CHAPTER VI. The Logical Character of Descriptive Science

THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF DESCRIPTIVE SCIENCE

§ 1. Scientific description may be contrasted with philosophical or teleological interpretation, but the contrast is not absolute. § 2. The primary end of all scientific description is intercommunication with a view to active co-operation. Hence all such description is necessarily restricted to objects capable of being experienced in the same way by a plurality of individuals. § 3. A second end of scientific description is the economising of intellectual labour by the creation of general rules for dealing with typical situations in the environment. In the course of evolution this object becomes partially independent of the former. § 4. From the interest in formulating general rules arise the three fundamental postulates of physical science, the postulates of Uniformity, Mechanical Law, and Causal Determination. § 5. The mechanical view of physical Nature determined by these three postulates is systematically carried out only in the abstract science of Mechanics; hence the logical completion of the descriptive process would mean the reduction of all descriptive science to Mechanics. That the chemical, biological, and psychological sciences contain elements which cannot be reduced to mechanical terms, is due to the fact that their descriptions are inspired by æsthetic and historical as well as by primarily “scientific” interests. § 6. The analysis of such leading concepts of mechanical Physics as the Conservation of Mass and of Energy shows them to have only relative validity 279