The functions of the family in a highly differentiated society are not to be interpreted as functions directly on behalf of the society, but on behalf of personality.
A gloss is a total system of perception and language.
The importance of certain problems concerning the facts will be inherent in the structure of the system.
That is, a system starts with a group of interrelated propositions which involve reference to empirical observations within the logical framework of the propositions in question.
Spencer's god was Evolution, sometimes also called Progress.
If there are four equations and only three variables, and no one of the equations is derivable from the others by algebraic manipulation then there is another variable missing.
It is that of increasing knowledge of empirical fact, intimately combined with changing interpretations of this body of fact - hence changing general statements about it - and, not least, a changing a structure of the theoretical system.
The system becomes logically closed when each of the logical implications which can be derived from any one proposition within the system finds its statement in another proposition in the same system.
A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed.
Now obviously the propositions of the system have reference to matters of empirical fact; if they did not, they could have no claim to be called scientific.
Special emphasis should be laid on this intimate interrelation of general statements about empirical fact with the logical elements and structure of theoretical systems.
The hypothesis may be put forward, to be tested by the s subsequent investigation, that this development has been in large part a matter of the reciprocal interaction of new factual insights and knowledge on the one hand with changes in the theoretical system on the other.
But the scientific importance of a change in knowledge of fact consists precisely in j its having consequences for a system of theory.
Among those who are satisfactory in this respect it is desirable to have represented as great a diversity of intellectual tradition, social milieu and personal character as possible.
But the fact a person denies that he is theorising is no reason for taking him at his word and failing to investigate what implicit theory is involved in his statements.
From all this it follows what the general character of the problem of the development of a body of scientific knowledge is, in so far as it depends on elements internal to science itself.