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

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method; and in so far, such men, among whom many have been looked upon in their day as great lights, are not genuine men of science; though it would be most unjust foul injustice to exclude them absolutely from their class. So if a man pursues a futile method through neglect to inform himself of effective methods, he is no scientific man; he has not been moved by an intelligibly sincere desire to learn and effective desire to learn. But if a man simply fails to inform himself of previous work which would have facilitated his own, although he is to blame, it would be too harsh to say that he has violated the essential principles of science. It a man pursues a method which, though very bad is the best that the state of intellectual development of his time or the state of the particular science he pursues would enable a man to take, -- I mean, for example, such men as Lavater, Paracelsus and the earlier alchemists, the author of the first chapter of genesis, the old metaphysicians, -- we perhaps cannot call them scientific men, perhaps, and while perhaps we ought to to do. Opitions would differ about this. They are,

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at any rate, entitled to an honorable place in the vestibule of science. A pretty wild play of the imagination is, doubtless it cannot be doubted an inevitable, of not and probably even a useful, prelude to science proper. For my part, [their?] if they those men had really had an effective rage to learn the very truth, and did what they did as the best way they knew, or could know, to find it out, I could not bring myself to deny them the title. The difficulty is that one of the things that coheres to that undeveloped state of intelligence is precisely a very imperfect and impure thirst for truth. Paracelsus and the alchemists were rank charlatans seeking for gold rather than for truth. The metaphysicians were not only pedants and pretenders, but they were trying to establish foregone conclusions. These are the traits which deprive those men of the title scientist, although we ought to entertain a high respect for them as mortals go; because they could no more escape the corruptions of their aims than they could the deficiencies of their [?] knowledge. Science consists in actually drawing

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{Section title: The true Classification of Science must be a true Classification of the lives of Scientific Men}

the bow upon truth, with intentness in the eye, and with energy in the arms.

Such being the essence of science, it is obvious that its first offspring will be men -- men whose whole lives are devoted to it. By such devotion each of them acquires a training in some making some particular kind of observations and experiments.^*. [^* Unfortunately, his acquisition of books, instruments, laboratory, etc. depends upon qualifications in which the man of science is usually rather wanting, -- as wealth, diplomacy, teaching of popularity as a teachers, -- so that he is less likely to be provided with them than are men less qualified to use them for the advancement of science.] He will thus live in quite a different world, -quite a difference aggregate of experience, -- fro unscientific men and even from scientific men pursuing different branches other lines of work than his. He naturally converses with, and reads the writings of, those who, having the same experience, have ideas intelligible interpretable

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into his own. This society develops conceptions of its own. Bring together the men from widely different departments, -- say a microscopical bacteriologist and an astronomer, -- and they will hardly know what to say to one another; for neither has seen the world in which the other lives. True, both use optical instruments; but the qualities sought striven for in a telescopic lens objective are of no consequence in a microscopic objective; and all the subsidiary parts of telescope and microscope are constructed on principles utterly foreign to one another, -- except their stiffness.

Here, then, are natural classes of sciences all sorted out for us in nature itself, so long as we limit our classification to actually recognized sciences. We have only to look over this list of scientific periodicals and the list of scientific societies to find the Families of science ready named. I call such classes Families because Agassiz tells us that it is the Family which strikes the observer as first glance. To make out then genera and especially the species closer examination is requisite; while the knowledge of orders, classes, and branches calls for a broader acquaintance with science.

{Marginal note in different handwriting: [diff?] [parent?] [diff?] [type?] [copy?]}

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{Section title: Rough Definitions of the Categories of Groups of Sciences.}

The first great division of science will be according to its fundamental purpose, making what I shall term Branches of science. A modification of a purpose general purpose may constitute a sub-branch. All knowledge whatever comes from observation, but different sciences are observational in such radically different ways that a kind of information derived from the observation of one department of science (say Natural History) could not possibly afford the information requiired of observation by another branch (say mathematics.) I call groups based on such considerations Classes, and modifications of the same nature Subclasses. Observation is, in Agassiz's phrase, the "ways and means" of attaining the purposes of science. Of two departments of science A and B of the same Class, A may derive special facts from B, for further generalization, while supplying B with principles which the latter, not aiming so high, is glad to have supplied find ready-made. A will rank higher than B, by virtue of the greater generality of its object, while