MS 427a (1902) - Minute Logic - Chapter II - Section I

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of systematized and established knowledge, which is nothing but the exudation of living science; -- as if plants were to be classified according to the characters of their gums. Many Some of the classifications do even worse that than, by taking science in the sense attached by the ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle, to the word ἐπιστήμη. A person can take no right view of the relation of ancient to modern science unless he clearly apprehends the difference between what the Greeks meant by ἐπιστήμη and what we mean by knowledge. The best translation of ἐπιστήμη is "comprehension". It is the ability to define a thing in such a manner that all its properties shall be corollaries from its definition. Now it may be that we shall ultimately be able to do that, say for light or electricity. But the Greeks On the other hand, it is also may possible that that should equally turn out that it forever remains as impossible as it certainly is to define number in such a way that Fermat's and Wilson's

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theorems should be simple corollaries from the definition.^* But, at any rate, to think the Greek conception of knowledge was all wrong in that they thought that one must advance in direct attack upon this ἐπιστήμη; and attached little value to any knowledge that did not manifestly tend to that. To look upon science in that point of view in one's classification is to do throw modern science into confusion.

{Marginal note: ^* I do not mean to deny, that those theorems are deducible from the definition. All that is here being urged turns on the falsity of the old notion that all deduction is colollarial deduction.}

Another fault of many classifications, -- or if not a fault, it is at least a purpose very different from that which I would undertake to pursue should be bold enough to attempt, -- is that they are classifications not of science as it exists, but as of [some?] systematized knowledge such as the classifier hopes may some time exist. I do not believe it is possible to have that intimate acquaintance with the science of the indefinite future that the discovery of its the real and natural classification of it

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would require. At any rate, I will make no such attempt, except probably in one department, and there only partially and timidly.

Let us look upon science, -- the science of today, -as a living thing. What characterizes it generally, from this point of view, is that the thoroughly established truths are labelled and put away upon the shelves of each scientist's mind, where they can be used at hand when there is occasion to use them, -- arranged, therefore, to suit his special convenience, -- while science itself, -- the living process, -- is busied under mainly with conjectures, which are either getting framed or getting tested. If When that systematized knowledge on the shelves is used, it is used just almost exactly as a manufacturer or practising physician might use it; that is to say, it is merely applied. If it ever becomes the object of science, it is because the in the

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A scientific man is likely in the course of a long life to pick up a pretty extensive acquaintance with the results of science; but in many branches, this is so little necessary that one will meet with men of greatest most deserved renown in science who will tell you that, beyond their own little nooks, they hardly know anything of what others have done. Sylvester always used to say that he knew very little mathematics: true, he seemed to know more than he thought he did. In various branches of science, some of the most eminent men first took up those subjects as mere pastimes knowing little or nothing of the accumulations of knowledge. So it was with the astronomer Lockyer: so it has been with many naturalists. Now, did those men gradually become scientific men of science as their stores of knowledge increased, or was there an epoch in their lives, after before which they were amateurs and after which they were scientists?

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I believe that the answer is that, like any other regeneration, the instamorphosis was is commonly sudden, though sometimes slow. When it is sudden, what is it that of an constitutes the transformation? It is their being served with a great desire to learn the true, and their going to work with all their might in by a well-considered method to gratify that desire. The man who is working in the right way to learn something not already known is recognized by all men of science as one of themselves, no matter how little he is informed. It would be monstrous to say that Ptolemy, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, and Posidonius, were not scientific men because their knowledge was comparatively small. The life of science is in the desire to learn. If this desire is not pure, but is mingled with a desire to prove the truth of a definite opinion, or of a general mode of conceiving of things, it will be apt almost inevitably lead to the adoption of a faulty