Abstract
ONE chief merit of this book is its exposition of the meaning of scientific law. There still exists, unfortunately, a type of mind which delights in such phrases as “the reign of law,” the “immutable laws of Nature,” and so on. The truly scientific mind has, however, been long familiar with the truth that a so-called law of Nature is simply a convenient formula for the co-ordination of a certain range of phenomena. It is this which Prof. Pearson so emphatically, if somewhat redundantly, expounds in the earlier chapters of the “Grammar.” As he delights in putting it, a scientific law is a description in mental shorthand of certain sequences of sense-impressions. Through these sense-impressions alone can we gain any knowledge of what we are accustomed to call the external world. Thus the Universe as pictured by the scientific mind is a purely mental product. We can assert, scientifically, nothing regarding its constitution other than what we may validly infer from our perceptions and the conceptions based on these; and even then we must never forget that the reality to us is conditioned wholly by our powers of perception. This is the grand argument of the grammarian of science.
The Grammar of Science.
By Karl Pearson, Sir Thomas Gresham's Professor of Geometry. “The Contemporary Science Series.” (London: Walter Scott, 1892.)
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K., C. The Grammar of Science. Nature 46, 97–99 (1892). https://doi.org/10.1038/046097a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/046097a0
