Preliminary statement : a synthesis of modern science / by Marshall Bruce Williams.

  • Bruce-Williams, Marshall.
Date:
[1905]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Preliminary statement : a synthesis of modern science / by Marshall Bruce Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    There is a growing impatience with these ever neir cartloadii (tj bricks, an increasing demand for a view of the Iniilding which it is proposed to make out of those we have. Tlie general feeling of the leaders of the scientific world is that a Synthesis is needed, that shall hind together in one harmonious whole the various special sciences, that in doing so the field of terminology shall he put in some temporary order; more is not })ossihle, since nothing remains permanent in life, and that such an organisation shall map out the fields of unexplored sciences in an almost antomatic or mathematical manner. There is a feeling that if this is not done, the scientific world on the one hand will soon reach the limits of its great discoveries, and on the other hand the world of kiwicledge will not operate with full power on the world of action. In putting forwai’d a claim to have provided such a method of organising the sciences I do not mean to say that it is the only way. I think an ingenious mind, starting from the point of view 1 do in attacking the ])rohlem, could find many, all of ivkicli might he more or les.^ practical. Nature contains more combinations than man is ever likely to discover, and we ever skirt, however deep we go, the mei’est fringe of her activities. I believe that in attacking the sociological problem through a Tiieoretic Unit, a Unit the special sciences will slowly learn to