Bibliography

Minute Logic: Chapter II. Prelogical Notions. Section I. Classification of the Sciences

It is essential, at the very threshold of logic, to distinguish between a percept, which is what the senses perceive, and which is an object of study for the intellect, and a perceptual fact, which the understanding perceives in the percept, and which is the first fruit of observation. Photographs, even when they show no more than the eye can see, are most valuable in sciences of observation; they are stored up percepts. But they in no degree enable us to dispose with scientific descriptions, which are records of perceptual facts, the basis of all else in science.

It is essential, at the very threshold of logic, to distinguish between a percept, which is what the senses perceive, and which is an object of study for the intellect, and a perceptual fact, which the understanding perceives in the percept, and which is the first fruit of observation. Photographs, even when they show no more than the eye can see, are most valuable in sciences of observation; they are stored up percepts. But they in no degree enable us to dispose with scientific descriptions, which are records of perceptual facts, the basis of all else in science.

Science is research; and research is science, from the first moment when the researcher casts aside all desire to prove his present opinions right, and burns with ardent desire to find out wherein they are wrong. Science thus consists in a disposition of living men; and therefore, the true divisions of science will be those which divide living men.