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 he 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 should 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 for 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:
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.
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 to 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 presupposed 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 of 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
of 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 mind 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 by seeking for
absolute knowledge. The philosophy to which he first turns is, at the
same time, the most naïve 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 can 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 or 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 from 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
to “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.
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? 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. 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] 1 Cours, vi. 651-3.
[32] 2 Cours, vi. 651-3.
[33] Discours sur l’esprit positif, p. 16; Pol. pos. III, 25.
[34] Cours, III, 4.
[35] Cours, VI, 647.
[36] Cours, I. 108: II. 18, 188-9.
[37] Cours, VI. 646 sqq.
[38] Cours, II. 18: III, 11-12.
[39] Cours, IV, 147.
[40] Cours, II, 195-7.
[41] Cours, II, 187.
[42] Cours, IV, 672-3.
[43] Revue générale des Sciences, 30 septembre, 1897.
[44] Discours sur l’Esprit positif, p. 15.
[45] Cours, 756., VI.