those who have not directly cultivated the exact sciences. ”

“ By showing the moral influence of experimental research in imparting "the scientific spirit;" promoting a love of truth; dispelling ignorance and superstition; detecting error; imparting certainty and accuracy to our knowledge; inculcating obedience to law; producing uniformity of belief; aiding economy and cleanliness, promoting humanity, &c, &c. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The answer which the man of science returns to this question, as to what is the use of his discovery, is, ‘I only tell you what is the interest of that discovery, that interest which compels and impels me to go on in the path of investigation.’ It is knowledge, mere knowledge of the facts and laws of nature, that the scientific mind seeks to gain. ”

“ In investigating any new claims whatever, experts—consciously or unconsciously—keep this order in mind: they first inquire whether the claims can be explained by laws already known to experts; if not so explained, then they are referred to the second order—the unknown in Nature—and attempts are made to bring them into the first order, or the known in Nature: such is the philosophy of all human progress in science. But when men go further, and assert that these unknown phenomena are of supernatural character, they bid good-by to the scientific method ”

“ The scientific method ignores no faculty of man or fact in Nature; it recognizes to the full our emotions, affections, and sentiments, but subordinates all these to the intellect, whose dictum alone is given command over the educated will. Authority relies on inspiration, revelation, the miraculous, and the supernatural; science relies on brain, on experience, the mastery of facts by accurate and patient thought. ”

“ In examining, therefore, the truths which science has revealed to us, it is advantageous, for the purpose of fixing the mind to the subject, that we assume certain conditions as true. These may be stated in a few sentences, and then, without wasting a thought upon those metaphysical subtleties which have from time to time perplexed science, and served to impede the progress of truth, we shall proceed to examine our knowledge of the phenomena which constantly occur around us. ”

“ If we choose to define positive science as the systematic establishment of the special laws of connection between facts, we may say that over and above the scientific problem of the systematisation of facts there is the further philosophical problem of their interpretation. ”

“ For if reality lies only in the passing impressions of our sensible nature, the claim of science to find valid truth must end in the denial of the very possibility of knowledge. Does not the very existence of physical science imply the priority of thought? ”

“ Why should the scientist escape the questioning of other men? Subtle and wonderful as science is, does it transcend humanity? Surely, when all is said, the scientific consciousness is not formally different from the ordinary consciousness. ”

“ And it is this agreement which gives rise to the general belief—in many, to the confident assurance—that the scientific interpretation of Nature represents her not merely as she seems but as she really is. ”

“ I perceive the gradual growth of knowledge through all the ages, the clouds of ignorance and superstition slowly parting, breaking up, and rolling away, to let the light of science shine—science being truth. ”

“ And when we fully recognize that a problem is being solved, we have only to gain some appreciation of its general nature and conditions, in order to reach some important, though limited, conclusions, which may fairly be called scientific, as to the meaning of the answer. These conclusions are not scientific in the sense of giving us quantitative and precise formulæ, but they may be so far scientific as to be certain and reliable. ”

“ How many a man of science, on some slight hint pointing in a given direction, with faith and courage has pursued his investigations, adopting hypothesis after hypothesis, rejecting, adjusting, the world meanwhile laughing at his folly and credulity, until he has discovered and proclaimed a great truth. ”

“ Thus there is a superficial science which is at present the object of pride of the world, and a secret science of which next to nothing is publicly known, but which is known to the wise and revealed by one’s own perception of truth. ”

“ But in doing so, they do not seem to perceive the difference between the method by which they obtain their knowledge and the process of modern scientific investigation by which the facts of nature are ascertained and its laws are discovered. ”

“ For us then the highest achievements of science are the dim shadow of the perfection of the infinite thought. And to science, accordingly, we must go, not for the invention, but for the intellectual illustration of our ideal. And science we must treat as absolute mistress of her own domain. Of the world as a whole, of the eternal as such, of infinite past time, of the inner truth of things, science pretends to tell and can tell nothing. Nor does science invent, nor yet can she prove, her own postulates, as we previously defined them. ”

“ A person observing the occurrence of certain facts and phenomena asks, naturally enough, what process, what kind of operation known to occur in nature applied to the particular case, will unravel and explain the mystery? Hence you have the scientific hypothesis; and its value will be proportionate to the care and completeness with which its basis had been tested and verified. It is in these matters as in the commonest affairs of practical life: the guess of the fool will be folly, while the guess of the wise man will contain wisdom. ”

“ The most perfect sciences are those which have expiated the vice of their origin, and are assimilated, as a creation, to divine science, that is, those in which the truth and the fact are mutually convertible. ”

“ The special science, because special or partial and because at the same time courting scientific character or validity, that is, conformity with reality, must be relative, formal, abstract, artificial, unreal, but also for exactly the same reason it must contrive to admit to its conceptions other view-points than its own. ”

“ It is demonstration rather than doctrine that is of divine origin. A man also who practises scientific research is largely compelled to adopt the most truthful views of nature, in order to enable him to make discoveries. ”

“ Natural Science, as shown in the Great Work, includes scientific knowledge on all planes of being on which the soul of man functions: The physical, moral, psychical, and spiritual; for man is a composite being.
The apotheosis of Natural Science, therefore, is Fact, Law, Demonstration, and Knowledge; before theory, conjecture, creed, dogma, superstition, or fear, intuition, inspiration, revelation, and “holy men” or “holy books” that must be accepted without evidence, or “believed” against evidence. ”

“ We must now consider more carefully how we must treat the scientific postulates that were our only comfort in studying reality before we reached our present insight.
When we postulated that the world must in the best sense satisfy our fundamental intellectual needs, we assumed what is necessary for science, but what science itself does not satisfactorily explain. ”

“ The fundamental propositions rest on a much broader basis of experiment than any of the beliefs which are held most strongly in every day life. Under these circumstances nobody should speak disparagingly of the validity of scientific knowledge — not even the scientist himself. ”

“ When we try to reduce the genesis of our knowledge to scientific ordination, and when to this end we search for the fundamental fact—the fact on which all knowledge depends, we meet the difficulty that there are several facts apparently answering to this description. ”

“ In the scientific discoveries that have been made, we can read the logic of the process by which they were attained, and thus raise “applied logic” to the dignity of a science, and indirectly discover a logic of probable evidence. It is the intellectual, and not merely the material value of physical science to which allusion is made in the text. It shows at once what man can know, and the limits where knowledge must give place to faith, and science to revelation.315.See Guizot's Hist. ”

“ We have dwelt long enough on these generalities, and it is time to come down to commonplaces, and to inquire what are the essential conditions of this scientific culture which shall fit us to investigate Nature; and the first thought that occurs to me in this connection may be expressed thus: Science presents to us two aspects, which I may call its objective and its subjective aspect. Objectively it is a body of facts, which we have to observe, and subjectively it is a body of truths, conclusions, or inferences, deduced from these facts ”

“ But then I said and it was the whole purport of my speech, made in the interests of science as well as religion that we can only expect these results from true science, which investigates what Nature really is, and not from a hasty and presumptuous science, which pretends to give us what Nature may be supposed to be. And my criterion of true science, suggested in a phrase, was, that the methods and results of it bear the impress of exactitude or certainty. You remark, as if you did not receive these simple and fundamental principles, that the "exact sciences" are exact, while others are not. ”

“ All great scientific discoveries lie in the objective, not in the subjective order. The exact sciences, natural as well as moral, have emanated not from reflexion of the subject upon itself, but from knowledge of objects and their [Pg 154] relations. ”

“ So doing we shall take a most important step towards a thorough-going confession of doubt.
Among scientific men it is a commonplace that for accuracy and genuineness or purity, that is to say for complete abstraction, science must be (1) independent of "life," all the subjective interests, whether personal or social, the interests of politics, industry, morality, or religion, being science's most unsettling influences; (2) specialistic, the "Jack of all trades" in science being anything but persona grata among scientific men ”