The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 6, December 1863 | Page 9

floats a
mighty nation's grandeur on through the waiting centuries.

BUCKLE, DRAPER, AND A SCIENCE OF HISTORY.
SECOND PAPER.
The word Science has been so indiscriminately applied to very diverse
departments of our intellectual domain, that it has ceased to have any
distinctive or well-defined signification. Meaning, appropriately, that
which is certainly known, as distinguished from that which is matter of
conjecture, opinion, thought, or plausible supposition merely, its
application to any special branch of human inquiry signifies, in that
sense, that the facts and principles relating to the given branch, or
constituting it, are no longer subjects of uncertain investigation, but
have become accurately and positively known, so as to be demonstrable
to all intelligent minds and invariably recognized by them as true when
rightly apprehended and understood. In the absence, however, of any
clear conception of what constitutes knowledge, of where the dividing
line between it and opinion lay, departments of the universe of
intelligence almost wholly wanting in exactness and certainty have
been dignified with the same title which we apply to departments most
positively known. We hear of the Science of Mathematics, the Science
of Chemistry, the Science of Medicine, the Science of Political
Economy, and even of the Science of Theology.
This vague use of the word Science is not confined to general custom
only, but appertains as well to Scientists and writers on scientific
subjects. So general is this indistinct understanding of the meaning of
this term, that there does not exist in the range of scientific literature a
precise, compact, exhaustive, intelligible definition of it. In order,
therefore, to approach our present subject with clear mental vision, we
must gain an accurate conception of the character and constituents of

Science.
In his History of the Inductive Sciences, Professor Whewell says:
'In the first place, then, I remark, that to the formation of science, two
things are requisite:--Facts and Ideas; observation of Things without,
and an inward effort of Thought; or, in other words, Sense and Reason.
Neither of these elements, by itself, can constitute substantial general
knowledge. The impression of sense, unconnected by some rational and
speculative principle, can only end in a practical acquaintance with
individual objects; the operations of the rational faculties, on the other
hand, if allowed to go on without a constant reference of external things,
can lead only to empty abstraction and barren ingenuity. Real
speculative knowledge demands the combination of the two
ingredients--right reason and facts to reason upon. It has been well said,
that true knowledge is the interpretation of nature; and therefore it
requires both the interpreting mind, and nature for its subject, both the
document, and ingenuity to read it aright. Thus invention, acuteness,
and connection of thought, are necessary on the one hand, for the
progress of philosophical knowledge; and on the other hand, the precise
and steady application of these faculties to facts well known and clearly
conceived.'
This explanation of the nature of Science, more elaborately expanded in
The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, is limited by its author to the
Physical Sciences only. In addition to this circumscribed application, it
is moreover indistinct by reason of the use of the word Ideas, a word to
which so many different significations have been attached by different
writers that its meaning is vague and undefined--to convey the
impression of Laws or Principles. The same defect exists in the detailed
exposition is perhaps the most extended and complete extant.
But even when we gain a clear conception of the proposition which
Professor Whewell only vaguely apprehends and therefore does not
clearly state, namely--that Science is an assemblage of Facts correlated
by Laws or Principles, a system in which the mutual relations of the
Facts are known, and the Laws or Principles established by them are
discovered;--when we understand this ever so distinctly, we are still at

the beginning of a knowledge of what constitutes Science. When do we
know that we have a Fact? How are we to be sure that our proof is not
defective? By what means shall it be certain, beyond the cavil of a
doubt, that the right Laws or Principles, and no more than those
warranted by the Facts, are deduced? These and some other questions
must be definitely settled before we can thoroughly comprehend the
nature of Science, and the consideration of which brings us, in the first
place, to the examination of the characteristics of Scientific Methods.
The intellectual development of the world has proceeded under the
operation of three Methods. Two of these, identical in their mode of
action, but arriving, nevertheless, at widely different results, from the
different points at which they take their departure, are not commonly
discriminated, but are both included in the technical term Deductive
Method. The other is denominated the Inductive.