MS 1343 (1902) - Of the Classification of the Sciences

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he is really a scientific man himself. He met his death as the consequence of an experiment. True, it was rather a foolish one; but what a monument to the genuineness of his intelligence, that he, a great legal light, should, at the age of sixty-six, have perished from his zeal in performing disagreeable and dangerous laboratory-work that he thought might go toward teaching him something of the nature of true science! For him man is nature's interpreter; and in spite of the crudity of some anticipations, the idea of science is, in his mind, inseparably bound up with that of a life devoted to single-minded inquiry. That is also the way in which every scientific man things of science. That is the sense in which the word is to be understood in this chapter. Science is to mean for us a mode of life whose single animating purpose is to find out the real truth,

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which pursues this purpose by a well-considered method, founded on thorough acquaintance with such scientific results already ascertained by others as may be available, and which seeks coöperation in the hope that the truth may be found, if not by any of the actual inquirers, yet ultimately by those who come after them and who shall make use of their results. It makes no difference how imperfect a man's knowledge may be, how mixed with error and prejudice; from the moment that he engages in an inquiry in the spirit described, that which occupies him is science, as the word will here be used.

By a specific science will be meant a group of connected inquiries of sufficient scope and affinity fitly to occupy a number of independent inquirers for life, but not capable of being broken up into smaller coexclusive groups of this description. For since we are to consider science in general as

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a mode of life, it is proper to take as the unit science the scientific mode of life fit for an individual person. But science being essentially a mode of life that seeks coöperation, the unit science must, apparently, be fit to be pursued by a number of inquirers.

It seems plain that with these definitions, the classification cannot be concerned with all possible sciences, but must be confined to actually realized sciences. If, however, this limitation is to be maintained, the question will arise, To what date or stage of scientific development is the classification to relate? According to the general spirit of this book, which values everything in its relation to Life, knowledge which is altogether inapplicable to the future is nugatory. Consequently, our classification ought to have reference to the science of the future, so far as we are now able to foresee what the future of science is to be. It will therefore be

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upon the soil of the near future of science that we should endeavor to plant our flag. If it be objected that we cannot know enough of the science of the future to classify it accurately, the reply would be that even if all faults of classification could be eliminated by remaining on the threshold of the future, it would still be necessary to advance further. For all the applicability of any writing, though it be not (like this,) the fruit of nearly half a century of study, must evidently be subsequent to its composition, and all its significance for that time has reference to a time still later. But when the objector comes to see the various imperfections that will have to be confessed in that part of the classification which concerns the present state of science, he will probably be disposed himself to acknowledge that its standard will not be much lowered by the danger of mistake about what is likely soon to be discovered.

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Meantime, let it not be understood that the classification is to ignore the scientific discoveries of the past. For the memoirs of that work are not so poor as not to merit being read critically, precisely as we shall read the memoirs of tomorrow. Such reading is, therefore, of the nature of scientific inquiry. True, it is not original research; but there is original research still to be done in the same specific science. For none of the sciences of the past is finished. If it be one of the positive sciences that is in question, there is not a single conclusion belonging to it which has in the past been made sufficiently precise or sufficiently indubitable. If it be a branch of mathematics, its propositions require to be further generalized, as well as to be more accurately limited. For these reasons all the old science that still stands is to be retained in the classification, but in its most modern forms.

The author has spared no pains to make the most minute