Theoretical science

“ I cannot stop to argue the point; but I myself believe that all the magnificent achievements of mathematical and physical science—our doctrines of evolution, of uniformity of law, and the rest—proceed from our indomitable desire to cast the world into a more rational shape in our minds than the shape into which it is thrown there by the crude order of our experience. ”

“ The empirical laws of those phenomena which depend on known causes, and of which a general theory can therefore be constructed, have, whatever may be their value in practice, no other function in science than that of verifying the conclusions of theory. ”

“ There is, if we will but reflect and understand that the course of procedure proper to the physical sciences, namely, the assumption that their, objects and the facts appertaining to these objects lie before them ready-made—is utterly inadmissible in true philosophy—is totally at variance with the scope and spirit of a science which professes to deal fairly with the phenomena of man. ”

“ The discrepancy between the world of physics and the world of sense, which we shall consider in our fourth lecture, will be found to be more apparent than real, and it will be shown that whatever there is reason to believe in physics can probably be interpreted in terms of sense.
The instrument of discovery throughout is modern logic, a very different science from the logic of the text-books and also from the logic of idealism. ”

“ The processes by which truth is attained, reasoning and observation, have been carried to their greatest known perfection in the physical sciences. As classical literature furnishes the most perfect types of the art of expression, so do the physical sciences those of the art of thinking. Mathematics, and its application to astronomy and natural philosophy, are the most complete example of the discovery of truths by reasoning; experimental science, of their discovery by direct observation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is the key of modern science and it was the beginning of the true understanding of Nature – this idea to look at the thing, to record the details, and to hope that in the information thus obtained might lie a clue to one or another theoretical interpretation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In such a case the contrasts between the varied and numerous phenomena brought together serve to eliminate the external and accidental circumstances of their conditions, and the universal thus comes clearly into view. Guided by such an intuition, experimental physics will present the rational science of Nature,—as history will present the science of human affairs and actions—in an external picture, which mirrors the philosophic notion. ”

“ It is by this process, in fact, that science, in its present advanced state, is chiefly promoted. Most of the phenomena which Nature presents are very complicated; and when the effects of all known causes are estimated with exactness, and subducted, the residual facts are constantly appearing in the form of phenomena altogether new, and leading to the most important conclusions. ”

“ Now we maintain, on the contrary, that such a statement of physical theory is erroneous and redundant; that Science is not obliged to postulate two such entities; that the concept of Energy supplies all her requirements; and that the employment of that conception obviates the very serious contradictions which are involved in any assumption of a real entity of the nature of Matter as ordinarily understood—a conception of which the very description involves difficulties which have perplexed thinking men for more than two centuries. ”

“ It testifies to the insatiable craving of the human mind for some coherent system of thought the invincible instinct that human science is not a bubble of the imagination, that as science means a generalization of observations, so the sciences in the sum are capable of some ultimate generalization, some co-ordination, some organic relation to each other. ”

“ It is probable that the whole science of mental occurrences, especially where its initial definitions are concerned, could be simplified by the development of the fundamental unifying science in which the causal laws of particulars are sought, rather than the causal laws of those systems of particulars that constitute the material units of physics. ”

“ Yet Biology and Psychology now rightly claim to be sciences, each with its own special methods and tests distinct from those of Mathematics and Mechanics. Indeed, the wisest and most fruitful philosophy is now coming to see that 'Reality generally eludes our thought, when thought is reduced to mathematical formulas'. [38] Concrete thought, contrariwise, finds full room also for History, Philosophy, Religion, for each as furnishing rich subject-matters for Knowledge or Science, of a special but true kind. ”

“ Science, it seems to us, postulates in Energy an a-logical, unextended, real thing-in-itself in terms of which the phenomena of Physics can be adequately and quantifiably stated. At the same time it furnishes Philosophy with a theory of the objectively real thing-in-itself which satisfied those necessities of thought by which we are constrained to interpret our sense-experience by a constant reference to a Reality beyond it—a necessity due to our association as Actors with an Energy beyond that which is the seat of our Presentment. ”

“ On this point even physicists agree. "Instead of regarding the proper object of physical science as a search after essential causes," says one of the best modern champions of scientific progress, "it ought to be, and must be, a search after facts and relations." [90] Hence, physical science deals with natural facts and their relations exclusively; the search after causes and essential principles constitutes the object of a higher science; and such a science is real philosophy, or metaphysics proper. ”

“ A science may undoubtedly be brought to a certain, not inconsiderable, stage of advancement, without the application of any other logic to it than what all persons, who are said to have a sound understanding, acquire empirically in the course of their studies. ”

“ In thus attempting to ascertain the general order of nature by ascertaining the particular order of the occurrence of each one of the phenomena of nature, the most scientific proceeding can be no more than an improved form of that which was primitively pursued by the human understanding, while undirected by science. ”

“ Is the fact that science is possible a proof of the principle of causation—"From like causes, like effects"—"A permanent law of things"—"Invariable order"? Because something is calculable, is it therefore on that account necessary? ”

“ So far as we may conjecture from analogy, we have proofs of the existence of this transcendental science, which includes all sciences, and is in its turn contained in one sole principle, or rather, in one only idea, in one only intuition. If we observe the scale of beings, the grades of distinction between individual intelligences, and the successive progress of science, the image of this truth will be presented to us in a very striking manner. ”

“ The interest in the formulation of general rules for practical interference with nature, again, necessarily dictates the form which our scientific descriptions will take, and is thus the source of those practical postulates of empirical science with which we have already made some acquaintance. 284It compels us to assume, in the first place, as an indispensable condition of success in our descriptions, that there are situations in the physical order which may be treated with sufficient accuracy for our practical purposes, as recurring identically ”

“ According to this doctrine, the ultimate ideal of science, or at any rate of physical science, is simply the description of the course of events by the aid of the fewest and simplest general formulæ. Why things happen as they do, it is now said, is no proper question for science ”

“ We recognize 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. This view also opens up to us the thought that the domain of science is practically boundless; for who can set limits to the action of mind on the universe, or of the universe on mind? ”

“ Indeed, every true science has for its object the determination of certain phenomena by means of others, in accordance with the relations which exist between them. ”

“ Our objective science of modern knowledge concerns itself only with phenomena, and with phenomena as regarded in their cause-and-effect relationship. I have nothing to say against our science. It is perfect as far as it goes. ”

“ It reduces other knowledge to the same degree of precision. That certainty which direct perception gives us respecting coexistences and sequences of the simplest and most accessible kind, science gives us respecting coexistences and sequences, complex in their dependencies or inaccessible to immediate observation. In brief, regarded from this point of view, science may be called an extension of the perceptions by means of reasoning. ”

“ Starting from a world of helter-skelter sense-data, we wish to collect them into series, each of which can be regarded as consisting of the successive appearances of one “thing.” There is, to begin with, some conflict between what common sense regards as one thing, and what physics regards an unchanging collection of particles. To common sense, a human body is one thing, but to science the matter composing it is continually changing. ”

“ Thus, if Ethics and History are to have their subject-matter, there must be some science which describes the processes of human life and conduct in terms of teleological relation to an end. Now, to what science can we go for such descriptions? From our previous examination of the postulates of physical science, it is clear that the requisite material cannot 306be afforded by any branch of physical science which remains rigidly consistent with its own postulates. ”

“ I shall subsequently point out that even the establishment of a wide and true law of nature is but the starting-point for the discovery of exceptions and divergences giving a new scope to empirical discovery. ”

“ Moreover, specific illustration is hardly necessary in the sphere of the different physical sciences, or again, in that of the social or the psychological sciences, for within each one of these groups the affinity but just now referred to has been very clearly exemplified, as in the interesting case of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, which nowadays are one science, not three, and which can be held apart only on methodological grounds, not metaphysically. ”

“ And may not the determination of this one characteristic, wherein they all agree, suffice to determine the conception of philosophy itself? A science has systematic form. All propositions in it are connected in one single fundamental proposition or principle, and unite with it to form a whole. ”

“ The most striking example which the history of science presents, of the explanation of laws of causation and other uniformities of sequence among special phenomena, by resolving them into laws of greater simplicity and generality, is the great Newtonian generalization ”

“ Each phenomenon which presents itself to us, however simple it may appear to be, is an outward expression of some internal truth, the interpretation of which is only to be arrived at by assiduous study, but which, once discovered, directs the way to new knowledge, and gives to man a great increase of power. There is no truth so abstract that it will not find its useful application, and every example of the ministration of Physical Science to the purposes of humanity is an evidence of the value of abstract study, and a reply to the utilitarian in his own language. ”

“ The great generalizations of modern science—the Conservation of Energy, the process of Evolution—are the products of Reason. They are metaphysical conceptions. Like the atomic theory or the law of gravitation, they are practical formulæ necessary to the advancement of science from the structure of our minds but they are the results of reason, not of sense. ”

“ And the student who turns to our science as a substitute for empirical Physics or Psychology, or for practical morality, is bound to go away disappointed. The reason of this we have already had occasion to see. Metaphysics has to presuppose the general principles of the various sciences and the general forms of practical experience as the materials upon which it works. ”

“ Such difficulties have made people doubtful how far objective reality could be known by sense at all, and have made them suppose that there were positive arguments against the view that it can be so known. Our hypothetical construction meets these arguments, and shows that the account of the world given by common sense and physical science can be interpreted in a way which is logically unobjectionable, and finds a place for all the data, both hard and soft. It is this hypothetical construction, with its reconciliation of psychology and physics, which is the chief outcome of our discussion. ”

“ Every art is thus a joint result of laws of nature disclosed by science, and of the general principles of what has been called Teleology, or the Doctrine of Ends;289 which, borrowing the language of the German metaphysicians, may also be termed, not improperly, the principles of Practical Reason.
A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for practice. ”