SCIENCE, in philosophy, denotes any doctrine,
deduced from self-evident principles.
Sciences may be properly divided as follows. 1. The
knowledge of things, their constitutions, properties,
and operations: this, in a little more enlarged sense of
the word, may be called physics, or natural philosophy;
the end of which is speculative truth. See NATURAL
Philosophy, and Physics.—2. The skill of rightly apply-
ing these powers, practical: The most considerable un-
der this head is ethics, which is the seeking out those
rules and measures of human actions that lead to hap-
piness, and the means to practise them, (see MORAL
Philosophy); and the next is mechanics, or the appli-
cation of the powers of natural agents to the uses of
life, (see MECHANICS).—3. The doctrine of signs,
oracular; the most usual of which being words, it is
aptly enough termed logic. See LOGIC.
This, says Mr Locke, seems to be the most general,
as well as natural, division of the objects of our un-
derstanding. For a man can employ his thoughts
about nothing but either the contemplation of things
themselves for the discovery of truth; or about the
things in his own power, which are his actions, for
the attainment of his own ends; or the signs the mind
makes use of both in the one and the other, and the
right ordering of them for its clearer information. All
which three, viz. things as they are in themselves
knowable, actions as they depend on us in order to
happiness, and the right use of signs in order to
knowledge, being totum cælo different, they seem to be
the three great provinces of the intellectual world,
wholly separate and distinct one from another.