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352 55 Review of Pearson’s The Grammarof Science 7 July 1892 Houghton Library The Grammar of Science. By Karl Pearson, M.A., Sir Thomas Gresham’s Professor of Geometry. [The Contemporary Science Series.] Imported by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892. The title of this book hardly prepares the reader for its real nature. It is an attempt to elucidate, in an original train of thought, what amounts, generically speaking, to Kantian nominalism, and to show its applicability to contemporary scientific problems. Although the metaphysical doctrine from which it proceeds is all but exploded, and rests upon an inaccurate psychology and an uncritical logic, in our opinion, yet it must be conceded that the book is one of considerable power, and contains matter for salutary reflection for anybody who cares to think deeply. “The object of the present work,” says the author, “is to insist that science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the mind.” This suggests that investigation consists in first collecting one’s facts, and then locking one’s laboratory door and retiring to one’s study to work out one’s theories; whereas, in truth, it involves experimentation alternately with things and with the diagrams of things. The realist will hold that this alternation is helpful, because the reason within us and the reason in nature are essentially at one; while the conceptualist will wish to separate his facts and theories as much as possible. He holds that any uniformity or law of nature is, as Prof. Pearson says, a mere “product of the perceptive faculty.” Newton’s great work was “not so much the discovery as the creation of the law of gravitation”; and the force of gravity, because it is a concept, not a percept, has no reality. “The mind of man,” he tells us, “in the process of classifying phenomena and formulating natural law, introduces the element of reason into nature; and the logic man finds in the universe is but the reflection of his 55. Pearson’s Grammar of Science, 1892 353 own reasoning faculty.” This is (as we think) very false; but it is the definite position, broadly taken, of a vigorous thinker. It is hardly necessary to say that the nodus of the whole argument lies in an attempt to show that “the reality of a thing depends upon the possibility of its occurring as a group of immediate sense-impressions.” But the author hardly seems aware that this statement will be regarded by most psychologists as involving an analysis of consciousness now quite out of date. In the first place, it is not possible, as here implied, for the same sense-impression to occur twice. It is an individual event which happens once only. When a sensation had today is said to be identical with one had yesterday, what is true is, that two sensations are recognized to be alike; and this likeness resides not in those sensations, nor in any others, but in the irresistibleness of an act of generalization. Thus, generality is essentially involved in that whereon the reality of a thing is said to depend; and that consideration is fatal to nominalism. Besides, there is no such thing as an “immediate” sense-impression: the only things immediately given are total states of feeling, of which sense-impressions are mere elements; and to say that they are elements is a metaphorical expression, meaning, not that they are in the immediate feeling in its immediateness, but that the act of reflective judgment is irresistible which perceives them there. Here, as before, therefore, a product of analytic thought is detected as essential to that whereon the reality of a thing depends; and, as before, nominalism is refuted. Moreover , in both these cases, and in all others, that which is most essential to reality is the irresistibleness of something; and this sense of resistance is a direct presentation of externality—what Hamilton called an immediate perception. Let the subjectivism out of which nominalism springs be modified by the recognition not merely of immediate feeling , but also of this sense of reaction, and further of the generalizing movement, and it will become a harmless doctrine enough—a mere aspect of realism. In his application of his nominalism to problems of science, Prof. Pearson has adhered to the spirit of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft with surprising fidelity. He has said things which Kant did not say, but which are so completely...

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