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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
For thirty years at least, I have designated myself as a zoologist interested in the “philosophical aspects of biology”. But I have now to admit that not until within the last two or three years have I recognized that logic, particularly in its inductive aspect, is involved in such interest.
For me as a zoologist with a predilection for natural history, observation has had a place of wide application and of implicit confidence. Until recently, I had rested in the supposition that after all of the devices practiced by naturalists to insure certainty of their observations, nothing further was needed so far as the information and understanding they gained was concerned. I had gone ahead with my reasoning, my logic, with no more qualms about the trustworthiness of the “inductive” than of the “deductive” side of it. I had not taken seriously the assertion, made years ago in my hearing by an eminent philosopher, that no one can be a philosopher without being skeptical and critical of the use of his senses in getting knowledge. Latterly, however, I have come to see that traditional philosophers take themselves very seriously in such assertions. This realization has been due to the discovery that the recent advances in physics and mathematics have led most of the leaders in these fields to believe that observation and the inductive side of logic may be left where they were a hundred years ago. These scientists seem to be about where John Stuart Mill was in his effort to improve Lord Bacon's effort for a better understanding of both observation and induction.
1 This essay was schemed and written with the notion of “common sense” strongly in the foreground. The effort to devise a title for it that should contain the phrase resulted in one too long for bibliographic and other purposes. The substitute title here used has not seemed to require any change in the original wording of the essay.
2 B. Russell, Mysticism and Logic, Hibbert Journal, July 1914, p. 791.
3 Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, Macmillan, 1939, Cambridge, England.
4 Dr. W. Windelband, A History of Philosophy, tr. Tufts, New York, 1905.
5 J. Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, New York, 1892.
6 Schopenhauer, Arthur. Schopenhauer's fuller philosophy is in Will in Nature, tr. K. Hillebrand, Bohn Library, 2nd Ed., 1891. Perhaps the most clarifying single expression of Schopenhauer's philosophy is given by Windelband: that the famous old doctrine “Thing-initself” is the Will.
7 R. S. Woodworth, Psychology, A Study of Mental Life, Henry Holt & Co., 1921.
8 Eliza Gregory Wilkins, The Delphic Maxims in Literature, University of Chicago Press, 1929. This book has been a great help to me in my effort to “know myself”.
9 My quoted words of Socrates are from The Works of Plato, Vol. III, tr. J. F. Church, Publisher, The Nottingham Society.
10 J. S. Mill, System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, London, 1843.
11 Thomas Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, Edinburgh, 1764.
12 A. R. Rogers, English and American Philosophy since 1800, p. 4, Macmillan, 1922.
13 F. J. E. Woodbridge, Nature and Mind, Columbia Univ. Press, 1937.