truth cannot mean that it works for it cannot but work, having been
constructed purely for that purpose. Its truth means that it
corresponds to some actual existence at present unknown. To prove its
truth the physicist does not appeal to its value as a hypothesis, but
devises experiments by which, if it does exist, its existence will be
demonstrated. In this actual case the experiments have had a uniformly
negative result, and therefore the truth of the hypothesis is made
doubtful or denied. The hypothesis continues to work as well as it
ever did, and physicists will probably long continue to use it, but it
has failed to establish its truth claim. The result is the modern
Principle of Relativity, which, as we have already said, has produced a
revolution in modern physics. The abolition of the æther would have
been impossible if the physicist had been content with the utility of
his hypothesis and had not experimented to prove its truth. The
relation between truth and utility is thus proved to be that it is
useful to know what is true.
These two illustrations of scientific method--namely, the discovery of
Neptune and the negative discovery {63} that the æther is
non-existent--make it evident that verification is the intellectual
process not of making true, but of finding true. We can, indeed,
distinguish quite clearly the two processes. The first process, that
of making true, is the constructing of the fiction by which we complete
an incomplete system, and the second is the testing of that fiction to
see if it corresponds to anything actually existing. No kind of
intellectual activity will make an idea true, and conversely we may say
that were truth only a utility, then knowledge instead of being
systematic would be chaotic. Existence has its roots in reality, not
in knowledge. Reality does not depend on truth. Truth is the
intellectual apprehension of reality.
If the pragmatist objects that in this argument I have throughout
supposed him to be urging the narrow meaning of utility, namely, that
it is usefulness in the strictly practical sense, whereas he intends it
in the widest possible meaning--a meaning that includes theoretical
usefulness--then the trouble is a different one; it is to know how and
where the pragmatist stops short of the coherence theory of truth, and
wherein his method differs from that of the idealist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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