Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, 1898, Vol. 9
Now it must be maintained on the scientific side that not only is the negative postulate true in itself, but it has been the pole-star of inductive science. In astronomy, chemistry, physics and biol ogy it has exercised a transforming in?uence, and its fruits are its best evidence. Being a universal negative, it is incapable of direct proof; but all scientific discoveries verify its claims. Nor can we easily overrate the services it has rendered to religion as well as to civilization, in curing credulity and abolishing the resort to demonology, and in emancipating us from intellectual servitude and there are not lacking indications which prove that its iconoclastic services are still required by society. Its one scientific rule is that, in exploring nature, we are not to introduce assumptions of the extra-natural interference of imp, angel or God. The investi gator who dares to supplement known physical causes with unknown assumptions of a different order, may find his progress easy, but the result is worse than worthless. He is only placing Obstacles in his own path, and will certainly be outrun by the competitor who seeks the causes of phenomena in nature itself.
The negative rule being somewhat indefinite, we must mark some limitations, which yet are not so Obvious as to prevent their being sometimes overlooked.
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