Science of Review

We are now in condition to see that a sub-branch of science has been omitted. It is a department perfectly well recognized. It belongs by virtue of its purpose to the branch of theoretical science; and yet it varies that purpose. It is the subject of Humboldt’s Cosmos, called by Comte philosophie positive, by Herbert Spencer, synthetic philosophy. Its object is to sum up the results of all the theoretical sciences and to study them as forming one system. I am somewhat inclined to call it popular science; but Spencer’s adjective synthetic is better. It may be still more explicit to distinguish it as reviewing science from the first sub-branch of advancing science.

By “science of review” is meant the business of those who occupy themselves with arranging the results of discovery, beginning with digests, and going on to endeavor to form a philosophy of science. Such is the nature of Humboldt’s Kosmos, of Comte’s Philosophie positive, and of Spencer’s Synthetic Philosophy. The classification of the sciences belongs to this department.

Science of Review is that science which endeavors to form a systematized digest of the whole or some part of human knowledge, using whatever the science of discovery has brought to light and filling up its lacunae for its own purpose by investigations of its own.

[Tactic science] prepares known truth for application by collecting it, arranging it, digesting it, generalizing what has been left fragmentary, and establishing the true theory of the history of science.

The second group of sciences, which I call the Systematic Sciences, consists of that activity which is motivated, not so much by a desire to add to human knowledge, as by the desire to render what has already been discovered comprehensible, in a wide sense of the term; that is, to put it into such shape that the mind can grasp and handle it with facility. The systematic scientists sort out the results of the heuretic scientists, subject these results to a criticism more comprehensive than the latter scientists in their narrow specification are in a condition to apply, deduce the best conclusions, which they digest in handbooks, and go on first to the classification of the sciences and to the characterization of the different classes, and finally proceed to such broad surveys as the ‘Philosophie Positive’ of Comte and the ‘Synthetic Philosophy’ of Spencer.

Tagmatic Science may be defined as all that knowledge that is collected in books for a purpose other than that of showing how it can be usefully applied to a definite purpose or class of purposes, but for one of these three ends, 1^st, to enable those who consult the books to learn all known facts concerning certain subjects, 2^nd, to furnish the history of attempts to gain certain kinds of knowledge or 3^dly, to base upon the the collection some theory or philosophy of science.

Let science of review include all handbooks and digests, all such work as those [of] Comte, Whevell, and Spencer, all classifications and histories of science, etc.