When first endeavouring to find a recognised definition of the term ‘science,’ I consulted the latest Encyclopædia Britannica of our public library, thinking that from such an acknowledged authority a correct statement could there be obtained. To my surprise, I found that the word ‘science’ was not included in the list of subjects. Searching further in this record of nineteenth-century thought, under the head of ‘Biology’—that department which is ordinarily supposed to be the science of life as distinguished from the consideration of non-living things—the following principle was found to be laid down—viz., that there was no essential difference between organized and unorganized Nature, for life was simply a property of matter.
It is well to weigh the argument for this doctrine, which necessarily destroys the essential idea of right and wrong, and removes the foundation of good and evil. It is set forth in the following manner:
‘The abstract-concrete sciences are mechanics, physics, chemistry.... Whilst their subject-matter is found in a consideration of varied concrete phenomena, they do not aim at a determination of certain “abstract” quantitative relations and sequences known as “laws,” which never are manifested in a pure form, but always are inferred by observation and experiment upon complex phenomena, in which the abstract laws are disguised by their simultaneous interaction.... These sciences of mechanics, physics, and chemistry have for their object to explain concrete phenomena by reference to the properties of matter set forth in their generalizations.’
The following important dictum in regard to biology is thus laid down:
‘It is the business of those occupied with that branch to assign living things in all their variety to the one set of forces recognised by the physicist and chemist ... and its evolution’ (that is, the evolution of life) ‘as the necessary outcome of those forces—the automatic product of those same forces.... The discovery of the mechanical principle of evolution completed the doctrine’ (of the material origin of life). ‘... It may be said to comprise the history of man, sociology, and psychology—viz., the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence.’
This ignoring by the Encyclopædia Britannica of any definition of the word ‘science,’ and also the attempted reduction of life to a property of matter, is, however, too limited a view of Nature to be accepted by many thoughtful students of the present day. Turning, therefore, to Chambers’ Cyclopædia, which is the latest expression of the views of the able thinkers of North Britain, an explanation of the term ‘science’ was found, which is far truer to advancing thought. The comprehensive definition is there given that science ‘is the correlation of all knowledge.’
As science searches for causes with their relations, and is proved knowledge, so no branch of knowledge or method of acquiring knowledge can be considered scientific which contradicts any facts of Nature, or which bases its methods on the destruction of those facts.
Truth can only be arrived at by considering various or apparently opposite aspects of human problems; so biological facts, or the problems of organized or living creatures must be considered, not simply from the side of ‘mechanics, physics, and chemistry, or the automatic action of the forces of matter,’ but also from the equally positive facts of life, and the forces which careful observation is gradually showing to be enfolded in the fact of mind as developed through protoplasm onward. The facts of affection, companionship, sympathy, justice, are positive forces. They exercise a powerful influence over the physical organization of all living creatures.
These mental forces can change the action of the bodily functions in the most surprising manner, arresting the heart’s action, interfering with secretion, or changing natural secretion into poison, and destroying the normal and beneficial controlling action of the nervous system. They are proved by experience to be so striking that they cannot be overlooked in any unprejudiced investigation of natural forces.
A fit of passion in a nursing mother has destroyed her infant; the industrious cultivator seeing his field of strawberries, the products of his toil, carried off by thieves, has fallen dead in his vain efforts to stop the cruel depredation. But such instances are world-wide, and corroborated by everyone’s experience. They prove that, although the forces of mechanics, physics, and chemistry are employed in the animal economy, there are also powers far beyond these limited forces, which must be studied also in biological research, if we are to learn how these physical may be overridden by mental forces. Without such correlation of knowledge we fail to realize the unity of Nature, and cannot attain to true science or proved knowledge.