Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/396

 390 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLT

The historical continiiitj of science and its origin in cnriosity and the instinct of self-preservation seem in general to have been overlooked by scientific investigators and historians of science, and there are even certain authorities who, in complete forgetfulness of the fundamental canon of the scientific method enunciated by Newton, have urged that science can not be said to have begun until ''laws of nature^' had been formulated and the causes of phenomena ascertained.^ But that is to invert the real evolution of scientific thought. As man's field of observation and comparison grew wider his deductions grew wider, until at length they became bounded only by the limits of the visible universe, but deductions are not knowledge, inferences are not science, they are merely implements which we wield for the further attainment of knowledge, the incitements to further research.

From the earliest dawn of history we find man formulating uni- versal generalizations which he has deemed laws of nature. His in- tellect demanded knowledge which his feeble powers were not yet fitted to attain, so by a simple extension of the method of anticipating results which he employed in investigating the minor details of his accustomed environment, he launched out into the infinite and anticipated the totality of phenomena. These deductions formed the dogmatic bases of his religions, and since from their very nature they could not be subject to the control of trial to which his less exalted generalizations were required to submit, so trial became taboo and the acknowledgment of impotence was deferred by making a virtue of necessity and faith an attribute of piety.

But, our scientific historian may here exclaim, our laws of nature are true, and the fantastic imaginings of primeval man bore no neces- sary relation to fact. I would reply that aU truth that is known to man is relative and that primitive religion bears exactly the same rela- tion to fact, upon a narrower basis of knowledge, that our laws of nature bear to our wider knowledge of fact. They were the best gen- eralizations that the profoundest and most inspired intellects of their age could form upon the basis of their then knowledge of the universe. Our generalizations represent no better efforts or manifest superiority of our intellect, they are the fruit of wider opportunities, but they do not therefore necessarily constitute the truth. There are certain curves well known to mathematicians, which, while they continuously approach a straight line, yet no matter how far we may trace them, short of tracing them to infinity itself, never actually attain the line. So with the knowledge of man; it is asymptotic to the Absolute, and continu- ously approaches but never attains the truth. Thus, while I do not deny that the law of the conservation of energy bears a closer relation to objective reality than the cryptic utterances of the Delphic oracle,

1 For example, E. Bay Lankester, "Degeneration, a Chapter in Darwinimn" in "The Advancement of Science," London, 1S90.

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