When assured, such a simple datum is for the sake of guarding the act
of inference. Color may mean a lot of things; any red may mean a lot
of things; such things are ambiguous; they afford unreliable evidence
or signs. To get the color down to the last touch of possible
discrimination is to limit its range of testimony; ideally, it is to
secure a voice which says but one thing and says that unmistakably.
Its simplicity is not identical with isolation, but with _specified_
relationship. Thus the hard "facts," the brute data, the simple
qualities or ideas, the sense elements of traditional and of
contemporary logic, get placed and identified within the art of
controlling inference. The allied terms "self-evident," "sensory
truths," "simple apprehensions" have their meanings unambiguously
determined in this same context; while apart from it they are the
source of all kinds of error. They are no longer notions to conjure
with. They express the last results attainable by present physical
methods of discriminative analysis employed in the search for
dependable data for inference. Improve the physical means of
experimentation, improve the microscope or the registering apparatus
or the chemical reagent, and they may be replaced tomorrow by new,
simple apprehensions of simple and ultimate data.
_b_) Natural or spontaneous inference depends very largely upon the
habits of the individual in whom inferring takes place. These habits
depend in turn very largely upon the customs of the social group in
which he has been brought up. An eclipse suggests very different
things according to the rites, ceremonies, legends, traditions, etc.,
of the group to which the spectator belongs. The average layman in a
civilized group may have no more personal science than an Australian
Bushman, but the legends which determine his reactions are different.
His inference is better, neither because of superior intellectual
capacity, nor because of more careful personal methods of knowing, but
because his instruction has been superior. The instruction of a
scientific inquirer in the best scientific knowledge of his day is
just as much a part of the control (or art) of inference as is the
technique of observational analysis which he uses. As the bulk of
prior ascertainments increases, the tendency is to identify this stock
of learning, this store of achieved truth, with knowledge. There is no
objection to this identification save as it leads the logician or
epistemologist to ignore that which _made_ it "knowledge" (that which
gives it a right to the title), and as a consequence to fall into two
errors: one, overlooking its function in the guidance and handling of
future inferences; the other, confusing the mere act of reference to
what is known (known so far as it has accrued from prior tested
inquiries) with knowing. To remind myself of what is known as to the
topic with which I am dealing is an indispensable performance, but to
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