Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Volume II. Spencer Herbert

      Issue is here raised in a form convenient for elucidation of the general question. It is true that, for purposes of identification , a chemist gives an account of all the sensible characters of a substance. He sets down its crystalline form, its specific gravity, its power of refracting light, its behaviour as magnetic or diamagnetic. But does he thereby include these phenomena as part of the Science of Chemistry? It seems to me that the relation between the weight of any portion of matter and its bulk, which is ascertained on measuring its specific gravity, is a physical and not a chemical fact. I think, too, that the physicist will claim, as part of his science, all investigations touching the refraction of light: be the substance producing this refraction what it may. And the circumstance that the chemist may test the magnetic or diamagnetic property of a body, as a means of ascertaining what it is, or as a means of helping other chemists to determine whether they have got before them the same body, will neither be held by the chemist, nor allowed by the physicist, to imply a transfer of magnetic phenomena from the domain of the one to that of the other. In brief, though the chemist, in his account of an element or a compound, may refer to certain physical traits associated with its molecular constitution and affinities, he does not by so doing change these into chemical traits. Whatever chemists may put into their books, Chemistry, considered as a science, includes only the phenomena of molecular structures and changes – of compositions and decompositions. 12 I contend, then, that Chemistry does not give an account of anything as a concrete whole, in the same way that Biology gives an account of an organism as a concrete whole. This will become even more manifest on observing the character of the biological account. All the attributes of an organism are comprehended, from the most general to the most special – from its conspicuous structural traits to its hidden and faint ones; from its outer actions that thrust themselves on the attention, to the minutest sub-divisions of its multitudinous internal functions; from its character as a germ, through the many changes of size, form, organization, and habit, it goes through until death; from the physical characters of it as a whole, to the physical characters of its microscopic cells, and vessels, and fibres; from the chemical characters of its substance in general to the chemical characters of each tissue and each secretion – all these, with many others. And not only so, but there is comprehended as the ideal goal of the science, the consensus of all these phenomena in their co-existences and successions, as constituting a coherent individualized group definitely combined in space and in time. It is this recognition of individuality in its subject-matter, that gives its concreteness to Biology, as to every other Concrete Science. As Astronomy deals with bodies that have their several proper names, or (as with the smaller stars) are registered by their positions, and considers each of them as a distinct individual – as Geology, while dimly perceiving in the Moon and nearest planets other groups of geological phenomena (which it would deal with as independent wholes, did not distance forbid), occupies itself with that individualized group presented by the Earth; so Biology treats either of an individual distinguished from all others, or of parts or products belonging to such an individual, or of structural or functional traits common to many such individuals that have been observed, and supposed to be common to others that are like them in most or all of their attributes. Every biological truth connotes a specifically individualized object, or a number of specifically individualized objects of the same kind, or numbers of different kinds that are severally specific. See, then, the contrast. The truths of the Abstract-Concrete Sciences do not imply specific individuality. Neither Molar Physics, nor Molecular Physics, nor Chemistry, concerns itself with this. The laws of motion are expressed without any reference whatever to the sizes or shapes of the moving masses; which may be taken indifferently to be suns or atoms. The relations between contraction and the escape of molecular motion, and between expansion and the absorption of molecular motion, are expressed in their general forms without reference to the kind of matter; and, if the degree of either that occurs in a particular kind of matter is formulated, no note is taken of the quantity of that matter, much less of its individuality. Similarly with Chemistry. When it inquires into the atomic weight, the molecular structure, the atomicity, the combining proportions, etc., of a substance, it is indifferent whether a grain or a ton be thought of – the conception of amount is absolutely irrelevant. And so with more special attributes. Sulphur, considered chemically, is not sulphur under its crystalline form, or under its allotropic viscid form, or as a liquid, or as a gas; but it is sulphur considered apart from those attributes of quantity, and shape, and state, that give individuality.

      Prof. Bain objects to the division I have drawn between the Concrete Science of Astronomy and that Abstract-Concrete Science which deals with the mutually-modified motions of hypothetical masses in space, as “not a little arbitrary.” He says: —

      “We can suppose a science to confine itself solely to the ‘factors,’ or the separated elements, and never, on any occasion, to combine two into a composite third. This position is intelligible, and possibly defensible. For example, in Astronomy, the Law of Persistence of Motion in a straight line might be discussed in pure ideal separation; and so, the Law of Gravity might be discussed in equally pure separation – both under the Abstract-Concrete department of Mechanics. It might then be reserved to a concrete department to unite these in the explanation of a projectile or of a planet. Such, however, is not Mr. Spencer’s boundary line. He allows Theoretical Mechanics to make this particular combination, and to arrive at the laws of planetary movement, in the case of a single planet. What he does not allow is, to proceed to the case of two planets, mutually disturbing one another, or a planet and a satellite, commonly called the ‘problem of the Three Bodies.’”

      If I held what Prof. Bain supposes me to hold, my position would be an absurd one; but he misapprehends me. The misapprehension results in part from his having here, as before, used the word “concrete” with the Comtean meaning, as though it were my meaning; and in part from the inadequacy of my explanation. I did not in the least mean to imply that the Abstract-Concrete Science of Mechanics, when dealing with the motions of bodies in space, is limited to the interpretation of planetary movement such as it would be did only a single planet exist. It never occurred to me that my words might be so construed. Abstract-Concrete problems admit, in fact, of being complicated indefinitely, without going in the least beyond the definition. I do not draw the line, as Prof. Bain alleges, between the combination of two factors and the combination of three, or between the combination of any number and any greater number. I draw the line between the science which deals with the theory of the factors, taken singly and in combinations of two, three, four, or more, and the science which, giving to these factors the values derived from observations of actual objects, uses the theory to explain actual phenomena.