Many centuries ago, at the very beginning of the systematic development of philosophy, Plato declared that the thinker's domain comprises “the wholeness of things;” and indeed, the earlier thinkers took all knowledge for their province and did not hesitate to discuss problems now referred to art, psychology, economics, mathematics, or physics. Since then the meaning of philosophy has appreciably changed, however, and the intellectual descendants of the great founder of the Academy no longer claim the monopoly of all fields of study. For there appeared in the meantime a mighty competitor—or should we say a partner?—in the pursuit of truth, namely, science.

This paper is a study in restraint on freedom of speculation. In view of the subtlety of the subject it has seemed advisable to begin the report with a list of the presuppositions initiating and determining the study. These are as follows:

1). That freedom of speculation is a prerequisite to sound mental health, in individuals as well as in large-scale social units.

2). That, consequently, individual and institutional faculties are alike deficient if and insofar as they prevent or abridge such freedom.

3). That the same factors operating in one aspect to restrain the influence of promulgated theories operate in another aspect to inhibit the free conception and hamper the expression of speculation not so promulgated.

4). That as it is the purpose of individual philosophizing to surround with coherent speculation or theory subjects of primarily individual interest, it is the purpose of institutional philosophizing similarly to invest with theory subjects of common social interest.

5). That speculation in general, whether individual or institutional, is free when the prevalent tendency is for subjects of comparable interest to be accorded comparable quantities of speculation; and that when and insofar as this tendency does not prevail speculation is to that extent not free but restrained.

Two different aspects of knowledge are frequently distinguished by the logician and philosopher: the non-repetitive and the repetitive. However, this distinction is imperfectly supported by careful observation, since no two objects or events are known to be exactly alike, and no two objects or events are completely different. In spite of this relativisitic state of affairs, there is some value in distinguishing between the thinker or student who is primarily interested in the unique, peculiar and non-repetitive phenomena of experience and the person whose emphasis is on general, repetitive and predictable observations. The approaches and mental operations of these two classes of agents are essentially different, although the world they experience may be the same. The first concentrates on one item at a time, the result being a restriction of his attention away from other objects or events of the same class. The generalizing student usually controls his mental operations fully as much, but in this case attention to the unique is held in abeyance and comparisons are deliberately fostered. The essential difference thus becomes a matter of the rejection of the comparative method of procedure by the first and overwhelming dependence on that method on the part of the generalizer.

The R-Being is, by definition, that entity which possesses all qualities which, expressed in English adjectives, begin with the letter R. It is of course unknown, at the commencement of our inquiry, whether any such entity exists, but it is nevertheless possible to determine the characteristics which such a being, whether existent or not, must possess.

Doubts concerning the validity of logic are as old as the empirical criticism of science. In the last two decades the idea that truth is relative to given sets of basic assumptions has been prominent; and the controversy about the principle of excluded middle has focussed renewed attention upon the nature of logic and its fundamental principles.

Recent investigations in formal logic have contributed greatly to the understanding of the principles of logic. It is simply a misunderstanding to conclude from them that the logical principles have been suspended, despite the various formal structures which are called “logics.” The purely formal treatment of problems concerning the foundations of logic, while necessarily undertaken as far as it can go, has essential limitations.

In a recent article in Philosophy of Science P. C. Jones discusses the relation between idealism and science. He presents in a very clear way the essentials of the causal theory of perception—the theory which lies at the foundation of the scientific method of research, for the scientist who does not believe that we have a direct knowledge of the external world. He summarizes this causal theory as follows: “An incompletely conceived idealism pictures objects in space and time, and admits only that we have no direct knowledge of them—that what we know of them we merely infer from sensory impulses.”

The problem of synthesis in biology may have reference to the evolutionary origin of living organisms in past time, a process not directly observable but conceivably reconstructible in broad outline: thus to the biochemist this evolution may appear as the evolution of the special biological compounds, to the psychologist as the evolution of “mind”—or at least of types of behavior. Or the problem may refer to the synthesis of the individual animal or plant, a process of construction which typically starts from a detached portion of a parent organism, such as an egg or seed; this is the problem of individual development or ontogeny and is not essentially different from the general problem of growth. But it is clear that the processes of phyletic evolution and of ontogeny must be considered together, since evolutionary history is in reality the history of a succession of individual organisms, each developing from its germ, i.e. of ontogenies; and the ontogenetic process, so faithfully repeated in each individual as it comes into existence, is itself a product of evolution, having originated (apparently by slow and tentative efforts) in the remote past. The succession of individuals has undergone progressive diversification, culminating in the present condition. We may describe our problem, then, as the problem of the factors underlying the synthesis of a highly special process, that by which the diffusely distributed nonliving materials and energies of nature are brought together in a special kind of unification and transformed into a living organism.

This paper does not purport to present a fully developed argument. Rather, it intends to delineate, in broad strokes and in a synoptic manner, the total frame of reference of Scientific Empiricism as far as it is necessary for an integration of the several contributory clarifications of the complex, usually referred to as the psychophysical problem. Several considerations seem to justify such an attempt. It is desirable, from time to time, to free the results of logical and methodological analysis from their specialized contexts. Only thus can they be presented in a way which brings to the fore their continuity with more traditionally worded epistemological thought. By doing this such a presentation should also help to dissolve the current objections of formalism, scientism, and philosophical irrelevance so frequently based on misunderstanding. It is only fair to admit, however, that these misunderstandings have been facilitated by the preoccupation with the technical, and the brevity with regard to the nontechnical, which characterize the modern analysts.

The world is beginning to look askance at Science. Or, rather, not beginning but intensifying an attitude of suspicion if not of downright hostility. We scientists are, of course, partly to blame; for we have so loudly proclaimed our virtues as the creators of radios and airplanes that, now these instruments are being abused as agents of mass propaganda and mass destruction, we are the obvious targets for the rising wrath of men. This is serious, for science is inseparably a part of the society and culture in which it is embedded, and it does not suffice to deny impatiently ourguilt and shrug away our responsibility to our fellows.