Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/569

Rh. Thus in the first paragraph he says:

The nature of matter has been regarded by philosophers from many points of view, but it is not from any philosophic standpoint that I presume in this university to ask you to consider the subject under my guidance.

And in the second paragraph he adds:

If I may venture to say so, it is the more philosophic side of physics which has always seemed to me the most suitable for study in this university; and although I disclaim any competence for philosophic treatment, in the technical sense, yet I doubt not that the new views, in so far as they turn out to be true views, will have a bearing on the theory of matter in all future writings on philosophy; besides exercising a profound effect on the pure science of physics and chemistry, and perhaps having some influence on certain aspects of biology also.

The course which Sir Oliver followed on the occasion of this Romanes Lecture is not without eminent precedent. Many a man of science has acknowledged subserviency to philosophy on similar occasions; and there is no doubt that the most of us have inherited a belief in the inferiority of science to philosophy. But the question I would ask is whether such subserviency and such belief are any longer justified and hence dignified?

This, of course, raises squarely the question of the distinction between science and philosophy. I assume, however, that it is unnecessary to thrash over old straw here and now. Brushing aside pseudo-science and barren philosophy, what is the distinction, if any, between sound science and sane philosophy?

If one applies the scientific method of investigation to scientists and to philosophers of the modern types he will find, I think, that they are very much alike and that neither claims any superiority over the other. It would appear also that the two words science and philosophy are now very frequently used as synonymous in spite of their widely differing shades of meaning.

Why then should we prolong distinctions which are no longer tenable? Why, to return to the Romanes Lecture, should we be asked to entertain the hypothesis that some Oxford philosopher is more likely to see straight with respect to the intricate properties of matter than Sir Oliver himself? How much, in fact, has all philosophy, in the sense in which Sir Oliver uses the word, contributed to our knowledge of matter? There was a time when every obscure professor of 'moral' or 'mental' philosophy was held, by common consent of the educated, more competent to judge of the philosophic aspects of the 'Origin of Species' than Charles Darwin. But have we not outlived that time, and is not a relapse to the ways of that time, even for the purposes of compliment, reprehensible?

2em

[The point of our correspondent appears to be well taken. But possibly Sir Oliver Lodge's compliment implied that experimental science has been neglected at Oxford.—]