Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/17

Rh of insight, who has awakened a fruitful interest in mathematics among philosophers and in philosophy among mathematicians.

In a remarkable address, too technical to summarize here, in which, to the luminous exposition of old ideas, was added the suggestion of novel ideas of fundamental interest, a statement was made of the community of interest shared by the several philosophical and mathematical sciences when abstractly regarded, and an account given of certain concrete investigations typical of the contemporary mutuality of interest among the more advanced students of philosophy and mathematics, together with some promising results. The sciences here grouped together as normative all agree in that they seek 'ideal' truth, as distinct from physical truth or from historical fact—are concerned with the consequences, implications and interrelations of ideas or of ideals, rather than with the order of phenomena or events. The mathematician is concerned with the exact expression and abstract logical development of ideas, the meaning of which in terms of their ultimate relations is sought by the philosopher. Both groups of sciences in all their branches are in need of a theory of the 'categories' or the fundamental and logically elementary conceptions by means of which human minds think; and in the discovery of such categories and their critical classification students in both groups must cooperate.

The discussions under physical science, embracing not only physics, chemistry, astronomy and the sciences of the earth, but biology and anthropology as well, were heralded by Dr. Robert S. Woodward, professor of mechanics and dean of the school of pure science at Columbia, distinguished alike for his buoyant efficiency and for his skillful command of the mathematics as a tool of physical inquiry, in which he combines a conspicuous catholicity in scholarship with a rare versatility in research, having been especially successful in the treatment of problems in cosmical mechanics which overlap the borders of many sciences. Professor Woodward pointed out a threefold unity in all physical science—a unity of origin in observation and experiment, a unity of growth in quantitative expression and elaboration toward prediction as a goal, and a unity of purpose in its attempt to describe the universe in 'consistent and verifiable terms.' A culminating unity, linking physical science to all other science, may be found in the light which it throws on man, and the human ends which it fulfills.

The unity and variety of historical science, comprising political and economic history, and the histories of law, language, literature, art and religion, was discussed with characteristic literary distinction by Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University, widely known as an historical student of polities, a literary student of history, an engaging cultivator of literature and a fond admirer of all the humanities. The conditions requisite to a needed synthesis both in the teaching and the writing of history were pointed out, with special emphasis upon the services of literary art and the conceiving imagination. The