Can Prophecy be a science? Science at any rate, appears to aim at prophecy. We are often told that the test of an hypothesis lies in the events that it predicts; but it is a test that is much too rarely applied. We are surprised when Biologists apply it in a systematic way to the theory of evolution. Historians also tell us that the study of the past will help us to foresee the future, but in their practice they hardly succeed in catching up to the present.
The organum of human knowledge, in fact, presents a curious spectacle—a vast system of foundations but no sign of the edifice these foundations are to bear. At least such was the case until recently. In the little prophetic volumes recently published we can see, perhaps, the preliminary sketch of its imposing elevation.
And so another question occurs. What is the future of prophecy? Psychical research may even yet surprise us. Latent powers of divination may lurk in the human mind, but it is premature no doubt to look for enlightenment here. Less sensational but more significant is the emergence of the prophetic function in the work of science itself, and in the pedestrian progress of our general intellectual life in the twentieth century.
It was this prophetic function of scientific thought which the author set out in this little book to investigate, but like other writers in the series he was tempted to “try out” some tentative principles which seemed to promise well. Perhaps the future will reveal some inaccuracies in his forecast, but the digression has been worth while. One thing, at least, is certain. Large scale organization extends to the work of science. In our past experiments we have been too much concerned with events of short