Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. 1 (of 2)
Religion
Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. 1 (of 2)
Medicine -- History; Science -- History
Especially as in the very beginnings of logic some of the Greeks
distinctly caught a glimpse of it. For, having started their reflection
upon reasoning from a desire to regulate debate and to argue a case
at law, they naturally noticed that there are two sides (at least)
to every question. Accordingly, Protagoras appears to have taught
systematically that there were always two reasonings (λόγοι) to be
considered,[395] Socrates, treated scientific inquiry as an extension
of the art of cross-examination, and Plato conceived the search for
ideal truth as a ‘dialectical’ process, as a sort of dialogue of the
soul with itself. Now this whole doctrine is equally good as logic
and as psychology. It is profoundly true of the inquirer’s mind; he
must be keenly alive, not only to the evidence _for_, but also to
that _against_ his working theory. But it is also true of the logical
nature of inquiry that it is a process of determining _which_ of the
alleged ‘facts’ and of the theories to interpret them are real and
true. Inquiry logically ‘presupposes’ a conflict between the data, and
a dispute about them.
Unfortunately, however, the conception of scientific research as
an inquiry lapses from the logical consciousness in consequence
of Aristotle’s work. His discovery of the forms and formulas of
demonstration overshadowed it, and restored the reign of dogma which is
so congenial to the authorities everywhere.[396] The true conception of
inquiry does not revive again until our days, when Mr. Alfred Sidgwick
and Professor John Dewey have endeavoured, not with the success
they deserved, to reopen the eyes of logicians to the facts of the
scientific situation.
§ 22. To conceive an inquiry as a question then is, we see, implicitly
to conceive it as having a plurality of answers, all of which have
to be examined. All these answers are initially hypotheses, and a
choice has to be made between them. This renders the recognition of
alternatives a paramount necessity for a logic of discovery, which
can no longer dismiss them with a jejune chapter on ‘disjunctive
propositions’. Their existence is no longer to be treated as an
annoying complication which delays the progress of science, but must be
taken to inhere in the logical nature of problems, and to be essential
to their proper elucidation.
Logic, therefore, should regard it as its duty to inquire (1) how the
inquirer is furnished with an adequate supply of theories for analysing
and testing the apparent facts of his subject, (2) what methods are
used to sift hypotheses and to select the more valuable, and (3) if it
can, to add some hints as to how theories and methods _ought_ to be
handled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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