Without intending any such slur, I may
still say that language and statements are worthy of the name
scientific as they approach this standard; and, moreover, that a
great deal is said and written which does not fulfil the
requirement. The fact that words lose their meaning when removed
from the connections in which that meaning has been acquired and
put to higher uses, is one which, I think, is rarely recognized.
There is nothing in the history of philosophical inquiry more
curious than the frequency of interminable disputes on subjects
where no agreement can be reached because the opposing parties do
not use words in the same sense. That the history of science is
not free from this reproach is shown by the fact of the long
dispute whether the force of a moving body was proportional to the
simple velocity or to its square. Neither of the parties to the
dispute thought it worth while to define what they meant by the
word "force," and it was at length found that if a definition was
agreed upon the seeming difference of opinion would vanish.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the case, and one peculiar to
a scientific dispute, was that the opposing parties did not differ
in their solution of a single mechanical problem.
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