Page:The Foundations of Science (1913).djvu/29

Rh most fundamental, of science, there is no longer any notable scientific orthodoxy. Thus, as knowledge grows firmer and wider, conceptual construction becomes less rigid. The field of the theoretical philosophy of nature—yes, the field of the logic of science—this whole region is to-day an open one. Whoever will work there must indeed accept the verdict of experience regarding what happens in the natural world. So far he is indeed bound. But he may undertake without hindrance from mere tradition the task of trying afresh to reduce what happens to conceptual unity. The circle-squares and the inventors of devices for perpetual motion are indeed still as unwelcome in scientific company as they were in the days when scientific orthodoxy was more rigidly defined; but that is not because the foundations of geometry are now viewed as completely settled, beyond controversy, nor yet because the ‘persistence of force’ has been finally so defined as to make the ‘opposite inconceivable’ and the doctrine of energy beyond the reach of novel formulations. No, the circle-squarers and the inventors of devices for perpetual motion are to-day discredited, not because of any unorthodoxy of their general philosophy of nature, but because their views regarding special facts and processes stand in conflict with certain equally special results of science which themselves admit of very various general theoretical interpretations. Certain properties of the irrational number π are known, in sufficient multitude to justify the mathematician in declining to listen to the arguments of the circle-squarer; but, despite great advances, and despite the assured results of Dedekind, of Cantor, of Weierstrass and of various others, the general theory of the logic of the numbers, rational and irrational, still presents several important features of great obscurity; and the philosophy of the concepts of geometry yet remains, in several very notable respects, unconquered territory, despite the work of Hilbert and of Pieri, and of our author himself. The ordinary inventors of the perpetual motion machines still stand in conflict with accepted generalizations; but nobody knows as yet what the final form of the theory of energy will be, nor can any one say precisely what place the phenomena of the radioactive bodies will occupy in that theory. The alchemists would not