The progress of science in any branch continually brings with it a
realization that problems in their previous form of statement are
insoluble because put in terms of unreal conditions; because the
real conditions have been mixed up with mental artifacts or
misconstructions. Every science is continually learning that its
supposed solutions are only apparent because the "solution" solves, not
the actual problem, but one which has been made up. But the very
putting of the question, the very giving of the wrong answer, induces
modification of existing intellectual habits, standpoints, and aims.
Wrestling with the problem, there is evolution of new technique to
control inquiry, there is search for new facts, institution of new
types of experimentation; there is gain in the methodic control of
experience. And all this is progress. It is only the worn-out cynic,
the de-vitalized sensualist, and the fanatical dogmatist who interpret
the continuous change of science as proving that, since each successive
statement is wrong, the whole record is error and folly; and that the
present truth is only the error not yet found out. Such draw the moral
of caring naught for all these things, or of flying to some external
authority which will deliver once for all the fixed and unchangeable
truth. But historic philosophy even in its aberrant forms has proved a
factor in the valuation of experience; it has brought problems to
light, it has provoked intellectual conflicts without which values are
only nominal; even through its would-be absolutistic isolations it has
secured recognition of mutual dependencies and reciprocal
reinforcements. Yet if it can define its work more clearly, it can
concentrate its energy upon its own characteristic problem: the genesis
and functioning in experience of various typical interests and
occupations with reference to one another.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] _Logic_ (translation, Oxford, 1888), I, 10, 11. Italics mine.
[12] See _Philosophical Review_, XI, 117-20.
III
THE ANTECEDENTS AND STIMULI OF THINKING
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