Article March 28, 1908 ISSUE

The meaning of the word science is often quite as...

Frederick Dixon

Stroud (Eng.) News

The meaning of the word science is often quite as thoughtlessly perverted as the word Christian. The Oxford dictionary has not yet reached the word, but I take the definition from Chambers, which is in agreement with all other authorities: "Knowledge systematized; truth ascertained ; pursuit of knowledge or truth for its own sake; that which refers to abstract principle." Now if there is one charge that is flung at Christian Science more frequently than another, it is that it refers to abstract principles. If there is any admission which the opponents of Christian Science are willing to make, it is that Christian Scientists are at least pursuing truth for its own sake, and if there is one thing that can be said of it with greater confidence than another, it is that it is the effort to systematize knowledge. That its basis of systematization is different from that of the materialist is obvious, but that does not in the least make its methods unscientific.

One of the most thoughtful critics of Christian Science writes, "We have been accustomed to regard science as dealing with secondary causes or physical facts," and on this promptly bases the objection to applying the term to primary causes, which are declared to be "in the domain of unprovable assumptions." Of course, if you begin by begging the question on a colossal scale, by being so unscientific as to assume that you can know nothing of primary causes, you are never likely to. You establish an orthodox science just as orthodox religion has been established, and you regard the scientific heretic with the same suspicion that Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin were once regarded theologically.

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