[T]his work... is... intended to arouse and stimulate the reader's own thought, rather than to inculcate doctrine: this result is often best achieved… - Karl Pearson

Professor Huxley has invented the term Agnostic... for those who limit the possibility of knowledge in certain fields. ...Professor E. du Bois-Reymond has raised the cry "Ignorabimus" ("We shall be ignorant") and... undertaken the difficult task of demonstrating that with regard to certain problems human knowledge is impossible. ...Now ...there is great danger in this cry. ...[T]he attempt to demonstrate an endless futurity of ignorance ...approaches despair. ...Evolution has taught us of the continual growth of man's intellectual powers.

Step by step men of science are coming to recognise that mechanism is not at the bottom of phenomena, but is only the conceptual shorthand by aid of which they can briefly describe and resume phenomena.

If any... work gives a description of phenomena that appeals to... imagination rather than to... reason, then it is bad science.