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Illustrations of universal progress (1884)
Illustrations of universal progress - 1884 Author:Herbert Spencer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IIL THE GENESIS OF SCIENCE. rr JL has ever prevailed among men a vague notion that scientific knowledge differs in nature from ordinary knowledge. By th... more »e Greeks, with whom Mathematics — literally things learnt — was alons considered as knowledge proper, the distinction must have been strongly felt ; and it has ever since maintained itself in the general mind. Though, considering the contrast between the achievements of science and those of daily untnethodic thinking, it is not surprising that such a distinction has been assumed ; yet it needs but to rise a little above the common point of view, to see that no such distinction can really exist : or that at best, it is but a superficial distinction. The same faculties are employed in both cases ; and in both cases their mode of operation is fundamentally the same. If we say that science is organized knowledge, we are met by the truth that all knowledge is organized in a greater or less degree — that the commonest actions of the household and the field presuppose facts colligated, inferences drawn, results expected ; and that the general success of these actions proves the data by which they were guided to havo been correctly put together. If, again, we say that science is prevision — is a seeing beforehand — is a know- THE GERM OF SCIENCE IN ORDINARY KNOWLEDGE. 117 ing in what times, places, combinations, or sequences, specified phenomena will be found; we are yet obliged to con fess that the definition includes much that is utterly foreign to science in its ordinary acceptation. For example, a child's knowledge of an apple. This, as far as it goes consists in previsions. When a child sees a certain form and colours, it knows that if it puts out its hand it will have certain impressions of resistance, and roundness...« less