CHAPTER VI

THE SCIENTIFIC MIND

MATTERS belonging to different provinces of intellectual achievement are often designated by a single word, for convenience or perhaps from lack of perception. Such a word is Art; 1 and such another word is Philosophy, which covers the speculations, even the best resolves, of the meditative human self. Philosophy is no single topic. One might write a volume on the varied meanings of the term.

Provisionally, with some vagueness and confusion, "science" is distinguished from those supposed a priori deductions, and corresponding universal or necessitated mental processes, grouped under the head of philosophy or dubbed metaphysics. Accepting, likewise vaguely and provisionally, this separation of science from philosophy, we hasten to observe that science also is one of those words which cover much that is diverse. Science, the direct, systematic and rational investigation of nature, has followed many ways

1 See post, p. 272, note.

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into many fields, and has been led by many motives. Though one should conceive a formula broad enough to hold the basic method or rationale of all scientific procedure, nevertheless, the faces and surfaces of actual scientific processes would differ. The way of mathematics, and of mathematical physics, show slight apparent kinship with the dissections of Vesalius or Harvey, or the keen microscopy of the modern cytologist.

The rudiments lie in common observation and the practice of the crafts. Science arises from the more systematic and purposeful investigation of the data of experience; from grouping them after their apparent relations, and from considering the how and why of their occurrence. It is an endeavour to rationalize observed phenomena and "simplify " them. And since mankind is social and articulate, the beginning and likewise the progress of the scientific consideration of the world carry the impulse to state the results, and to communicate and transmit them.

As for the scientific method there are shades of difference due to the subject-matter and the intellectual temper of the individual scientist. But the testimony of the senses and a reliance upon experience, somehow tested, compared, and logically adjusted, are the foundation. The method of the scientist lies also in his choice of facts, his choice of significant, constantly recurring, rather than meaningless sporadic facts; the facts which most

readily lend themselves to generalization or simplification in a descriptive statement, which is the statement of a law.

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As, of course, every investigator in his choice of facts and the invention of experiments through which to shape and clarify his experience, proceeds on some working hypothesis; otherwise his facts are but an haphazard collection, having no interrelation, and not lending themselves to classification, generalization, and simplification—which is always the end in view. But the investigator should beware of what Henri Poincaré calls unconscious hypotheses," which as of course will enter, and perhaps vitiate, his work, since they are part of his personal or scientific equation. They are his prepossessions, from which no man is altogether free. Prepossessions, indeed, are the bygone attainments of the mind. They represent the latent experience lying behind every conscious intellectual attitude. They form the stage from which the scientist views the field of his investigation. But he should realize the nature of the ground on which he stands.

The fields of investigation were always multifarious, and have multiplied in the recent centuries. And how different have been the motives of investigators! With the old Greeks (who had leisure) the quest of knowledge was aristocratic, largely for the sake of knowing, and usually without the thought of gain or the wish to benefit mankind.

Modern science is more commonly impelled or directed in its researches by the desire to master Nature by understanding her, and often has social, material, economic betterment for its aim. It would prove itself useful, is philanthropic, benevolent, or industrial, seeking material results and even gross rewards. It has not the detachment of Greek science.1

The usefulness and profit of scientific investigations in the last two centuries have strengthened enormously the thews and sinews of research and enlisted thousands in scientific labour. The utility of "applied" science has been a great factor in modern scientific progress. Nevertheless, certainly in the past and probably to-day, the curiosity of gifted men holds a leading rôle in the progress of natural science, as it has held in philosophy and in every field of human knowledge and reflection. An end is more apt to be reached when directly sought with singleness of motive. Those who have pursued the end of knowing have done more to increase human knowledge, including natural science, than those who have pursued the end of doing. There has been, moreover, the clearest intellectual freedom in the endeavours of those who simply sought to know.

1 Yet our best scientists follow knowledge for its own sake, and investigate for the sake of the investigation. Said Simon Newcomb: "The true man of science has no such expression in his vocabulary as useful knowledge.'"

I

THE WAY OF GREEK SCIENCE

In the way of method, Greek science, compared with modern investigation, practised a minimum of systematic observation and experiment with a maximum of general or theoretical reasoning. The Greeks disliked drudgery, and some of their philosophers loved to think that observation and experiment made the lower part; the better part was reasoning, perhaps from the results of observation or with its results in mind. The fruits of reason were more perfect and beautiful, less subject to error than the observations and experiments of the senses. Very extreme is the expression of Socrates in Plato's Republic: "Since this fretted sky is still a part of the visible world, we are bound to regard it, though the most beautiful and perfect of visible things, as far inferior nevertheless to those true revolutions which real velocity and real slowness, existing in true number and in all true forms, accomplish relatively to each other. . . which are verily apprehensible by reason and thought, but not by sight. . . . Therefore, we must employ that fretted sky as a pattern or plan to forward the study which aims at those higher objects." 1

1 Republic, 529, Davies and Vaughan's translation. Modern mathematical physics need not be unsympathetic toward this passage.