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Scientific Method and Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Harold N. Lee
Harold N. Lee*
Affiliation:
Newcomb College, New Orleans, La.
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Extract

Twenty five hundred years ago a Greek named Thales introduced something important into the world. We know little about the details, but there is a persistent tradition going back at least as far as Aristotle that Thales is to be given the credit for being the first person to think in the way that led, without break in continuity, to the development of the scientific method of thought. The conclusions to which Thales came, if we can trust the tradition, are of no value today. The important thing was the way of putting and answering questions. This was carried on by Thales' followers until by the time of Plato and Aristotle the essentials of the scientific method were coming to be recognized even though they were not explicitly and adequately stated in abstraction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 1943 , pp. 67 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1943

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References

1 See the discussion of system and order in L. S. Stebbing, A Modern Introduction to Logic, Crowell, N. Y., 1930, pp. 196–203.

2 See John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, A. & C. Black, London, 1920, p. 28. See also Burnet, Greek Philosophy, Thales to Plato, Macmillan, London and N. Y., 1914, p. 11; and Raphael Demos, The Philosophy of Plato, Scribners, N. Y., 1939, p. 284.

3 A sincere and courageous devotion to truth is often held to be a part of the definition of the scientific method. This, however, is less a part of the definition of the method than it is a statement of a moral predisposition necessary to its application. Unless the scientist displays this attitude there is little chance that he will gain genuine knowledge by the use of the method. The attitude by itself, however, adds nothing to the guarantee of the genuineness of purported knowledge.

4 For a more detailed treatment of the way in which the rational sciences are independent of concrete experience see the author's article “The Meaning of the Notation of Mathematics and Logic” in the Monist, Vol. 41, p. 594.

5 See C. I. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, Scribners, N. Y., 1929, pp. 6–8. For the word “categorial,” see his note, p. 12.

6 See the author's “Modern Logic and the Task of the Natural Sciences” in Sigma Zi Quarterly, Vol. 28 at p. 124 for a further discussion of this point.

7 Validity requires norms of reason that are universal. Are there such norms? I should say yes, they are to be found in the consensus of agreement between individuals. Do we find such a consensus? Again I should say yes, the fact of communication is evidence that there is something common in knowledge. This is the old Socratic argument. The possibility and success of communication is evidence of the existence of universal norms. If there were no consensus of agreement, there could be no successful communication. I am not sure, however, that we have any satisfactory theoretic justification of the treatment accorded those all too frequent individuals who fall outside the consensus of agreement.

8 The above does not deny, of course, that in constructing any particular system of logic or mathematics, one might keep the end of applicability in view and guide his construction with that aim.