Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/851

 of the utterances of scientific men from a religious standpoint. The fundamental difference between the scientific and religious conception of nature consists almost wholly in the manner of regarding abstract terms. Causes—efficient and final—mind, life, and the whole category of vast abstract entities, are to the religionist the most real of all existences; to the scientist they are merely generalized expressions, binding together a large class of phenomena.

The term science does not, like the name of a religious sect, denote the belief in a set dogmatic formula, nor the acceptance of a certain class of ideas. There is no orthodoxy nor heterodoxy in science. On the contrary, the term science connotes the knowledge of the occurrence of certain phenomena in a certain definite order; and the term scientist denotes one who is versed in these facts, and who, from his knowledge of the past, is capable of making more or less probable guesses (hypotheses) as to the occurrence of these phenomena in the future, or in unexplored portions of the past. The attribution of more than this to the term science is not warranted. To say that true science teaches one thing and false science another is wrong. Science teaches nothing; it is itself knowledge rendered more exact. Vagueness of language and a looseness in the use of words lie at the root of many a difficulty. When we think of the numerous disputes that grow out of the misuse of words even on simple topics, and the difficulty there is in confining one's self to their pure signification, we can not wonder at this. It is a common defect in early education that pupils are not taught to attach sensible experiences to the words they repeat. Words are used with but an indefinite apprehension of the objects they are symbols of, and indistinct conception of the thought of others engenders indistinct thought in ourselves. It by no means suffices to establish the etymological meaning of words, for they are not, for the most part, scientifically constructed terms with precise significations, but are the result of the constant adaptation of old words to new uses, and are consequently often much distorted from their original meaning. Plato affords us an excellent model of the way to get at the meaning of terms. Take any of the Socratic dialogues and notice the trenchant manner in which the husks are severed from the true meaning of the words, and we see just what we must do with scientific terms if we would preserve their clearness. Should the logical teaching of our schools and colleges enforce this dialectical method as applied to scientific abstractions, we should see fewer attacks upon scientific men by those who utterly misapprehend their position.

It must be ever borne in mind that the scientist, as a scientist, has nothing to do with the metaphysical or theological implications of the words he uses. He employs them, as we have endeavored to point out, simply and purely to designate the occurrence of phenomena in a certain order which, could we sufficiently magnify our powers of observation, would be presented to our sensation in unequivocal terms.