Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/617

 PLACE OF SCIENCE IN MODERN CIVILIZATION 601

well as being efficient for good and evil. They feel the inherent antagonism between themselves and the scientists, and look with some doubt on the latter as being merely decorative triflers, al- though they sometimes borrow the prestige of the name of science as is only good and well, since it is of the essence of worldly wisdom to borrow anything that can be turned to account. The reasoning in these fields turns about questions of personal ad- vantage of one kind or another, and the merits of the claims can- vassed in these discussions are decided on grounds of authen- ticity. Personal claims make up the subject of the inquiry, and these claims are construed and decided in terms of precedent and choice, use and wont, prescriptive authority, and the like. The higher reaches of generalization in these pragmatic inquiries are of the nature of deductions from authentic tradition, and the training in this class of reasoning gives discrimination in respect of authenticity and expediency. The resulting habit of mind is a bias for substituting dialectical distinctions and decisions de jure in the place of explanations de facto. The so-called "sci- ences" associated with these pragmatic disciplines, such as juris- prudence, political science, and the like, is a taxonomy of cre- denda. Of this character was the greater part of the "science" cultivated by the Schoolmen, and large remnants of the same kind of authentic convictions are, of course, still found among the tenets of the scientists, particularly in the social sciences, and no small solicitude is still given to their cultivation. Substan- tially the same value as that of the temporal pragmatic inquiries belongs also, of course, to the "science" of divinity. Here the questions to which an answer is sought, as well as the aim and method of inquiry, are of the same pragmatic character, although the argument runs on a higher plane of personality, and seeks a solution in terms of a remoter and more metaphysical expediency.

In the light of what has been said above, the questions recur : How far is the scientific quest of matter-of-fact knowledge conso- nant with the inherited intellectual aptitudes and propensities of the normal man ? and, What foothold has science in the modern culture ? The former is a question of the temperamental heritage