Special science

“ 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. ”

“ And in this series or ramification of the sciences, the more general science will not suffice to solve the problems of the more special. Chemistry embraces phenomena which are not explicable by Physics; Biology embraces phenomena which are not explicable by Chemistry; and no biological generalization will enable us to predict the infinite specialities produced by the complexity of vital conditions. ”

“ In any special natural science, a scientific description appears as an adjustment, express, conscious, exact, of the internal structure of a system of ideas to the external structure of a world of preexistent facts; and the business of science has been repeatedly defined, of late years, as simply and wholly taken up with the exact description of the facts of nature. ”

“ Certain tendencies characteristic of the science of our day clearly suggest the direction of our thoughts most appropriate to the occasion. Among the strongest of these is one towards laying greater stress on questions of the beginnings of things, and regarding a knowledge of the laws of development of any object of study as necessary to the understanding of its present form. It may be conceded that the principle here involved is as applicable in the broad field before us as in a special research into the properties of the minutest organism. ”

“ But besides the sciences thus formed by the aid of special experience, the conditions which flow from those more comprehensive ideas first mentioned, Space, Time, and Number, constitute a body of science, applicable to objects and changes of all kinds, and deduced without recurrence being had to any observation in particular. These sciences, thus unfolded out of ideas alone, unmixed with any reference to the phenomena of matter, are hence termed Pure Sciences. ”

“ The processes of the medical art are even now mostly empirical: their efficacy is concluded, in each instance, from a special and most precarious experimental generalization: but as science advances in discovering the simple laws of chemistry and physiology, progress is made in ascertaining the intermediate links in the series of phenomena, and the more general laws on which they depend ”

“ The advance of scientific knowledge—the astonishing discovery of the atom and the cell, and of the unsubstantially or unmateriality, so to speak, of matter itself, and of the elusiveness of energy and life, as indicated by the newer theories of the nature of the ether, and the acceptance of thought-transference as a physical or psychological fact—these and other remarkable scientific discoveries which are leading science to what is seemingly the borderline of a world beyond the cognizance of the bodily senses, have powerfully affected the rationalism and idealism of the present day. ”

“ It is a general truth that the physical sciences of light and heat are based upon mechanical conditions of the particles of matter; that the science of chemistry is founded upon physics; that biological phenomena are dependent upon physical and chemical conditions; that psychological subjects are based upon biology; and that biological science cannot progress excepting in proportion to the advance of the sciences on which it is based. ”

“ It may be a task, not hopeless, to extract from the past progress of science the elements of an effectual and substantial method of Scientific Discovery. The advances which have, during the last three centuries, been made in the physical sciences;—in Astronomy, in Physics, in Chemistry, in Natural History, in Physiology;—these are allowed by all to be real, to be great, to be striking ”

“ 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. ”

“ I now propose briefly to unfold that argument, and to set forth, in a form intelligible to those who possess no special acquaintance with anatomical science, the chief facts upon which all conclusions respecting the nature and the extent of the bonds which connect man with the brute world must be based: I shall then indicate the one immediate conclusion which, in my judgment, is justified by those facts, and I shall finally discuss the bearing of that conclusion upon the hypotheses which have been entertained respecting the Origin of Man. ”

“ I do not mean the mechanical sciences alone, physical astronomy and the like, though these undoubtedly have a prerogative value as the instruments of such a culture; but the like effect will be promoted by the exact and solid study of any portion of the circle of natural sciences; botany, comparative anatomy, geology, chemistry, for instance. But I say the exact and solid knowledge; not a mere verbal knowledge, but a knowledge which is real in its character, though it may be elementary and limited in its extent. ”

“ The way to science then lies through common knowledge; we must extend that knowledge by careful observation and experiment, and learn how to state the results of our investigations accurately, in general rules or laws of nature; finally, we must learn how to reason accurately from these rules, and thus arrive at rational explanations of natural phenomena, which may suffice for our guidance in life. ”

“ Science includes many things; but chemistry and physics, which explain the manifestations of force in the material world, biology which reveals important laws of plant and animal life, and physiography, which acquaints us with our entire environment as to location, phenomena, and partial explanation—these are connected with the practical side of civilization and the welfare of humanity, and are a guard against superstition and error; they are indispensable for practice in induction, and they should be well represented in a course of study. ”

“ One of the urgent needs of modern physical science is a thorough investigation of the nature, methods, and aids of scientific cognition, and thus of the nature of its real limits, chiefly in the light of the teachings of comparative philology and comparative psychology. ”

“ I am not a practical chemist seeking the mysteries of nature in the laboratory, nor a professional scientist exploring the fields of original research; but, like La Place, Comte, Herbert Spencer and others, I formulate my theories and scientific hypotheses from the latest and best established facts of science as I see it. ”

“ Indeed, if at the present moment we run over the names distinguished in the several sciences into which Natural Knowledge may be divided—in Physics, in Chemistry, in Botany, in Zoology—we find but few investigators who can be said to have thoroughly mastered the whole range of any one of them. ”

“ Can the biologist undertake to interpret life with purely mechanical principles; can he reconcile the purposiveness of organisms with the mechanical theory of causation? Will the psychologist, who deals with states of mind or consciousness, be able to account for the existence of these from the physicist's principles, atoms and motion? A science is needed that will consciously and methodically aim to bring order into this chaos, that will consider all the facts, and, if possible, unify these facts. ”

“ The same distinction could very easily be shown to be the foundation of every other science. All the physical sciences have this in common, that they are researches into what is real as distinguished from what is apparent, that is, from what lies exposed and obvious on the very surface of things. ”

“ I have been compelled to use the words ‘science’ and ‘scientific’ because these terms have become firmly adherent to a group of subjects such as Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Botany, etc., and cannot now be detached from them. Unfortunately ‘scientific’ is used in another sense as implying accuracy of experimental method and in deduction from results. So that in calling ourselves scientific men we run the risk of seeming to claim a monopoly of method, as though we pretended to be somehow superior to the trained workers in other branches. ”

“ These scholars and inquirers, with Bacon, believe that the only science is general science. What they want to know is not what instruments we use, our processes, our technique, and the thousand and one details of the experiments on which we spend our lives in the laboratory. ”

“ INTRODUCTION. IN order to the acquisition of any such exact and real knowledge of nature as that which we properly call Physical Science, it is requisite, as has already been said, that men should possess Ideas both distinct and appropriate, and should apply them to ascertained Facts. ”

“ It was thought that the temper of the really scientific man, so patient in research, so accurate and conscientious, so slow to dogmatize, so deferential to others, might be fostered by experimental science in the schools, acquiring "knowledge at first hand," making experiments, looking with great respect at balances, weighing and measuring, and giving an account of results. ”

“ The application of the principle which I have been enforcing, of learning to know man through Nature, the thorough knowledge of his environment, and of those of his relations to it which constitute his life, must clearly be the foundation of a scientific medicine. ”

“ Natural science has become so vastly extended, its recorded facts and its unanswered questions so immensely multiplied, that every strictly scientific man must be a specialist, and confine the researches of a whole life within a comparatively narrow circle. ”

“ We recognise this when we divide science into that which is experimental, or depends on apparatus, and that which is observational and classificatory—distinctions these which relate not so much to the objects of science as to our methods of pursuing them. ”

“ The same mind is measuring the same environment, only with carefully devised instruments of precision instead of arm's lengths or stone's throws and rules of thumb. In a word, science is merely the ordinary consciousness highly developed, not without considerable abstraction, into critically conscious method and clearest possible perception. Indeed, perhaps without myself clearly knowing all my reasons, I am constrained to say that science is related to ordinary perception very much as the inventor's consciousness of his wonderful flying-machine to the simple sensations of a bird. ”

“ This happened to you because you have no conception of a synthetical, systematic science, but know only collations of the sayings of wise men. Each science is to you a sand-pile, whereof each grain is existing and complete in itself, and comprehensible even as a grain of sand. But you know nothing of a science as an organic and self-organizing body. ”

“ That same science which fills our cabinets and herbariums, and chambers of natural history, with mute stones and shells and plants and dead birds and insects—that same science that fills our scientific volumes with coloured pictures true as life itself, and letter-press of prose description—that same science that anatomises the physical frame with microscopic nicety,—in the hand of its master, found in the soul, that which had most need of science ”

“ It is, first of all, necessary to understand the method of experimental science. One of the greatest tasks of the next few generations is to give to the human sciences something of the same certainty, something of the same possibility of accumulating tested knowledge, that has marked the natural sciences since their new start made, let us say, by Francis Bacon's "Novum Organum." ”

“ The surest way to acquire this qualification is to study the sciences. The dazzling array of facts which science has accumulated, owe half their value to the systematization they have received at the hands of her greatest savants.
It is impossible to take a step in scientific study without coming face to face with her grand classifications. At the very beginning science divides the universe into two parts, the inorganic and the organic. The inorganic is studied under the head of “physics”; the organic, under “biology.” ”

“ Man constructed a science of numbers, of the stars, of molar and molecular masses, of plants, of stones, and of creeping things, before he realized that he was himself an object capable of receiving scientific attention. ”

“ The legitimate aim of all systematic, exact experiments is to lay a foundation of well-ascertained and closely related facts on which may be developed a superstructure of science to supersede the theoretical speculations which form an important part of the prelude of scientific discovery. ”

“ After this preliminary statement of the results of experimental investigation, we said, "Therefore, it is now regarded as a fundamental truth of physical science, and a fundamental law of Nature, that force, like matter, is never created or destroyed." The proposition is stated as an inference, as an induction from observations, as a result of experimental inquiry into the physical processes of Nature, and as a pure principle of science. ”

“ And all the sciences have recourse to similar inventions,—such as the electron, or the ion, or energy regarded as a substance, and in mathematics the sublimated, space-transcending concepts. Looking through the eyes of science, we are taught to see, underlying the grossest forms of matter, imaginary entities which are well-nigh metaphysical in nature. Science starts from the realm of the sensible, and constructs its super-rarefied devices on mechanical models. ”