Endless
variety and complexity confront us all in the beginning. There is
indeed an order and classification of things in nature, but it does not
appear on the surface, and for centuries men remained ignorant of the
underlying harmony. Nature is full of valuable secrets, but they lie
concealed from the careless eye. They are to be detected by prying
deeper into individual facts, by putting a thing here and a thing there
together, by pondering on the relationship of things to each other in
their nature, appearance, and cause. It is a remarkable fact that we
not only increase knowledge best by analyzing, comparing, and
classifying objects, experience, and phenomena--even into old age--but
that the deeper we penetrate into the individual qualities and inner
nature of objects, the more we extend and classify our information, the
simpler all the operations of nature become to our understanding. The
surprising simplicity and unity of nature in her varied phenomena is
one of the mature products of scientific study. The most scientific
thinker, then, is only trying to reduce to a simple explanation the
same puzzle which confronted the infant in its cradle. The problem is
the same and the method similar.
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