Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/154

148 sciences is of insignificant value, and the arrangement of science courses might well enough be determined by local and economic conditions.

This misconception should be classed with that of mistaking general for singular terms, as is often done in the case of moral law and natural law. For it regards science as all one and the same, having one invariable procedure in all branches of scientific research, regardless of the peculiar nature of any particular group of phenomena. Consequently a study of any one of the sciences ought to satisfy the modern demand for science study and should qualify the more brilliant students as competent and reliable investigators in any branch of science whatsoever. If this were true, then, so far as pertains to method, the chemist might at once turn psychologist and pursue his work as successfully as though he had received his training in psychology instead of chemistry. The ideal man of science would be the last person to make any such claim. For he well knows that, besides the common features of the scientific method which appear everywhere in their broad outlines, there are numerous variations due to individual characteristics possessed by the data of the various sciences or different groups of sciences, and that to be a good scientist requires a preparation in the field in which one is to work. A better understanding of these facts might do much towards dispelling illusions as to a model science and the superiority of one science over another. Unfortunately scientists often assume an unscientific attitude towards one another. The physicist, for example, declares that for one to undertake the scientific study of psychical phenomena is to sound his death knell as a scientist. There is much need, among investigators in the various fields of human interest, of increased respect for one another's methods and results; of an intelligent conception of the peculiar conditions and difficulties of problems other than one's own; and instead of ridicule and depreciation, a just and cordial recognition of contributions honestly made, even though they lack the precision and finality which characterize results obtained elsewhere.

In addition to an orderly presentation of scientific methods and analysis of important and interesting conceptions such as the uniformity of nature, cause, hypotheses, theory, law, inductive logic should make it very evident that the data of our thinking are varied, and that the character of many conclusions is problematical. The facts of human experience, the problems of the world at large, do not lend themselves to any 'secure method' or yield conclusions that are certain. At one time we must act decisively on inferences which are far from approximating to certainty; and then again when it is not a question of choosing or starving, we need that suspended judgment which has been called the greatest triumph of intellectual discipline. In brief,