There has been thus an increasing approach toward unity, toward the summation of phenomena under one simple, general formula.[1] Poincaré, in reviewing this progress, writes:
[Footnote 1: Poincaré notes also the opposite tendency, for science to grow more complex. As he says: "And Newton's law itself? Its simplicity, so long undetected, is perhaps only apparent. Who knows whether it is not due to some complicated mechanism, to the impact of some subtile matter animated by irregular movements, and whether it has not become simple only through the action of averages and of great numbers? In any case it is difficult not to suppose that the true law contains complementary terms, which would become sensible at small distances." (Foundations of Science, p. 132.)]
The better one knows the properties of matter the more one sees continuity reign. Since the labors of Andrews and Van der Wals, we get an idea of how the passage is made from the liquid to the gaseous state and that this passage is not abrupt. Similarly there is no gap between the liquid and solid states, and in the proceedings of a recent congress is to be seen, alongside of a work on the rigidity of liquids, a memoir on the flow of solids....
Finally the methods of physics have invaded a new domain, that of chemistry; physical chemistry is born. It is still very young, but we already see that it will enable us to connect such phenomena as electrolysis, osmosis, and the motions of ions.
From this rapid exposition what shall we conclude?
Everything considered, we have approached unity; we have not been as quick as we had hoped fifty years ago, we have not always taken the predicted way; but, finally, we have gained ever so much ground.[2]
[Footnote 2: Poincaré: loc. cit., pp. 153-54.]
The satisfaction which disinterested science gives to the investigator is thus, in the first place, one of clarification. Science, by enabling us to see the wide general laws of which all phenomena are particular instances, emancipates the imagination. It frees us from being bound by the accidental suggestions which come to us from mere personal caprice, habit, and environment, and enables us to observe facts uncolored by passions and hope, and to discover those laws of the universe which, in the words of Karl Pearson, "hold for all normally constituted minds." In ordinary experience, our impressions and beliefs are the results of inaccurate sense observation colored by hope and fear, aversion and revulsion, and limited by accidental circumstance. Through science we are enabled to detach ourselves from the personal and the particular and to see the world, as, undistorted, it must appear to any man anywhere:
The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know—it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: Mysticism and Logic, p. 44.]