TEXT C Why the inductive and
mathematical sciences, ,after their first rapid development at the culmination
of Greek civilization, advanced so slowly for two thousand years and why
in the following two hundred years a knowledge of natural and mathematical
science has accumulated, which so vastly exceeds all that was previously known
that these sciences may be justly regarded as the products of our own times
are questions which have interested the modern philosopher not less than
the objects with which these sciences are more immediately conversant. Was it
the employment of a new method of research, or in the exercise of greater virtue
in the use of the old methods, that this singular modern phenomenon had its
origin Was the long period one of arrested development, and is the modern era
one of normal growth Or should we ascribe the characteristics of both periods
to sc-called historical accidents to the influence of conjunctions in
circumstances of which no explanation is possible, save in the omnipotence and
wisdom of a guiding Providence The explanation which has become
commonplace, that the ancients employed deduction chiefly in their scientific
inquiries, while the moderns employ induction, proves to be too narrow, and
fails upon close examination to point with sufficient distinctness the contrast
that is evident between ancient and modern scientific doctrines and inquiries.
For all knowledge is founded on observation, and proceeds from this by analysis,
by synthesis and analysis, by induction and deduction, and if possible by
verification, or by new appeals to observation under the guidance of
deduction--by steps which are indeed correlative parts of one method; and the
ancient sciences afford examples of every one of these methods, or parts
of one method, which have been generalized from the examples of
science. A failure to employ or to employ adequately any one of
these partial methods, an imperfection in the arts and resources of observation
and experiment, carelessness in observation, neglect of relevant facts, by
appeal to experiment and observation--these are the faults which cause all
failures to ascertain truth, whether among the ancients or the moderns; but this
statement does not explain why the modern is possessed of a greater virtue, and
by what means he attained his superiority. Much less does it explain the sudden
growth of science in recent time. The attempt to discover the
explanation of this phenomenon in the antithesis of "facts" and "theories" or
"facts" and "ideas"--in the neglect among the ancients of the former, and their
too exclusive attention to the latter proves also to be too narrow, as well as
open to the charge of vagueness. For in the first place, the antithesis is not
complete. Facts and theories are not coordinate species. Theories, if true, are
facts a particular class of facts indeed, generally complex, and if a logical
connection subsists between their constituents, have all the positive attributes
of theories. Nevertheless, this distinction, however inadequate
it may be to explain the source of true method in science, is well founded, and
connotes an important character in true method. A fact is a proposition of
simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true has all the characteristics of a
fact, except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and
difficult means. To convert theories into facts is to add simple verification,
and the theory thus acquires the full characteristics of a fact. According to the author, mathematics is ______.
A．an inductive science B．in need of simple verification C．a deductive science D．based on fact and theory