18. The Applied Sciences.
It will be remarked that the grouping of the table gives no place at all in its scheme to certain branches of learning taught in the universities and equally good technical institutions. We look in vain not only for theology and jurisprudence, but also for astronomy, medicine, etc.
The explanation and justification of this is, that for purposes of systematization we must distinguish between pure and applied sciences. By virtue of their strictly conceptual exclusiveness the pure sciences constitute a regular hierarchy or graded series, so that all the concepts that have been used and dealt with in the preceding sciences are repeated in the following sciences, while certain characteristic new concepts enter in addition. Thus logic, the science of the manifold, exercises its dominion over all the other sciences, while the specific concepts of physics and chemistry have nothing to do with it, though they are of importance to all the biologic sciences. Through this graded addition of new (naturally empiric) concepts, the construction of the pure sciences proceeds in strict regularity, and their problems arise exclusively from the application of new concepts to all the earlier ones. In other words, their problems do not reach them accidentally from without, but result from the action and reaction of their concepts upon one another.
At the same time there are problems that each day sets before us without regard to system. These come from our endeavor to improve life and avert evil. In the problems of life we are confronted by the whole variety of possible concepts, and under the day's immediate compulsion we cannot wait, if we are sowing crops or helping a sick man, until physiology and all the other appropriate sciences have solved all the problems of plant growth and the changes of the human body and human energy. When other signs fail, we use the position of the stars for finding our way on the high seas. In this manner we turn the teaching of the stars, or astronomy, into an applied science, in which at first mechanics alone seemed to have a part. Later physics took a share in it, then optics took a particularly prominent share, and in recent times not only did chemistry find its way into astronomy, but the specifically biologic concept of evolution was applied in astronomy with success.
Thus, side by side with the pure sciences are the applied, which are to be distinguished from the pure sciences by the fact that they do not unfold their problems systematically, but are assigned them by the external circumstances of man's life. The pure sciences, therefore, almost always have a larger or smaller share in the tasks of the applied sciences. For instance, in building a bridge or railroad, physical problems have to be taken into consideration as well as sociologic problems (problems of trade), and a good physician should be a psychologist as well as a chemist.
But since all the individual questions arising in the applied sciences may be considered essentially as problems of one or other pure science, they need not be explicitly enumerated along with the pure sciences, especially since their development is greatly dependent upon temporary conditions and is therefore incapable of simple systematization.