Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/66

54 to 'Chambers's Cyclopædia,' which is the latest expression of the views of the able thinkers of North Britain, an explanation of the term 'science' was found, which is far truer to advancing thought. The comprehensive deﬁnition is there given that science 'is the correlation of all knowledge.'

As science searches for causes with their relations, and is proved knowledge, so no branch of knowledge or method of acquiring knowledge can be considered scientific which contradicts any facts of Nature, or which bases its methods on the destruction of those facts.

Truth can only he arrived at by considering various or apparently opposite aspects of human problems; so biological facts, or the problems of organized or living creatures, must be considered, not simply from the side of 'mechanics, physics, and chemistry, or the automatic action of the forces of matter,' but also from the equally positive facts of life, and the forces which careful observation is gradually showing to be enfolded in the fact of mind as developed through protoplasm onward. The facts of affection, companionship, sympathy, justice, are positive forces.