There is a general belief that science can answer the riddle. But science is only one possible view of things, the one best adapted to the needs of creatures like ourselves. It cannot deal with questions of value. It can tell us how things operate, their relative mass and positions in space and time, but it cannot tell us what they are in themselves, nor why they exist nor anything about their goodness or beauty. The more exact scientific knowledge becomes, the more closely it approaches mathematics. Pure mathematics deals only with abstractions and logical relations and can dismiss the whole world of objects. Science presupposes the data of experience and the validity of its own logical principles. It substitutes its mechanized order of things for things as we experience them. Human reasoning is partial in all its processes. We think successfully about things when we ignore all the aspects or qualities of them except those which are relevant to the purpose at hand. The H₂O-ness of water is no more the ultimate nature of water than is its wetness, or its thirst quenching quality. That it is H₂O is only one of the things that may be said about water. Now if we add together bits of one-sided and partial scientific knowledge, we do not thereby gain a sum total which is the equivalent of reality as a whole. We have a useful instrument for dealing with our environment, because in thought we have greatly simplified it by ignoring in each instance all that is irrelevant. But what we now have is a universe of discourse, a human construction which is what it is because we are always more interested in some aspects of things than in others.