nceptions of Natural Science. The
Descriptive Method.]

Sect. 46. If natural science be animated by any special cognitive
interest, this motive should appear in the development of its method and
fundamental conceptions. If that interest has been truly defined, it
should now enable us to understand the progressive and permanent in
scientific investigation as directly related to it. For the aim of any
discipline exercises a gradual selection from among possible methods,
and gives to its laws their determinate and final form.

The _descriptive method_ is at the present day fully established. A
leading moral of the history of science is the superior usefulness of an
exact account of the workings of nature to an explanation in terms of
some qualitative potency. Explanation has been postponed by enlightened
science until after a more careful observation of actual processes shall
have been made; and at length it has been admitted that there is no need
of any explanation but perfect description. Now the practical use of
science defined above, requires no knowledge beyond the actual order of
events. For such a purpose sufficient reason signifies only sufficient
conditions. All other considerations are irrelevant, and it is proper
to ignore them. Such has actually been the fate of the so-called
metaphysical solution of special problems of nature. The case of Kepler
is the classic instance. This great scientist supplemented his laws of
planetary motion with the following speculation concerning the agencies
at work:

"We must suppose one of two things: either that the moving
spirits, in proportion as they are more removed from the sun,
are more feeble; or that there is one moving spirit in the
centre of all the orbits, namely, in the sun, which urges each
body the more vehemently in proportion as it is nearer; but in
more distant spaces languishes in consequence of the
remoteness and attenuation of its virtue."[129:2]

The following passage from Hegel affords an interesting analogy:

"The moon is the waterless crystal which seeks to complete
itself by means of our sea, to quench the thirst of its arid
rigidity, and therefore produces ebb and flow."[129:3]

No scientist has ever sought to refute either of these theories. They
have merely been neglected.

They were advanced in obedience to a demand for the ultimate
explanation of the phenomena in question, and were obtained by