CHAPTER IV SCIENCE

 We may admit, with Aristotle, that curiosity is natural to man, and that we are inclined to inquire into things for the pleasure of knowing them. But it must be admitted, adds Comte, that this inclination is one of the least active and the least imperative in our nature. It must have been still less so in the beginning of mankind’s development; and it was, in any case, much weaker than the inclination to laziness, or than the repugnance to accept anything new. It has therefore been necessary, in order that man might emerge from his primitive intellectual torpor, that the activity of his mind should be induced and even compelled to exert itself by pressing circumstances. Such were undoubtedly the necessities of hunting, the dangers of war, and in a general way, the desire to avoid suffering and death.   Moreover, the knowledge which the human mind acquires at first is only very imperfectly real; for theological philosophy furnishes the mind with its first conceptions. Man begins by supposing everywhere wills like his own, and the world which surrounds him is peopled with gods or fetishes. Nevertheless, from this first period, the rudiments of a more positive knowledge already appear. In every order of phenomena some are very simple and of such striking regularity, that evidently no arbitrary will intervenes in their working. Man must very quickly have had a “real” idea of these phenomena. In all the other cases instead of observing the phenomena he61 imagined the mode of their production; but here he observed the sequences and concomitances which he could not resist; and he regulated his conduct upon this observation. From this humble beginning science came into being.   In this way, far from opposing scientific thought to common thought, as most of the philosophers do, Comte, without disregarding the special character of one and of the other shows that both spring from the same source, and that they do not present any essential point of difference. However abstract and however elevated science may become, it always remains, according to him, a “simple special prolongation” of good sense, of common sense and of “universal wisdom.” The character of “positivity,” by which scientific knowledge is distinguished from theological and metaphysical conceptions, belongs also to popular wisdom. Like this wisdom, which the practical necessities of life have formed, science abstains from searching after the causes, the ends, the substances, and whatever is beyond the reach of verification by experience. Its efforts bear exclusively upon the laws of coexistence and of succession which govern the phenomena. And again it is from this wisdom that it has borrowed the spirit of its positive method, which consists in observing facts and in systematising observations to rise to the concept of laws.   It follows from this that science contains within itself neither its starting-point nor its terminus. Both are given it by “common sense” whence it springs. The starting-point is the spontaneous observation of constant relations between the most simple phenomena. The terminus is the knowledge of these same relations among all given phenomena, as complete and as precise as our requirements demand. Indeed the common sense, or the popular wisdom, is soon baffled by the complexity of phenomena. If we had no other guide we should know very little, and in nearly all cases we should62 be reduced to a kind of empirical divination. The function of science is to substitute a real knowledge of laws to this divination.   This function would never have been fulfilled if the human mind had not possessed the property of being able to separate theory from practice. Undoubtedly the former proceeds from the latter. As has been said, every science is born from a corresponding art, and from the desire to perfect it. But this perfecting would not have gone very far, if the human mind had never lost sight of it. Happily, man is capable of temporarily forgetting his immediate interests in the pursuit of knowledge. By degrees, from the complexity of concrete cases, he has learnt to disengage the elements common to a whole class of phenomena. He has thus formed the idea of law, or the invariable relation between given phenomena. Beyond the intellectual satisfaction which this knowledge gave him, he found in time applications of it which he would never have imagined beforehand. To quote an example from a civilisation already very advanced, when the Greek geometers patiently applied themselves to the study of conic sections, did they suspect that their labours would one day serve in calculating certain astronomical determinations upon which the safety of mariners would depend?   In this way, science, utilitarian in its origin, since it sprang from the practical needs of man, utilitarian in its end, since it aims at providing for those needs, has nevertheless been unable to develop itself and will be unable still to do so in the future, except by neglecting this very utility. Better to fulfil its destiny, it must provisionally forget it; and it will be the more useful, in the long run, in proportion as it will have been the more disinterested. We never know, a priori, if a discovery which finds no application to-day, combined later with another one, will not be of capital interest for63 mankind. Therefore it is of the highest importance that theoretical order should remain clearly distinct from the practical order.   That is why Comte regarded the appearance of a sacerdotal class, specially occupied with speculative research, as a decisive moment in history of humanity. It matters little that these researches should have remained chimerical and absurd during long centuries. The essential point was that the human mind should form and keep the habit of disinterested speculation, that it should not rest content with immediately applicable knowledge, and that it should exert itself towards a theoretical conception of nature, however simple at first that conception was bound to be.   Thus, science has, properly speaking, two roots, the one practical, the other theoretical. If it originated in the primitive arts, it is no less closely allied with primitive philosophy. It still bears features which enable us to discern this twofold filiation. On the one hand, it has remained speculative as was the theological philosophy which first dominated over the human mind. Only this speculation has gradually abandoned everything except the laws of phenomena, and it has ended by undermining the theological conceptions from which it came. On the other hand, science has remained real, like the popular wisdom which gave it birth. But, while dealing with given phenomena in experience, it has developed in the direction of theory. Instead of only considering scenes of concrete objects, it has resolved them into their elements. A more and more powerful analysis has raised it to the consideration of laws more and more general and abstract. Thus, while the popular wisdom is limited to empirical generalisations, a science such as, for instance, astronomy discovers the law which governs the whole of an immense order of phenomena.   From this general idea of science the following consequences at once follow:   64   1. Science is the collective work of humanity. It bears upon an object common to all: Reality. It employs the method common to all: the positive method. All intellects work in the same manner on a common ground. It is what Comte calls “the profound mental identity of learned men with the crowd whose destiny fulfils itself in active work.31” The progress of the scientific mind is a methodical extension of popular common sense to all subjects accessible to human reason. But here method does almost everything. “The whole superiority of the philosophical mind over the popular common sense results from a special and continuous application to common speculations, in starting prudently from the initial step, after having brought them back to a normal state of judicious abstraction, for the purpose of generalising and coordinating. For, what ordinary intellects chiefly lack, is less the precision and penetration appropriate for discerning partial approximations, than the aptitude for generalising abstract relations, and for establishing a perfect logical coherence among our various notions.”32   The germ of the highest scientific conceptions is often to be found in common reason. Comte delights in giving as an example one of the discoveries which he most admires, Descartes’ invention of analytical Geometry. To determine at every moment the position of a point in space by its distance from fixed axes: is not that what geographers have been doing for so long in order to determine the longitude and latitude of a place upon the terrestrial sphere? And has not this proceeding itself been suggested to the geographer by simple common sense? For he instinctively seeks to mark the inaccessible points which interest him, by means of their distance from given points or lines. From this the idea of the Cartesian co-ordinates only differs by a superior degree of abstraction and of generality.   65   Thus all men must be regarded as collaborating in the discovery of truth as much as in making use of it. Speaking generally, if the great philosophers and scientific men of genius seem to be the intellectual guides of humanity, it is because they are the first to be affected by each mental revolution. They are the first to pass from a traditional to a new attitude and their example is decisive. But, says Comte, “the changes relating to the method of thinking with originality only become manifest when they are almost accomplished.” The great men whose names are justly authors attached to are, however, more the heralds than the of these changes.   2. Science is the work of all: it must therefore be accessible to all. It is a patrimony common to the whole of mankind; and the inheritance must be taken from no one. As a consequence, the State owes scientific instruction to those who are not in a position to procure it for themselves. Not that all men, all the people ought to acquire a deep knowledge of the several fundamental sciences, like those who make it the particular occupation of their lives. The impossibility of such a thing is too evident for several reasons. Neither is it a question of popularising the great scientific theories, for the use of badly prepared minds. Comte condemns severely this way of “simplifying” science. For instance, he will not allow Newton’s laws to be separated from their demonstrations. It will always be the duty of the greater number of men to adopt the majority of scientific truths on the testimony of those who will have discovered, criticised and verified them. But, what it will be the duty of common education to give to every mind, is the habit of conceiving all phenomena, from the most simple to the most complex, as equally governed by invariable laws, and, consequently, of understanding the whole of nature as an order which the positive method alone allows us to discover and to66 modify. And as this method cannot be studied apart from the sciences in which it is used, it will be necessary for every man to be made acquainted with a summary of each fundamental science, from mathematics to sociology. There is nothing impracticable in this scheme. Comte has drawn out, in the positive Polity, a plan of education conceived on this principle. On this condition alone will philosophy, founded upon positive science, succeed in realising the harmony of minds, and in “reorganising the beliefs.” II.   Auguste Comte often says that the positive spirit consists in keeping oneself equally distant from two dangers, mysticism and empiricism.33 By mysticism he understands the recourse to non-verifiable explanations and to transcendent, hypotheses. Men’s imagination finds pleasure in these things, but we must be able to bring all “real” knowledge back to a general or particular fact. Positive science therefore abstains from searching after substances, ends, and even causes. It only bears upon phenomena and their relations.   Empiricism, in its turn, is no less than mysticism contrary to the spirit of science, Empiricism signifies for Comte the knowledge which does not go beyond the pure and simple ascertainment of a fact. Now, an accumulation of even precisely noted facts has no theoretical interest. It may, at most, be erudition, but it is not science. To think that by thus gathering facts together one is labouring at the work of science, is “to take a quarry for an edifice.”34 In a word, “science is made up of laws, and not of facts.”35   Strictly speaking, no scientific observation is even possible without a previous theory, that is to say, without a presupposed67 law, whose verification is in question. Undoubtedly in science when it has become positive, the imagination no longer constructs “causes” or “essences.” It must submit to reason, that is to say, to the methodical investigation of phenomena. Nevertheless, this investigation cannot take place without guiding hypotheses, and thus the imagination plays a part in science, subordinate it is true, but indispensable. Comte here separates himself from Bacon. According to the English philosopher, in the knowledge of nature, the mind must make itself as receptive as possible. In introducing anything of itself it would falsify science, and its whole effort must be to hold itself up to phenomena as a perfectly plain and unspotted mirror, so as to reflect them as they are. Now this is precisely the idea of science which Comte rejects under the name of empiricism. Without the hypotheses or the theories suggested by the very activity of the mind science would never be constituted, according to him. There would never even be an apprehension of fact, at least an apprehension such that it could be of service to science. In a word “absolute empiricism is impossible.” In the simple observation of a phenomenon by the human mind, the entire mind is interested, and in it the subjective conditions of science are already virtually given.   This being granted, science may be defined as a methodical processus of the connection and extension of our knowledge. It consists, in every department “in the exact relations established between observed facts, so as to deduce from the least possible number of fundamental data, the most extensive series of secondary phenomena, in renouncing absolutely the vain search after causes and essences.” So long as men seek to “explain” phenomena the theological and metaphysical spirit has not yet disappeared. Positive science abstains from all explanations of this kind. Thus, Newton has placed in the same category universal gravitation and the attraction of68 bodies. We cannot know what this mutual action of the stars and the attraction of terrestrial bodies are in themselves. But we know with full certainty, the existence and the law of these two orders of phenomena and moreover we know that they are identical. For the geometer weight is explained when he conceives it as a particular case of general gravitation. On the contrary it is weight which makes the physicist proper understand celestial gravitation. We can never go beyond such juxtapositions “of ideas.”36   But while science brings together similar phenomena, its chief function is to connect them, that is to say to determine them one by another according to the relations which exist between them. All science, says Comte, consists in the co-ordination of facts; and if the several observations remained isolated there would be no science. We may even say generally that science is destined, as far as the various phenomena permit, to dispense with direct observation, in allowing us to deduce the greatest possible number of results from the smallest number of acquired data. If a constant relation is found to subsist between two phenomena, it becomes useless to observe them both; for from the observation of one the variations of the other will be deduced. But the first may in its turn be the function of a third, and so on; until at last we conceive a constant connection between all the phenomena of a given order, which may allow us to deduce them all from a single law. Such for Comte would be the perfect form of science: how near it is to the Cartesian ideal! “The positive spirit,” he says, “without failing to recognize the preponderance of reality directly ascertained, tends to enlarge the rational at the expense of the experimental domain, by substituting the prevision of phenomena to their immediate observation.” Scientific progress consists in diminishing the number of69 distinct and independent laws, by continually multiplying their respective connections.37   “Prevision” thus becomes the essential characteristic of scientific knowledge, and that independently of any utilitarian mental reservation. For the eventual applications of science do not determine its theoretical advance. The prevision with which we are here concerned consists solely in the possibility of knowing with certainty without observing. It is knowledge a priori in the Aristotelian sense of the word, of which mathematics present the most perfect model. A rectilinear triangle being given, I do not need experience to know with certainty that the sum of the angles in it is equal to two right angles. Thus understood prevision applies to the present, and even to the past, as well as to the future. When Comte writes “All science has prevision for its aim,”38 we must understand: “All science tends to substitute deduction to experience, rational to empirical knowledge.” This prevision, a necessary consequence of the constant relations discovered between phenomena, will allow men never to mistake real science for fruitless erudition, which accumulates facts without deducing them one from another.   Thus the formula cited above enlarges itself: “Science is composed of laws and not of facts.” The more deduction is substituted to experience, the better is the extension and connection of our knowledge realised. Consequently, the more also does science draw near to that unity which is imperatively claimed by our understanding, and which is for it the criterion of truth. “Real science,” says Comte, “regarded from the highest point of view, has no other general object but to establish or to fortify unceasingly the intellectual order, which is the basis of all other order.”39 The mind70 which applies itself to the contemplation of the world requires, before everything, to find it intelligible. “Real” science satisfies it, not in imagining wills and causes, as did theology and metaphysics, but in discovering order in the constant relations between phenomena. When this order is harmonious, that is to say, when the several classes of phenomena are conceived as homogenous, and as similarly governed by laws, “the spontaneous unity of our understanding is consolidated.” It matters little that the various orders of phenomena are given to us as irreducible to one another. The highest object of science is to determine the point of view from which all phenomena appear intelligible, and this point of view is one as the understanding itself is one. III.   Perhaps it would have been easy to pass from this conception of positive science to a theory of knowledge, and to a metaphysical view of nature, both idealistic. But Comte neither could nor would push his theory in this direction. In this respect nothing is more significant than his way of understanding the relativity of science.   This relativity is usually presented as the conclusion of a criticism of our understanding, of its nature, of its bearings, and of its relations to its objects. But, according to Comte, an inquiry pursued on these lines, has no chance of reaching a conclusion. The only theory of knowledge which is positive and “real,” is drawn from the history of the human mind. The laws of the mind are only revealed in the examination of the successive products of its activity, that is to say in its beliefs and in its science. The relativity of science can therefore only be stated at first, as a fact, leaving it for subsequent inquiry to determine the reason of that fact. The law of the three States suffices for this, for it shows that man began by71 seeking for absolute knowledge. The philosophy to which he first turns is, at the same time, the most na?ve and the most ambitious. But a necessary evolution causes him to abandon the pursuit of the absolute, first in its theological form and then in the metaphysical form. Having reached the positive state, man knows that his science, necessarily relative, is limited to “the systematic co-ordination of phenomena,” and the knowledge of their laws.   The condemnation which thus strikes researches bearing on the absolute is itself, moreover, only relative in character. It prejudges nothing respecting the ultimate solution of questions. Positive philosophy in no way takes sides in respect to these problems. It simply states that science has more and more cut them off from the number of those which it studies. Indeed it is impossible to apply the positive method to questions which concern the absolute. Now, this method being the only one which our mind can henceforth follow, at least if it wishes to maintain the logical unity which is its supreme requirement, it follows that these problems are in fact abandoned. Nothing more and nothing less. “Sound philosophy,” says Comte, “sets aside, it is true, insoluble questions”; but “in stating the motive of their rejection, it avoids denying anything respecting them, which would be contradictory to that systematic disuse by which alone uncontrovertible opinions must die out.” (Comte means: opinions which do not come within the range of positive discussion.) The problems relating to the essence of the soul or to the “substantia prima” will melt away, as the majority of the metaphysical problems which the scholastics put to themselves have already disappeared.   Even to positive science, we must be careful not to attribute an absolute character—that is to say, in a sense slightly different from the preceding one, but very frequently with Comte—a definite and immutable character. The laws which we can72 determine are never true except under certain conditions. We have no right to consider them as true absolutely. Newton’s law is demonstrated for our solar system: but do we know that it is verified in all the systems throughout space? Do not let us confound the world, which we can study with the united resources of observation and calculation with the universe, of which we know scarcely anything, and which outranges all our powers. In spite of the famous principle of the sufficient reason the absence of motives for negation does not constitute the right of affirmation, without any direct proof. Absolute notions, says Comte, seem to me so impossible that I would not even dare, whatever probability I may see in it, to warrant the necessary and unalterable perpetuity of the theory of gravitation restricted to the interior of our world, if one day, (which is moreover very difficult to admit) the precision of our present observations came to be perfected as much as we have done in comparison to Hipparchus.40   In the same way, must not attraction have seemed to be an absolute quality (that is to say an immutable one) of bodies, since neither change of shape, nor the passage from one physical constitution to another, nor any chemical metamorphosis, nor even the difference between the state of life and death could modify this quality, so long as the integrity of the substance was maintained? The Newtonian conception came and destroyed entirely at a signal stroke this character which must have appeared so indestructible, by showing that the weight of a body is a phenomenon purely relative to the position of this body in the world, or, more precisely, to its distance from the centre of the earth.41   In order that our positive science of any part of nature should be absolute, that is to say, final, it would have to be complete. But, as all things are caused or causing, helped or73 helping, according to Pascal’s expression, all the phenomena in a reciprocal universal action, all the laws relative one to another, our science will never be complete on any point. It only furnishes more or less imperfect approximations.42 The discovery of new facts and new laws is always possible.   How many times does not positive science find itself obliged to modify and to readjust a system of long acquired notions, in order to make a place for new elements? This is a work often very laborious, but from which science never dreams of shrinking, knowing that it is made liable to it, so to speak, by definition, that is to say, that it is relative. Examples of this abound, not only in the history of physical and natural science, but even in that of so-called exact sciences. Do we not hear M. Poincaré declaring in accordance with Hertz, that given the system of Galileo and of Newton in mechanics it is impossible to give a satisfactory idea of mass and of force?43   Thus the definitions, and even the laws, established by the positive sciences, are at every period approximations corresponding to the knowledge we have of facts. And as this knowledge can always be enriched the approximation may also become stricter, without ever reaching its confines. Leibnitz already said that the analysis of anything real reaches to infinity. This thought is with him, closely allied to the whole of his metaphysics. We find in Comte an expression in some way equivalent, although positive. He says, although the progress of the science of nature consists in substituting as much as possible the rational method to the experimental method, the limit can never be attained, we can never affirm that experience will not bring new elements which will oblige us to modify the edifice of science. The relativity of science thus serves to maintain an equal balance between the need of unity which comes from74 the understanding, and the inexhaustible diversity of the world of reality which this understanding studies.   As a fact, then, positive science is always relative. Rightly, it cannot be otherwise, and this for two essential reasons. It depends necessarily upon “our organisation” and “our situation”44 or, in other words, it is relative “both to the individual and to the species in its advance.”   It is relative in the first place to our organisation. Here Comte takes up again an idea which was dear to the philosophers of the XVIII. century and in particular to Diderot. If our organisation were different, the data which our science elaborates would be other that they are. With more organs we might perhaps grasp kinds of problems of which we have no idea. If we suppose our species to be blind, astronomy would not exist for it. And further, a natural law requires that the more complex and the higher phenomena in regard to their conditions of existence, should be subordinated to the more general and the more common phenomena. The intellectual phenomena thus depend, first, upon the biological phenomena, and then upon all those to which the biological phenomena are subordinated. In this sense, therefore, science is relative to our organisation, which is itself relative in respect to the milieu in which we live. But, reciprocally, the representation of this milieu and of this organisation rests upon intellectual laws which impart to science a need of unity and harmony special to the mind.   Comte concludes, therefore, that to endeavour to apportion what belongs to the object and what to the subject in scientific knowledge is a hopeless attempt. We simply know that science is not the exclusive product either of the subject or the object. Giving too much to the object leads us to “empiricism.” Falling to the opposite extreme leads to75 “mysticism.” The efforts of philosophers to construct an abstract theory of knowledge have only ended in miserable results. We have not gone beyond Aristotle’s “axiom as corrected by Leibnitz.” Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus. We are only certain of one thing: our science, necessarily conditioned by our organisation, is also necessarily relative.   But this is not the most decisive consideration for it only makes us see that our science would be different, if our organisation were to change. Now, as a matter of fact, our organisation does not change. Human nature, according to Comte, remains similar to itself in the whole course of its evolution. It is this evolution which itself becomes a cause, and a decisive one, of relativity for science. For, if our organisation does not vary, the system of our conceptions and of our science necessarily varies, according to our “situation,” that is to say, according to the position which we occupy in this evolution, which accomplishes itself according to laws.   Our conceptions, our religions, our philosophies, are not only individual phenomena; they are also and chiefly social phenomena, moments in a collective and continuous life, of which all the phases are interdependent. We only know in a given order of knowledge, what is compatible at that moment with the generally admitted philosophy, with the knowledge already acquired in this and in the other orders of phenomena, with the great hypotheses considered as true, with the methods in force, etc. As soon as the human mind has become conscious of the evolution to which it is subject, as soon as it has grasped its most general law (the law of the three states), in a word, as soon as sociology is founded, science can no longer be conceived as other than relative. For from that moment the various sciences appear as so many great social facts, which vary as so many functions of the rest of civilisation.   76   Our speculations, “depending on the totality of social progression,” can therefore never admit of that absolute fixity which metaphysicians have supposed. The continuous movement of history modifies, in the long run, the beliefs which appear to be the most immutable. Our theories tend to represent more and more faithfully the objects of our investigations, that is to say the laws of phenomena. We are thus brought back to the idea of limit, which is never attained, towards which we are advancing by means of approximations ever more exact.   The time is not yet far distant, when a doctrine of this kind could not have been advanced without at once being rejected as sceptical. The human mind is scarcely beginning to understand that truth cannot be immutable.45 Men believed that truth must always be identical with itself, always identical for all minds at all times and at all places. It seems that in losing this character, it must cease to be truth. That is why philosophy has been so persistent in the pursuit of the absolute. It was believed that no truth could be certain, unless it rested, ultimately, upon an immutable foundation.   Science was therefore made to hang on metaphysics. And the defeats, a thousand times repeated, of metaphysics would not have discouraged the human mind had not positive philosophy at last shown that the truth of which we are capable, because it is relative does not cease to be truth. We are not condemned to choose between the pursuit of an inaccessible absolute and the crumbling down of all science. It suffices to understand that human science evolves and that this evolution is subject to laws. It is never ended: it always “becomes.” It is not a “state:” it is a “progress.”   There are therefore provisional, and, if one may so speak, temporary truths. Does science ever establish any others?77 The ideas which Hipparchus and the Greek astronomers had of the heavens was not false in all respects. It was the astronomical truth compatible with the conditions of the society in which they lived. After the labours of the observers of the Middle Ages, utilised by Copernicus, this idea faded before another one which became more perfect with Newton and Laplace. Perhaps this one will be modified in its turn, in consequence of new discoveries! Similarly it was thought that the earth was a flat surface, then a round disc. Then it was represented as a sphere and finally as an ellipsoid. To-day we know that this ellipsoid is irregular.   Truth is then at each period “the perfect logical coherence,” or the correspondence between our conceptions and our observations. The history of human thought is composed of a progressive series of alternating periods. At a certain moment the mind has placed what it conceives in accordance with what it knows. But, by degrees, new facts are observed, known facts are better interpreted, discoveries burst forth. The harmony between the conceptions and the observations then becomes precarious. Minds find a greater and greater difficulty in fitting all the acquired knowledge into the traditional frame. At last the frame gives way. Then the harmony is re-established in a more comprehensive form, which in its turn is destined to become insufficient. Here positive philosophy recognises a sociological law. It gives up the vain dream of immutable truth. It no longer regards the truth of to-day as absolutely true, nor the truth of yesterday as absolutely false. It ceases to be critical in regard to the past.”   To conclude, the theory of science can therefore only be accomplished from the sociological point of view. It remains imperfect so long as “we” has not been substituted to “I,” the universal subject which is humanity to the individual subject, and a philosophical history of the sciences to mere reflective analysis.78 To the logical conditions of science, to define it completely, its biological and social conditions must be joined. Then, but then only, it will be understood, that, at each period, science is at the same time true and relative, without its relativity placing its truth in danger.