Abstract

The scientific world-outlook is something quite different from natural science. The word “science” in its legitimate modern usage represents both a kind of knowledge and the method of obtaining that knowledge. By “science” we may mean an objective body of facts and relationships concerning the physical world and arrived at by the scientific method of observation and reasoning—preferably quantitative observation and mathematical reasoning: thus we may say that the law of constant proportions is a part of the science of chemistry. But we may also use the word science to denote that scientific method which I have just mentioned: thus I may say that science is the key to the investigation of nature—or that some inaccurate or biased piece of work is unscientific. Science, in either of these senses, does not contain any world-outlook, for it is quite impersonal. Thus science in the first sense consists of certain statements and relationships e.g.—that sulphur is yellow, that Jupiter has eight satellites, that all solutions of acids in water conduct electricity; while the scientific method indicates the manner in which from the data of our sense-impressions we can infer statements and conclusions, such as the above, which will be found to represent the phenomena correctly. But a scientific world-outlook means something different, because it is a world -outlook, the attitude of a man or woman towards the whole of that of which he or she is conscious.