Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

electricity are kept apart one from another. He has never before met facts classified and pigeonholed in this way. The logical classification appears to him as something quite different from the normal, or psychological, one. But when the individual, in passing from the logical to the psychological classification, has been led to appreciate the purpose of the sciences and to understand the method by which they give better control over the activities of his daily life, this break between the logical and the psychological classifications disappears. Sciences take their normal place in his world, which is interrelated by bonds of purpose. The logical method of the sciences has now become psychological for him.

Unless a science does thus become psychological for the individual, it cannot, indeed, be logical for him; because the true significance of the groupings of facts depends upon the purpose for which these groupings were made and are used. In a word, the individual to whom a science is not psychological misses the logic of its classifications, and, therefore, misses everything that makes it science.

When we view the sciences from the wider perspective of their social development, the psychological and logical organizations of things do not appear incongruous. They stand opposed to each other only in the experience of some individual who, without taking the intermediate steps, jumps from a comparatively crude experience of control to the use of social patterns for highly developed experience, as in the case of a pupil who with a meagre knowledge of natural phenomena begins the study of a logically organized textbook in chemistry. The omission of these intermediate steps makes the break appear between the psychological and logical. The advanced

patterns do not have an appropriate basis in his experience, and give, therefore, abnormal results.

[ocr errors]

The sciences, to use the words of Spencer, are "a development of that common knowledge acquired by the unaided senses and uncultured reason." They arose historically when practical difficulties made men feel the need of better control. When the Nile overflowed its banks and washed away landmarks, geometry was devised for the practical purpose of redistributing the land. To regulate the dates of religious festivals and to fix times for agricultural operations, astronomy was devised. As Spencer says, "How to fix the religious festivals; when to sow; how to weigh commodities; in what manner to measure ground; were purely practical questions out of which arose astronomy, mechanics, geometry."2 Scientific method is not something externally imposed upon the mind to guide its investigations, but merely a recognition of the necessary ways in which the mind works in developing means of control. When these ways are known, they can be followed deliberately, thus giving the best results with the least expenditure of thought. There is no break, therefore, in going from the uncultured to the cultured reason. Nor is there a break in going from the unaided to the aided senses. Seeing with a telescope and microscope is not essentially different from seeing with the naked eye. The only difference is one of distinctness and minuteness of vision. In primitive times, aids to the senses appeared in such variable standards of measurement as the length of a man's foot, arm, or step, the width of his hand, the breadth of grains of barley, the weight of grains of wheat, the length of a day, and the 1 Spencer, Herbert, Essays - Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Vol. II, p. 29. 2 Spencer, Herbert, opus cit., p. 69.

duration of the cycle of the moon's changes. They have developed until, according to Marmery, "we can now perceive the 9,000th part of a degree in temperature, 1,000,000th of a second in time, 1,000,000th of an inch in space, 1,000,000th of a gramme in weight, the presence of the 10,000,000th part of a gramme of a substance. We can in fact observe 'quantities 300,000 or 400,000 times as small as in the time of the Egyptians." "1

IV

Social division of labor has rightly provided workers in the pure sciences who are not concerned with applying the results of their investigations to practical affairs. The pure sciences are, however, only intermediate steps in the social development of control, and are supplemented by applied sciences such as those of engineering, medicine, and education.

1

Although sciences arose in overcoming difficulties in the practical life and are the outgrowth of common experience, they could not be developed by one man or by one generation of men. They are the slow and difficult product of centuries of investigation. Aristotle and Bacon, who lived two thousand years apart, both contributed to the development of scientific method.' In the social division of labor, it was natural for men specially gifted in scientific research to devote their lives to such work. The developing of the sciences has thus become the task of a special class of men who are not concerned with applying the results of their investigations to practical affairs, but serve their function in the social order by merely finding and recording the laws of nature. They are limited in this way to pure sciences.

1 Marmery, J. V., The Progress of Science, p. 268.

Pure sciences are, however, only an intermediate stage in the social development of control. The purpose which normally calls them into being is not fulfilled until they are put in the service of the practical life. They are put in the service of the practical life by the so-called applied sciences, the workers in which must understand not only truths established by pure sciences but also the practical activities in which these truths may be useful.

The conclusions of the pure sciences, like blossoms on a tree, do not all bear fruit. Applied sciences must select those which prove to be useful, and organize them for practical ends. Medical science includes useful results of such pure sciences as anatomy, physiology, biology, and chemistry; agricultural science includes useful results of such pure sciences as botany, zoology, geology, and chemistry; engineering sciences involve useful conclusions of various branches of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In education, truths that give practical guidance are taken from psychology, sociology, logic, ethics, and other fields. The function of applied sciences is thus to turn pure sciences to service in the practical life, in which they originated.

In view of the fact that the ultimate purpose of sciences is practical, should not all investigators have in view the practical uses to which their conclusions may be put? Would not this prevent waste of time with trifling matters and definitely guide investigations in the most useful directions? However important may be the scientific results attained by men working with direct practical purposes, it would be a distinct social loss to have all investigations conducted under such conditions. At best, the practical investigator can have in mind only comparatively few uses for testing the importance of

the truths he finds. He would be liable, therefore, to neglect facts which other men might recognize as very useful. The pure scientist, who has no interest in the practical application of the truths he finds, records all his results, so that all men, whatever may be their practical interests, can apply what appears to be useful to them. Matters which may seem to be objects of mere idle curiosity may, furthermore, under the impartial investigations of the pure scientist, develop into truths of farreaching importance. As Thomson says:

The twitching of the legs of Galvani's frogs was studied as a theoretical curiosity; who could have foretold that it pointed to telegraphy?... Dr. A. E. Shipley has recently called attention to two diagrammatic illustrations of our theme. "A few years ago no knowledge could seem more useless to the practical man, no research more futile than that which sought to distinguish between one species of gnat or tick and another; yet that knowledge has rendered it possible to open up Africa and to cut the Panama Canal." "This witness," Mr. F. A. Dixey remarks, "is true; and it would be difficult to point to a more complete demonstration of the fact that natural knowledge pursued for its own sake, without any direct view to future utility, will often lead to results of the most unexpected kind and of the very highest practical importance." (Nature, Sept. 2, 1909.)1

V

The normal path leading an individual from unscientific experience to a genuine understanding of the pure sciences, begins with the application of scientific truths to practical affairs, and passes on through difficulties which can be overcome only by scientific methods.

Pure and applied sciences have developed hand in hand. The earliest scientific investigations were in the interest of practical affairs, and, although a place was

1 Thomson, J. Arthur, Introduction to Science, pp. 240, 243-244.

« AnteriorContinuar »