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that the essential thing in the scientific pro- cess is not the collection of facts, but the analysis of facts. Facts are the raw mate- rial and not the substance of science. JJti is analysis that has given us all ordered' knowledge, and you know that the aim and the test and the justification of the scientific process is not a marketable conjuring trick, but prophecy. Until a scientific theory yields confident forecasts you know it is un- sound and tentative; it is mere theorizing, as evanescent as art talk or the phantoms politicians talk about. The splendid body of gravitational astronomy, for example, es- tablishes itself upon the certain forecast of stellar movements, and you would absolute- ly refuse to believe its amazing assertions if it were not for these same unerring fore- casts. The whole body of medical science aims, and claims the ability, to diagnose. Meteorology constantly and persistently aims at prophecy, and it will never stand in a place of honor until it can certainly fore- tell. The chemist forecasts elements before he meets themit is very properly his boast =and the splendid manner in which the mind of Clerk Maxwell reached in front of all experiments and foretold those things that Marconi has materialized is familiar to us all. All applied mathematics resolves into computation to foretell things which otherwise can only be determined by trial. Even in so unscientific a science as economics there have been forecasts. And if I am right in saying that science aims at prophecy, and if the specialist in each science is in fact doing his best now to prophesy within the limits of his field, what is there to stand in the way of our building up this growing body offorecast into an ordered picture of the future that will be just as certain, just as stri...
