A History of Science, vol 1 by Henry Smith Williams (red white and royal blue hardcover .TXT) 📕

ation ofgeneral ideas or principles. In the familiar definition ofHerbert Spencer, science is organized knowledge.

Now it is patent enough, at first glance, that the veriest savagemust have been an observer of the phenomena of nature. But it maynot be so obvious that he must also have been a classifier of hisobservations--an organizer of knowledge. Yet the more we considerthe case, the more clear it will become that the two methods aretoo closely linked together to be dissevered. To observe outsidephenomena is not more inherent in the nature of the mind than todraw inferences from these phenomena. A deer passing through theforest scents the ground and detects a certain odor. A sequenceof ideas is generated in the mind of the deer. Nothing in thedeer's experience can produce that odor but a wolf; therefore thescientific inference is drawn that wolves have passed that way.But it is a part of the deer's scientific knowledge, based onprevious experience, individual and racial; that wolves areda