INTRODUCTION
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The treatise of a master needs no commendation through the words of a mere learner. But, since my friend and former fellow student, the translator of this volume, has joined with another of my colleagues, Professor Cattell, in asking me to undertake the task of calling the attention of my fellow students to the importance and to the scope of M. Poincaré’s volume, I accept the office, not as one competent to pass judgment upon the book, but simply as a learner, desirous to increase the number of those amongst us who are already interested in the type of researches to which M. Poincaré has so notably contributed.
I
The branches of inquiry collectively known as the Philosophy of Science have undergone great changes since the appearance of Herbert Spencer’s First Principles, that volume which a large part of the general public in this country used to regard as the representative compend of all modern wisdom relating to the foundations of scientific knowledge. The summary which M. Poinearé gives, at the outset of his own introduction to the present work, where he states the view which the ‘superficial observer’ takes of scientific truth, suggests, not indeed Spencer’s own most characteristic theories, but something of the spirit in which many disciples of Spencer interpreting their master’s formulas used to conceive the position which science occupies in dealing with experience. It was well known to them, indeed, that experience is a constant guide, and an inexhaustible source both of novel scientific results and of unsolved problems; but the fundamental Spencerian principles of science, such as ‘the persistence of force,’ the ‘rhythm of motion’ and the rest, were treated by Spencer himself as demonstrably objective, although
