THE SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION For something like seventy years science has been the dominant intellectual activity of the Western world. During that period the range of its material has greatly increased until now the scientific method is regarded as the method proper to almost any investigation. Philosophy is still a partial exception, but there is a strong tendency to regard such philosophic problems as are not susceptible to the application of the scientific method as being essentially incapable of solution, or else as incorrectly stated. But although the prestige of science is so great, and the general attitude towards it so reverential, there is still much confusion respecting its function and achievement. Its relations to other human interests and activities are not yet clearly defined. The attempts to define them by allotting to science its “sphere” have proved, in the result, to be so ill-judged that it is now considered safer to waive the question of limitations altogether. The question is not settled. Everything is left open, but it is not therefore assumed that science contains or will contain all we know or all we need to know. Science is not yet the one object of our contemplation: we have a number of interests which still lead separate lives. The separation is not complete. Science, if not openly, then indirectly, has invaded every province of the mind, and even a modern musical composition counts Copernicus as well as Beethoven amongst its ancestors. But it is admitted, of course, that we are not usually reminded of astronomy in listening to music; there is a sense in which music, and many other things, are autonomous. But it is interesting to notice that science, to a greater extent than any other pursuit, can be isolated, although its historical direction has been influenced, of course, by social and political accidents. Science has given generously, but has taken comparatively little, and its few borrowings are in process of being handed back with regret as being, after all, unsuitable.