To my mind, whatever doctrine professes to be the result of the
application of the accepted rules of inductive and deductive
logic to its subject-matter; and which accepts, within the
limits which it sets to itself, the supremacy of reason, is
Science. Whether the subject-matter consists of realities or
unrealities, truths or falsehoods, is quite another question. I
conceive that ordinary geometry is science, by reason of its
method, and I also believe that its axioms, definitions, and
conclusions are all true. However, there is a geometry of four
dimensions, which I also believe to be science, because its
method professes to be strictly scientific. It is true that I
cannot conceive four dimensions in space, and therefore, for me,
the whole affair is unreal. But I have known men of great
intellectual powers who seemed to have no difficulty either in
conceiving them, or, at any rate, in imagining how they could
conceive them; and, therefore, four-dimensioned geometry comes
under my notion of science. So I think astrology is a science,
in so far as it professes to reason logically from principles
established by just inductive methods. To prevent
misunderstanding, perhaps I had better add that I do not believe
one whit in astrology; but no more do I believe in Ptolemaic
astronomy, or in the catastrophic geology of my youth, although
these, in their day, claimed--and, to my mind, rightly claimed--
the name of science. If nothing is to be called science but that
which is exactly true from beginning to end, I am afraid there
is very little science in the world outside mathematics.
Among the physical sciences, I do not know that any could claim
more than that it is true within certain limits, so narrow that,
for the present at any rate, they may be neglected. If such is