Chapter 100
Science and scientific method; the pursuit and organization of natural knowledge.
496 passages · 188 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Science, in the sense these volumes give it, is the organized pursuit of natural knowledge. It covers what kind of knowing science is, by what method it proceeds, how it tests and revises its conclusions, how far it can reach, and what place it ought to hold in human life. The idea is great for the Harvard Classics because they are among the few collections of general reading that set the working documents of science beside poetry and philosophy. Harvey’s dissections, Faraday’s candle, Darwin’s notebooks and Pasteur’s ferments sit in the same series as Hobbes’s definitions, Pascal’s doubts and Emerson’s complaints. The reader can therefore watch the claim to scientific knowledge being made, practised and contested within one set of books.
The most austere definition comes from Hobbes. For him science is not sense or memory, which are given to us, but something gained by industry and method from the right use of names1,2. Discourse that begins with definitions and proceeds by syllogism yields conditional knowledge of the consequence of one name upon another; discourse that does otherwise yields only opinion3,4. Two marks follow. Science can be demonstrated to others, whereas the signs of prudence are uncertain5, and acquired science gives an infallible ability that bookish trust in false rules cannot6.
Later authors locate the essence of science less in demonstration than in the discovery of law. Emerson calls it the finding of analogy and identity in remote parts of nature7. He adds that every general law proves to be a particular case of a more general one, so that explanation is never final8. Helmholtz makes conformity to law the very mark that sets the natural sciences apart from the mental ones9,10, and he sees regular law even in what looks wild and desolate11. Pasteur’s account of fermentation shows the ideal at work: a phenomenon once isolated and mysterious becomes simple and general once it is referred to living ferments12,13.
How the sciences divide and rank was an old question before it became a modern one. Sidney ties astronomy, geometry and medicine to the works of nature14. He treats them as serving sciences, directed to an architectonic mistress-knowledge15. Hobbes arranges geometry, astronomy, mechanics, optics, ethics and politics as consequences drawn from the accidents of bodies16. Hume instead separates the sciences of general facts, such as politics, natural philosophy and chemistry, from those of particular facts, such as history17. Among the moderns, interdependence is stressed more than hierarchy. Pasteur notes that his fermentation studies aided medicine18. Geikie shows geography rising from travellers’ tales to a methodical science that borrows from geology and enriches it in turn19,20,21.
The great proposals of method begin with Bacon’s charge against the received learning. The existing sciences, he says, are barren of works and fruitful only of controversies22,23. They stand like statues while the mechanical arts grow24. Neither trust in authorities nor unguided industry can reach the hidden parts of nature25. His remedy is a total reconstruction in which the mind waits upon nature rather than overruling her26. That reconstruction is to be founded on a new natural and experimental history27,28. Voltaire hails Bacon as the father of experimental philosophy, who pointed out the paths to nature before he knew it well29,30.
Descartes reaches a different reform by a different road. The sciences, he finds, borrow their principles from a shaky philosophy, and he rejects alchemy and astrology outright31. A science built of the probable opinions of many is farther from truth than one man’s sound inferences32. His order therefore descends from principles to effects to particulars33.
Whether science proceeds by experiment or by deduction is put most sharply by Mill. He holds that where combined causes produce the sum of their separate effects, as in mechanics, deduction is possible34. Where they do not, as in chemistry, the science must be experimental. From this criterion he concludes that politics must be deductive. Mill also faults Comte for being precise about methods of investigation while lacking exact conditions of proof35.
A further demand of method is that explanation be real. Lyell traces how geology was misled by supposing that ancient causes differed from present ones36,37. He argues that patient study of causes now acting, multiplied by time, can make geology an exact science38,39. Darwin explicitly models natural selection on Lyell40. To believe in sudden, unexplained transformations, he says, is to leave science for the realm of miracle41. To say that the Creator chose a uniform plan, or merely to restate the facts, is no explanation at all42,43.
The practice of inquiry is displayed more fully here than anywhere else in literature. Faraday calls the candle an open door to natural philosophy, because every law of the universe comes into play in it44. He then shows experiment step by step. He draws vapour from the flame’s dark centre45. He proves that solid carbon particles give brightness46,47. He identifies the condensed product as water by testing it with potassium48. He decomposes water by the battery and identifies its gases49,50. Along the way he teaches the experimenter’s ethic: when a trial fails, nature is not wrong, we are51.
Harvey brings the same temper to anatomy. He proposes to test received views of the heart by dissection and experience52, and he corrects Vesalius and Aristotle by observation53,54. He confirms his conclusions by repeated demonstrations before colleagues55, and he arrives at the circulation through persistent observation that led from perplexity to discovery56. Jenner adds the control inoculation57. He also separates conjecture from fact and rests his case on uniform results across thousands of trials58,59.
Instruments extend all this observation. Kelvin insists that tidal theory must go with the tide gauge60, and he describes how harmonic analysis of long records separates the sun’s share from the moon’s61. Newcomb notes that earlier astronomers mistook instrumental error for parallax62. Emerson dissents, observing that Galileo with an opera-glass discovered more than later elaborate machinery63.
In the field, Darwin’s journal is a continuous lesson in inference. He reads the relative ages of lava streams from the beds beneath them64. He infers ancient upheaval from shells now lying at fourteen thousand feet65,66. He explains erratic boulders by floating icebergs67,68. He locates an earthquake’s focus from the orientation of damaged walls69. Twice he reasons from resemblance to a prediction that is then confirmed, once finding petrified trees70 and once tracing Atlantic dust to Africa71.
The same men are candid about the limits of their evidence. Darwin admits that his abstract is imperfect and that a fair result requires balancing arguments on both sides72. He states the gravest objections himself73 and concedes that the geological record is imperfect74. Newcomb confines speculation within sound reasoning, granting that exact knowledge is small and many conclusions only probable75.
Science advances through dispute, and the texts show such disputes being settled by experiment. Franklin’s electrical theory prevailed over Nollet’s because its experiments could be verified, and Franklin answered with new experiments rather than polemic76. Pasteur’s work is a long record of controversy. He defends his theory against Brefeld and Traube by experiments on ferment weight and oxygen77,78. He wins Brefeld’s concession after further trials79. He meets doubters by repeating experiments until they are convinced80, and he offers a public test before a commission81.
This progressive character was already argued by Pascal. Sciences subject to experiment and reasoning, he says, must be continually augmented, each generation building on the last82. The ancients’ denial of the vacuum followed from their limited experiments and may be reversed83,84. Voltaire treats the discoveries of Galileo, Kepler, Newton and the air-pump as a new universe found85. Helmholtz shows the facts of glacier flow forcing philosophers to accept a result that seemed improbable86. Emerson reports Wordsworth’s suggestion that even Newtonian and atomic theory may be superseded87.
Progress so conceived requires organization. Bacon’s Salomon’s House divides scientific labour among collectors, experimenters, compilers and Interpreters of Nature, who draw axioms from experiments88,89. Voltaire compares the Royal Society with the Paris Academy90. Newman holds that even scientific thought needs meetings like the British Association, since intercourse advances knowledge beyond solitary study91.
Against this confidence runs a persistent doubt about whether natural philosophy can be a science at all. Plato’s Socrates recalls his youthful passion for the causes of generation and destruction, and his eventual sense of incapacity for such inquiry92. Pascal finds the sciences infinite in extent and resting on premises with no final support93. He also records Montaigne’s finding that every discipline’s foundations are uncertain, like a dream94. Locke denies that natural philosophy can become a science, because nature’s works surpass our faculties95,96. Yet he grants that Newton’s mathematical method offers hope of certain knowledge of parts of nature97. Hume allows that natural philosophy reduces phenomena to simpler principles such as gravity, but holds that it reaches limits beyond which it cannot go98.
The moderns turn this limitation into a principle. Voltaire argues that discovering a phenomenon’s laws counts as science even if its reason is unknown, unlike the ancients’ abhorrence of a vacuum99. Darwin says that science need not explain the essence of life, as gravity’s essence remains unexplained while its results are followed100.
Whether man and society can be studied scientifically divides the authors deeply. Hume makes politics a science only if laws and governments have uniform influence101. He hopes that a science of mind may do what astronomy did with Newton102, with the moral philosopher drawing on historical experiments103. Mill takes physical science as the model for political science104. Yet he treats political economy as only conditionally true and its generalizations as provisional105,106.
Taine and Huxley press further. Taine holds that moral sciences obey the same law as physical ones, though their forces cannot be measured numerically107,108. Huxley insists that social phenomena be investigated by the methods of physical research109. Pascal had found the abstract sciences unsuited to man110. Ruskin mocks the economist’s “science” as a teaching of covetousness111. Freeman distinguishes ethnology, a physical science classifying races by bodily structure, from philology, a historical study112,113. He warns that popular race doctrine distorts the truth that scientists rightly defend114.
On the value of science the authors agree least. Bacon seeks human utility and power, to enlarge the bounds of human empire115,116. Descartes would make men lords and possessors of nature117. Hume places the use of the sciences in teaching us to control future events by their causes118. Channing sees the application of science to art transforming the labourer’s condition119. Huxley argues that applied science is only pure science applied, requiring a firm grasp of principles120. He claims a place for science in liberal education against the classical monopoly121,122. In his view natural knowledge offers a criticism of life resting on nature, not authority123. Milton had already prescribed a real tincture of natural knowledge for his students124.
The moral critique is ancient. Augustine grants that men foretell eclipses precisely but finds the achievement puffs them with pride125. Pascal holds that physics cannot console in affliction, though ethics consoles for ignorance of physics126. Burke charges geometricians and chemists with a dryness that leaves them callous to moral feeling127. Goethe’s Faust sees chemists keeping lifeless fragments and missing the spirit-band128. Emerson calls modern science cold, a matter of nomenclature and dissection, jealous of love and moral purpose129,130,131.
Others seek reconciliation. Wordsworth expects that discoveries, once familiar, will become matter for poetry132. Whitman calls scientists the lawgivers of poets133. Holmes denies that science turns hearts to ice134. Ruskin and Darwin record public neglect and misunderstanding: a nation profiting from science yet doing nothing for it135, and locals who think inquiry useless and impious136. Behind the true science stands its counterfeit. Jonson’s alchemy is sham learned mystery137. Manzoni’s Don Ferrante excuses failed predictions as misapplication rather than any fault in his astrology138.
Several questions remain open across these books. One is whether science is demonstration from definitions or the inductive discovery of law. Another is whether it can know causes or only effects, and whether its methods reach mind and society. A last is whether its power over nature is matched by any wisdom about how that power should be used. Bacon’s confident instauration and Pascal’s dream-like foundations stand at the two ends of the debate, and Darwin’s candid weighing of difficulties suggests what a mature science looks like between them.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Experience 9a · Mind 6c · Logic 2b · Philosophy 5b
See also: Geology 1a
See also: Element 4b · Physics 4c · Matter 1c · Experience 9e
See also: Experience 9b · Medicine 10a · Animal 1d · Reasoning 5a
See also: Physics 5b
See also: Change 5a · Geology 6a · Cause 8a · Evolution 6d
See also: Geology 4b
See also: Life and Death 1d · Cause 9b · Experience 9c
See also: Cause 6c
See also: Race and Nationality 3b · Language 9c
See also: Education 8b
See also: Education 8b
See also: Geology, Experience, Cause, Hypothesis, Physics, Philosophy