Scientific Method in Biology/Chapter 8
VIII.
WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?
THE apparent opposition between popular and medical judgment in relation to certain methods of biological research, which claim to be scientific, necessitates a clearer knowledge of what science is, and a recognition of the methods of research which can alone be called scientific.
It is certain that knowledge of truth must reconcile varying but honest opinions, and furnish plans of investigation that neither shock the humane development of our nature nor hinder our intellectual progress towards truth.
The terms 'science' and 'scientific' are constantly used and abused. They are often applied to the accumulating of facts or of phenomena; but such accumulation is not necessarily science, and may even hinder science. For although the collecting of facts may bring together valuable materials essential for future use, it may also bring together rotten or sham materials, which will interfere with sound work. A faulty method of endeavouring to obtain facts may seriously destroy the value of the phenomena thus observed.
The gratification simply of intellectual activity or curiosity must not be confounded with genuine research. Curiosity is the outcome of ignorance. Now, our ignorance of much in Nature is no reproach to anyone; but the way in which curiosity is gratified marks the difference between the simple child and the rational adult. In the childish development curiosity, though useful, is superficial and short-sighted; it is necessarily a shallow impulse which cannot realize the wide relations of existence, and its satisfaction has no necessary connection with the acquisition of valuable knowledge. But the adult rises into a higher plane of thought. Curiosity is no longer unduly exercised, but has grown into a love of truth. It has become that reverential use of reason which is the basis of truth, and which forms the true guide to the attainment of scientific knowledge; for rational method does not isolate a fact from all its connections, but sees it in its relations, and in due proportion. Thus only can valuable knowledge be acquired.
Neither is analysis science. It is only when the observations of analysis are corrected and proved by synthesis that the truth of science can be obtained.
A clear recognition of the different use of analysis and of synthesis is essential in any claim of research to be called scientific. 'Although by analysis we separate, and by synthesis we combine, yet in the synthesis there is more than in all the parts taken analytically. The mere synthesis introduces something entirely new.'
Kant, in speaking of the use of analysis and synthesis in logic, lays down the test of all scientific inquiry. He says: 'Analysis is the first and chief requirement in making our knowledge distinct. For the more distinct our knowledge of a thing is, the stronger and more effective it can be; only the analysis must not go so far that at last the object itself disappears.'
Truth being a unity, the science which demonstrates it must correlate all knowledge.
Science is not, therefore, an accumulation of isolated facts, or of facts torn from their natural relations. To know a thing scientifically is to know it in just relation to all other things. For science unites, and demands the exercise of our various faculties, as well as of our senses.
Science is proved knowledge. It is the study of causes and their relations applied to facts; but such proof can only be obtained by search which is in accordance with the laws of Nature—laws which are gradually discovered by our race.
Natural law is deduced from all the facts of human experience. In searching for and collecting which we must recognise the conditions under which we are placed, the limitations of the present phase of our intellectual powers, the gradual growth of conscience.
Science being proved truth, scientific method requires that all the factors which concern the subject of research shall be duly considered, in order to arrive at correct thought respecting the special subject of inquiry.
The application of scientific method necessarily varies, therefore, according to the subject under investigation.
Thus, the construction of a bridge and the calculation of an eclipse equally involve the bases of scientific method, viz.: observation, deduction, and experiment; but each subject requires a special application of scientific method, suited to the varying nature of the subject of study.
Consequently, biological research, in order to be scientific, requires a special modification of method, because the new factors of sensation and consciousness come into play in biology—factors which do not exist in astronomy, or geology, in mechanics, physics, or chemistry.
In order to attain truth respecting biology, therefore, the facts concerning sensation and consciousness, and their relation with, or the way in which these new factors modify the facts of, physics and chemistry, must be carefully considered in this higher state, which we call life, or the investigation is not scientific, no matter how interesting as an intellectual exercise.
When first endeavouring to find a recognised definition of the term 'science,' I consulted the latest 'Encyclopædia Britannica' of our public library, thinking that from such an acknowledged authority a correct statement could there be obtained. To my surprise, I found that the word 'science' was not included in the list of subjects. Searching further in this record of nineteenth-century thought, under the head of 'Biology'—that department which is ordinarily supposed to be the science of life, as distinguished from the consideration of non-living things—the following principle was found to be laid down, viz., that there was no essential difference between organized and unorganized Nature, for life was simply a property of matter.
It is well to weigh the argument for this doctrine, which necessarily destroys the essential idea of right and wrong, and removes the foundation of good and evil. It is set forth in the following manner:
'The abstract-concrete sciences are mechanics, physics, chemistry. . . . Whilst their subject-matter is found in a consideration of varied concrete phenomena, they do not aim at a determination of certain "abstract" quantitative relations and sequences known as "laws," which never are manifested in a pure form, but always are inferred, by observation and experiment upon complex phenomena, in which the abstract laws are disguised by their simultaneous interaction. . . . These sciences of mechanics, physics, and chemistry have for their object to explain concrete phenomena, by reference to the properties of matter set forth in their generalizations.’
The following important dictum in regard to biology is thus laid down:
'It is the business of those occupied with that branch to assign living things in all their variety to the one set of forces recognised by the physicist and chemist . . . and its evolution' (that is, the evolution of life) 'as the necessary outcome of those forces—the automatic product of those same forces. . . . The discovery of the mechanical principle of evolution completed the doctrine' (of the material origin of life). '. . . It may be said to comprise the history of man, sociology, and psychology, viz., the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence.'
This ignoring by the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' of any definition of the word 'science,' and also the attempted reduction of life to a property of matter, is, however, too limited a view of Nature to be accepted by many thoughtful students of the present day. Turning, therefore, to 'Chambers's Cyclopædia,' which is the latest expression of the views of the able thinkers of North Britain, an explanation of the term 'science' was found, which is far truer to advancing thought. The comprehensive definition is there given that science 'is the correlation of all knowledge.'
As science searches for causes with their relations, and is proved knowledge, so no branch of knowledge or method of acquiring knowledge can be considered scientific which contradicts any facts of Nature, or which bases its methods on the destruction of those facts.
Truth can only he arrived at by considering various or apparently opposite aspects of human problems; so biological facts, or the problems of organized or living creatures, must be considered, not simply from the side of 'mechanics, physics, and chemistry, or the automatic action of the forces of matter,' but also from the equally positive facts of life, and the forces which careful observation is gradually showing to be enfolded in the fact of mind as developed through protoplasm onward. The facts of affection, companionship, sympathy, justice, are positive forces. They exercise a powerful influence over the physical organization of all living creatures.
These mental forces can change the action of the bodily functions in the most surprising manner, arresting the heart's action, interfering with secretion, or changing natural secretion into poison, and destroying the normal and beneficial controlling action of the nervous system. They are proved by experience to be so striking that they cannot be overlooked in any unprejudiced investigation of natural forces.
A fit of passion in a nursing mother has destroyed her infant; the industrious cultivator, seeing his field of strawberries, the products of his toil, carried off by thieves, has fallen dead in his vain efforts to stop the cruel depredation. But such instances are world-wide, and corroborated by everyone's experience. They prove that, although the force of mechanics, physics, and chemistry are employed in the animal economy, there are also powers far beyond these limited forces, which must be studied also in biological research, if we are to learn how these physical may be overridden by mental forces. Without such correlation of knowledge we fail to realize the unity of Nature, and cannot attain to true science or proved knowledge.
It is thus seen that, as already stated, in useful scientific investigation, the object to be attained, the method to be employed, and the application to be made of the knowledge searched for, must all be considered in determining the distinction between genuine science and simple unguided intellectual activity or curiosity.
It is necessary to emphasize the fact, because this vital distinction is often overlooked in the claim now made for the grand term 'science.'
In defining the meaning and scope of science as pursued by rational beings, it must be recognised as a fundamental principle, which cannot be too often dwelt upon, that what we can do, is not a measure of what we ought to do. Thus, when Stanley attempted to excuse the infamous action of his naturalist, Jameson,[1] by saying that he was a real good fellow, but 'his science misled him,' he degraded the term 'science' by applying it to an act of morbid curiosity.
Again, when the Russian nobleman purchased a child and condemned it to be brought up with a deaf and dumb nurse, under the unnatural condition of deprivation of all social relations, his action was not scientific, but a gratification of inhuman curiosity.
It is within our power apparently to drown an animal, human or brute, and recover it to life again and again, but we gain no scientific knowledge by so doing. We torture the creature and violate our natural instincts, but we acquire no practical benefit to human welfare; on the contrary, we endanger the mental integrity of the experimenter.
It is a short-sighted and hopeless attempt to do violence to Nature in a search for scientific truth. Distinction must be made between the possible and impossible in the conditions under which we are placed in life. Thus, we cannot destroy the family relation, but we can make it happy and conducive to the welfare of the race. We cannot change the method of human generation, but we can spiritualize its exercise. We cannot destroy the instinct of private property, but we can guide and limit it. We cannot change structure, but we can educate it; nor abolish curiosity, but we can restrain and direct it; nor check invention, but it need not be applied to evil purposes. Neither can we make races equal, but we can establish justice and mercy in the relations of the stronger to the weaker.
This study of the natural laws, which necessarily limit rational human action, applies with especial force to biological research, and explains the reason for limiting scientific method.
Thus, the study of living creatures under unnatural or destructive conditions, although it may be a well-meaning attempt to acquire knowledge, is nevertheless a dangerous one. It is intellectually a false method, which may lead to practical error, and produce a labyrinth of confusion and contradictory experience which hinders the attainment of exact knowledge. It is morally a false method, because it injures those elementary instincts of justice and mercy by whose evolution civilization advances. Thus the progress of the race is retarded.
The present astounding multiplication of drugs, of inoculations, of mutilations in the practice of medicine, with the eager attempt to prove each new invention by a formidable array of imperfect statistics, is a striking object-lesson in the present day, of the error into which false methods of research have led many members of a noble and humane profession. It is a fallacy necessarily proceeding from a wrong view of what science really is.
Although this erroneousness is by no means solely connected with vivisectional methods, yet if the high claim which the noble art of medicine makes to advance our social well-being be justly founded, a stringent obligation rests upon it not to injure the moral sense of its members by the methods employed in education or in practice.
- ↑ This naturalist, when amongst cannibals in the Emin Pasha Expedition, bribed the cannibal tribe to eat a young negro girl.