ervations. They
have noted that, given certain conditions, certain results
follow. They observe that animals with given similarities of
form and structure have certain identical ways of life, that
some substances are malleable and others not, that dew
appears at certain times in the day on certain objects and not
on others. They have generalized from these; and we now
call such generalizations law. These generalizations when
gathered into a system constitute a science.

The sciences started out with unconfirmed guesses based
on not very accurate information. As man's methods became
more precise, he controlled the conditions under which
observations were made, and the conditions under which generalizations
were drawn from them. The control of the conditions
and methods of observation constitute what is known as
induction in science. To this phase of the reflective process
belong all the instruments for precise observation which
characterize the scientific laboratory. The control of the methods
by which generalizations or theories are built up from these
facts is also part of the logic of induction, and includes all the
canons and regulations for inductive inference.

But generalizations once made must be tested, and the
elaboration of these generalizations, the analysis of them into
their precise bearings, constitute that part of the process of
reasoning known as deduction. The final verification is again
inductive, an experimental corroboration of theories by the
facts already at hand and by facts additionally sought out
and observed.

(These processes will be discussed in detail in the chapter
on "Science and Scientific Method.")

However complicated the process of inquiry may become,
the sciences remain essentially man's mode of satisfying his
disinterested curiosity about the world in which he is living.
Through the sciences man makes himself, as has been so often
said, at home in the world. He substitutes for the "blooming,
buzzing confusion" which is the world as he first knows it,
order, system, and law. Primitive man, absurd as seems to
us his belief in a world of magic, of malicious demons and
capricious gods, was trying to make sense out of the meaningless
medley in which he seemed to find himself. Through
science, modern man is likewise trying to make sense out of
his world. The more apparently disconnected and incongruous
facts that can be brought within the compass of simple
and perfectly regular l