The latter half of the nineteenth century saw the most rapid expansion of scientific thinking in history, based primarily on the willingness of thinkers to test their concepts by experiment, so that these could be conformed to observation. The discovery of Christian Science occurred at this juncture of mental ferment.
Some thinkers believed that following the scientific method would lead to the discovery of absolute truths, but it is now recognized that the most that can be hoped for from scientific investigation of the physical universe is approximation.
The physical sciences are necessarily confined to the temporality of matter and its alter ego, energy. And the principle of indeterminacy, which forestalls absolute precision in experimental observation, is well established. When scientific endeavor turns to fields involving human beings, it must contend with the variableness of human notions and whims. Even mathematics, escaping from many of the limitations of materiality into the exactitude of mental concepts, has little relevancy to many phases of human activity.
