Chemistry and biology he includes, on the
contrary, among concrete sciences, because chemical combinations and
decompositions, and the physiological action of tissues, do actually
take place (as our senses testify) in the manner in which the scientific
propositions state them to take place. We will not discuss the logical
or philological propriety of either use of the terms abstract and
concrete, in which twofold point of view very few of the numerous
acceptations of these words are entirely defensible: but of the two
distinctions M. Comte's answers to by far the deepest and most vital
difference. Mr Spencer's is open to the radical objection, that it
classifies truths not according to their subject-matter or their mutual
relations, but according to an unimportant difference in the manner in
which we come to know them. Of what consequence is it that the law of
inertia (considered as an exact truth) is not generalized from our
direct perceptions, but inferred by combining with the movements which
we see, those which we should see if it were not for the disturbing
causes? In either case we are equally certain that it _is_ an exact
truth: for every dynamical law is perfectly fulfilled even when it seems
to be counteracted.
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