If we ask finally what influence upon the shaping of the future such investigations as those which have been sketched in outline above can have, the following can be said. Up till now it has been considered a completely uncontrollable event whether and where a great and influential man of science has developed. It is obvious that such a man is among the most costly treasures which a people (and, indeed, humanity) can possess. The conscious and regular breeding of such rarities has not been considered possible. While this is still the case for the very exceptional genius, we see in the countries of the older civilization, especially in Germany at present, a system of education in vogue in the universities by which a regular harvest of young scientific men is gained who not only have a mastery of knowledge handed down, but also of the technique of discovery. Thereby the growth of science is made certain and regular, and its pursuit is raised to a higher plane. These results were formerly attained chiefly by empirically and oftentimes by accidental processes. It is a task of scientific theory to make this activity also regular and systematic, so that success is no more dependent solely upon a special capacity for the founding of a "school" but can also be attained by less original minds. By the mastery of methods the way to considerably higher performances than he could otherwise attain will be open for the exceptionally gifted.
[3] Equal groups cannot be distinguished here, and therefore represent only a group.
THE CONTENT AND VALIDITY OF THE CAUSAL LAW
BY BENNO ERDMANN
(Translated from the German by Professor Walter T. Marvin, Western Reserve University)
[Benno Erdmann, Professor of Philosophy, University of Bonn, since 1898. b. October 5, 1851, Glogau in Schlesien, Germany. Ph.D.; Privy Councilor. Academical Lecturer, Berlin, 1876- ; Special Professor, Kiel, 1878-79; Regular Professor, ibid. 1879-84; ibid. Breslau, 1884-90; ibid. Halle, 1890-98. Member various scientific and learned societies. Author of The Axioms of Geometry; Kant's Criticism; Logic; Psychological Researches on Reading (together with Prof. Ramon Dodge); The Psychology of the Child and the School; Historical Researches an Kant's Prolegomena, and many other works and papers in Philosophy.]
We have learned to regard the real, which we endeavor to apprehend scientifically in universally valid judgments, as a whole that is connected continuously in time and in space and by causation, and that is accordingly continuously self-evolving. This continuity of connection has the following result, namely, every attempt to classify the sum total of the sciences on the basis of the difference of their objects leads merely to representative types, that is, to species which glide into one another. We find no gaps by means of which we can separate sharply physics and chemistry, botany and zoölogy, political and economic history and the histories of art and religion, or, again, history, philology, and the study of the prehistoric.
As are the objects, so also are the methods of science. They are separable one from another only through a division into representative types; for the variety of these methods is dependent upon the variety of the objects of our knowledge, and is, at the same time, determined by the difference between the manifold forms of our thought, itself a part of the real, with its elements also gliding into One another.[[4]]
The threads which join the general methodology of scientific thought with neighboring fields of knowledge run in two main directions. In the one direction they make up a closely packed cable, whereas in the other their course diverges into all the dimensions of scientific thought. That is to say, first, methodology has its roots in logic, in the narrower sense, namely, in the science of the elementary forms of our thought which enter into the make-up of all scientific methods. Secondly, methodology has its source in the methods themselves which actually, and therefore technically, develop in the various fields of our knowledge out of the problems peculiar to those fields.
It is the office of scientific thought to interpret validly the objects that are presented to us in outer and inner perception, and that can be derived from both these sources. We accomplish this interpretation entirely through judgments and combinations of judgments of manifold sorts. The concepts, which the older logic regarded as the true elementary forms of our thinking, are only certain selected types of judgment, such stereotyped judgments as those which make up definitions and classifications, and which appear independent and fundamental because their subject-matter, that is, their intension or extension, is connected through the act of naming with certain words. Scientific methods, then, are the ways and means by which our thought can accomplish and set forth, in accordance with its ideal, this universally valid interpretation.