The association of determinism with the coming of experimental science in the modern world was an unnecessary carry-over of certain aspects of the medieval belief that the aim of knowledge is to grasp or contemplate “eternal truth.” If we take a science such as chemistry or physics as typical instead of astronomy, it would seem that control of actual concrete transformations is the acid experimental test rather than prediction of “inevitable” future events. The latter surely has the smell of pre-scientific (...) prophecy. If so, and if we choose to base our interpretation of science and our philosophy of nature on this consideration, we can avoid determinism without in any way limiting the efficacy or potential universality of science. At the same time we avoid the traditional metaphysical or theological notion of “free will.”. (shrink)

On the side of Niels Bohr, not to mention a few other physicists, there is an honest acknowledgment of a difficulty in understanding Einstein's objection to the “completeness” of the Ψ-function description of the quantum phenomenon. Yet the weight which Bohr himself attaches to Einstein's insistence may indicate that if the latter's difficulty could be understood, then, through the cooperation of understanding physicists, another great accomplishment of unification might be obtained which would be as fruitful for the future as either (...) or both the general theory of relativity and Bohr's statistical theory have been to the present. (shrink)

In part one of this paper we shall elucidate an operational concept of logical simplicity as it seems to function in natural science. Although this is a tentative and exploratory formulation, its novelty, relative to the great European philosophical tradition, seems to require a preliminary warning about misunderstandings.In Part Two we shall apply the formulation to social inquiry and make a positive suggestion for further development of the proposal.

In view of the importance of the philosophical method argued in Mr. C. I. Lewis's “Experience and Meaning,” I wish to call attention to ambiguities which may have an important bearing on one of his conclusions. The method for which he argues is a certain empirical test of meaningfulness. It is his ‘positivistic’ inference from this method which I wish to challenge. To do so I shall present four points: A summary of his empirical test of meaningfulness; A ‘non-positivistic’ hypothesis (...) which Mr. Lewis rejects; An analysis of this hypothesis in view of his test; The theory of universals implied in my analysis. (shrink)

The argument of this paper is intended merely as a reassertion of John Dewey's naturalistic thesis that value and existence cannot be separated; and that the traditional concept of science which separates them is vicious. But the writer is not at all sure that he has not perverted the ideas of Dewey beyond recognition. If so, he hopes he has perverted them away from truth, but he fears otherwise. For there is not much hope of “reforming” science; at least, not (...) of cutting and stretching it to fit the Procrustian bed herein prescribed. But if science really does not need reform, the writer is more than willing to submit to the sword of Theseus along with all other marauders and disturbers of the peace. (shrink)

The “determination to catch the world's multiplicity and variety in a single net appears to be an incurable bias of the learned mind.” The extremes to which a philosopher will go to make his net hold water should be nothing short of absurd to the literal minded who neglect “the climate of opinion” which shapes the very logic of the systems or who fail to sympathize with the deep underlying human needs which call forth the great philosophies. Most thinkers in (...) this anthropological day make their bow to the fact of cultural conditioning and to the fact of personal and social surds in the thought of the past. We make our bow, and then proceed to forget that we are human individuals living in an historical period with its own unique strains and symphonies and discords: if only today's system can be shown to be scientific, it must then be beyond dispute. (shrink)