Philosophy and Specific Problems [pp. 208-232]

2THE PRINCE TON RE VIE W.
mental features and larger generalizations of physical science
itself.
(I) For physical science, as for all science, it is not informa tion, however abundant, respecting particular facts, which consti tutes scientific knowledge as such. To be aware that apples
fall to the ground and the planets move in certain apparent direc tions is not of itself enough to constitute scientific knowledge of
these phenomena. These facts may be noticed by an idiot. They
are not scientifically known until they are explained, and expla nation results simply from the discovery of something common
to the two cases and to all similar cases-something" universal"
about them-viz. the common rule of their motion, or the socalled law of gravitation. When, therefore, we say that philosophy has the form of knowledge of the universal, we simply say
that it has the form of science.
(2) As regards its substance, physical science is "knowledge
of the universal or absolute nature of experimental reality"
within the peculiar sphere to which such science is confined. This
sphere is the sphere of sensible existence, qua sensible. In its
largest generalizations physical science is therefore the "science
of (sensible) being as such." The results of these generalizations,
which are well known, are indeed highly abstract and come far
short of that which all men, including the scientific generalizers
themselves, by an inexpugnable conviction believe to be given in
their whole and immediate experience. These results, summarily expressed, are that sensible existence, qua sensible, is not substantial, but phenomenal. It is not, for example, matter as a substantive or independent and absolute existence which is sensibly
known to us, but only" figured space." Nor have we sensible
knowledge of powers or forces, but only of motions. The world
of physical science, as such, is therefore described by the scientist
as simply a world of "configuration and motion." It is a world
of sensible phenomena spatially separate or "coexistent" and
temporally sequent. These phenomena constitute to sense an
aggregate and not an organic whole. No one phenomenon by its
nature implies another. The relations among them, the rules or
"laws" of coexistence and sequence, are hence purely mechanical and capable of exact expression in the form, and only in the
form, of mathematical formula. Thus physical science is, within
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