Surprising as it may perhaps seem to many, I have found in the upshot of a fairly persistent series of trials that it is easier to define “life” in terms of “culture” than it is to define “culture” in terms of “life.” Searching logistic experiments show that the latter way is strewn with conceptual booby-traps in the shape of such terms as “physical,” “non-physical,” “material,” “immaterial,” “spiritual,” “ideal,” “natural,” “supernatural,” etc. Some important sectors of our intellectual culture have for generations stultified themselves by attempting to account in such unserviceable and deceitful terms for manifest and institutionally important differences in natural phenomena and the practical human affairs to which they appertain. Such desperate jugglery as has been engaged in, although embraced in much received doctrine, is not conducive either to intellectual or to moral integrity. Such dualistic chimeras had best be abandoned, the more peremptorily the better, as leading only to self-contradiction, confusion, and serious temptation to futile logical expedients.

I am greatly obliged to Mr. Williams and the editor for the republication of numerous passages from my recent book. I especially appreciate Mr. Williams' contribution of a magnificent answer to those of my critics who contend that my book is largely devoted to belaboring a straw man because our generation no longer holds any of the views I attack. Even though my views are both misquoted and out of context in his presentation, I must say that they never looked better to me than in the light of his criticism. On the other hand, it would certainly never have occurred to me to reply to an effusion of this sort except for the editors' request for comment. If I failed in my little book to make clear my position, as I obviously did in the case of Mr. Williams, I see small prospect of doing so in the few paragraphs here at my disposal. Since the essays to which he objects originally appeared in a popular magazine which, I believe, is known for the rigor of its editorship, at least so far as clarity is concerned, Mr. Williams' inability to understand them are the more disturbing. I will give only a few examples.

The measurement of mind appears to constitute a problem generally different from that encountered in the measurement of matter. From the viewpoint of scientific methodology, however, the differences between mental measurement and physical measurement are not as great as they sometimes appear. The major difficulty involves a proper clarification of the mind we measure and, unfortunately, this clarification is a little more difficult than the clarification of the matter we measure. In order to achieve this clarification, it is necessary to reorient some of our habitual ways of thinking by taking several specific steps.

The purpose of my remarks is to draw some conclusions about the conditions which must be realized if physical, biological and social scientists are to work effectively in reaching common goals. I shall draw these conclusions on the basis of my experience as a psychologist whose participation in the war effort found him a member of a team composed principally of physicists and research engineers. I may say that while my experiences were largely at the level of the lower echelons of the working fraternity, the conclusions appear to me to have application without regard to the extent of the brass which, in a figurative sense, decorates the scientist's hat.

Today a failure of the physical sciences accompanies a failure of the social sciences; and the failure of both consists in part in this: in the lack of a fully-developed and implemented sense of social responsibility. Both have denied guilt for their shortcomings in this respect: advancing rationalizations to the effect that social reform is not the task of science; that objectivity suffers if such motivations are allowed to become involved; and that science makes its most valuable contributions to social welfare rather by maintaining a strict laboratory manner of impartiality. Implied often, as well, is the conclusion that not science itself but the misuse of science; not the patience and care of science itself but the impatience and carelessness of non-scientists is responsible for the miscarriage of its contributions.

Since essence examined from one point of view can always be dissolved into relationship, and since the act of this dissolution—which is the general analyzing act of science—seems at first to explain the essence or transcending cause (for as we move toward it the newly envisaged relationship may appear to replace and to render unnecessary the metaphysical whole), therefore in every science and with every such new discovery of material determining agents, there will be a period of enthusiasm when real explanation and cause seem to be revealed. But after the discovered relationship has been examined for a time, it becomes apparent both that further unexplored relationships are required to connect these agents we have found with the operations they are supposed to effect, and that a new transcendental unity must be postulated of the whole to bind the agents into the ordered pattern they maintain.

I want to commend the article, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” Philosophy of Science, April, 1948, by Hempel and Oppenheim. However, there are two points in the article that have been treated in a manner incompatible with the general attitude taken by the authors and, I believe, they are mistaken in these two rather essential matters. The first concerns the relationship between emergents and prediction. The second concerns the relationship between “evidence” or sense data and law.

1. Deductive and Inductive Inference. Within the traditional treatments of scientific method, e.g., in (2) and (25), it was customary to divide scientific inference into two parts: deductive and inductive. Deductive inference was taken to mean the activity of deducing theorems from postulates and definitions, whereas inductive inference represented the activity of constructing a general statement from a set of particular “facts.” Deductive inference was relegated to the mathematical (formal) sciences, and inductive inference to the empirical (non-formal) sciences. As a consequence, the whole of science was split into two quite distinct parts: deductive science was conceived to start with precise axioms, postulates, and definitions, and its method consisted in drawing inferences from these “givens” in such a way that if the original assumptions are taken as true, then the theorems must be taken as true also. The obligation behind this “must” of the mathematical sciences was an obligation based on strict rules of deductive inference; in the earlier analyses, it was supposed that these rules were all aspects of the general theory of the syllogism, as it was described in an almost complete form in (2) but in later work the rules have been formalized in more general terms (17). Inductive inference, on the other hand, was supposed to start with observed facts; these facts, or “data,” were presumably given by the senses, and described particular aspects of the external world. If the facts were given in a certain way, then the empirical scientist could “infer” a generalized description; this generalization had the characteristic that if it were granted as true, then all the facts could be deduced as consequences. The inductive process admittedly does not lead to unique generalizations (no more than the deductive process leads to unique theorems), and the philosopher of science searched for other defining characteristics of good inference, such as “simplicity” and “convenience.” These empirical generalizations were taken to be “descriptions of the phenomenal world of the scientist”; a further inductive step might be taken by constructing a set of very general principles out of the more specialized generalizations within specific research problems. These “higher” inductive inferences were regarded as “theories,” which could be studied by themselves within the method of deductive inference. The scientist was then described as “checking” theory by determining whether or not the predicted consequences deduced from theory actually hold in the phenomenal world.

Like a number of other authors, Miller uses the term “emergent” interchangeably with “unpredictable” and employs it as a property term, i.e., in contexts of the form “Event E is emergent.” As we showed in our article, however, predictability and unpredictability as well as emergence are relations; they can be predicated of an event only relatively to some body of information. Thus, a lunar eclipse is predictable by means of information including (a) data on the locations and speeds, at some particular time, of the celestial bodies involved, and (b) the laws of celestial mechanics plus certain principles of optics; it is unpredictable on the basis of, say, (b) alone. Consequently, the phrase “Event E is unpredictable” is incomplete, and hence meaningless, in much the same sense as the expression “Straight line l is parallel.” Similar observations apply to the term “emergent,” which is frequently used to characterize events which, in a sense examined in detail in our article, are not explainable by a micro-structure theory.

As I understood it, the general aim of the symposium was exploratory. Is there need of cooperation between the two divisions? And in what respects? Granting the fullest measure of autonomy, in what way, if any, can there still be mutual assistance?

Today there is almost universal agreement among scientists and philosophers that no factual statement or hypothesis about the world of fact has meaning apart from experienceable phenomena. In general we say we must find evidence for every hypothesis or theory before we can consider it as even probably true. But when we state the relationship between hypotheses and evidence in this way, by implication we are still holding that hypotheses have priority over data or that the function of data is to support pre-conceived ideas. This is, by implication, and acknowledgment of the primacy of rationalism over empiricism or of reason over sense data, or of explanation over that which is to be explained.

In a recent paper, Maslow (12) has suggested that we turn from means-centering to problem-centering in science. In two other papers (6, 7) the present author offered a theoretical foundation which would make Maslow's suggestions psychologically (empirically) sound. For as he suggests, it is only by centering ourselves towards the task that the task is accomplished or towards the problem that the problem is solved. This does not mean that methods or means, or, in the broader sense, of means as ends or of ends per se, do not constitute problems. The whole problem of psychology is the means by which the organism obtains knowledge; the problem of education is that of means (the teaching), or the problem of communication is one of means (the language), or of any profession, e.g., engineering or medicine, the problem may be of means as a problem. Whichever is the case it is only so far as problems are solved that we are free to go on to tackle new ones or throw light on the more basic ones and thus enrich our lives. Problem solving, of course, does not mean that particular problems as framed are solvable. For example, if the rules state that one must connect each dot with every other dot on a piece of paper (a two dimensional limitation) with lines (straight or curved) that do not intersect, a four dot problem is solvable but a five dot situation cannot be resolved within these rules. In the latter case it may mean that the problem becomes: “can anyone solve it?” This has been the lesson of the mathematicians and the logical positivists. But what is problem solving?

1. In his paper “On Denoting” Russell points out what he calls a puzzle every satisfactory theory of denoting will have to solve. Of the three sentences

1. (A) George IV. wished to know whether Scott was the author of Waverley

2. (B) Scott is the author of Waverley

3. (C) George IV. wished to know whether Scott was Scott the first two, (A) and (B), are presumably true, while the third, (C), is presumably false. The reason given for considering this arrangement of truth values a puzzle is (1) that the ‘is’ in (B) signifies identity; (2) that the proper name ‘Scott’ and the descriptive phrase ‘the author of Waverley’ denote the same object; and that, therefore, (3) if the latter is replaced by the former in the true sentence (A), the resulting sentence, (C), should again be true. Yet (C) is false, or, as one also says, the context considered is nonextensional with respect to this replacement.

What I am going to say here may be thought by some to be more appropriate to science as a whole, rather than “what sociology has to offer to the physical sciences.” The main point of my remarks has to do with objectivity and values in science. Great masses of people are today in doubt as to whether science is a friend or an enemy of theirs. They do not see it as a means to continued material progress, as objectively measured in such things as the level of living, and morbidity and death rates. To them it is, for example, a means for spreading mass misery through depressions due to technological unemployment. Or, it is the means for the production of ever more destructive weapons in continually more destructive wars.

The papers given at this symposium have been directed to two problems:

1. (1) the needs of the physical sciences which the social sciences should fulfill, and

2. (2) the capacity of contemporary social science to satisfy these needs.

Consideration of the first problem divided itself into two parts: (a) the needs involved in the process of answering questions in the physical sciences, and (b) the needs involving application of information gained by questions in physical science. The role of social science with respect to (b) is generally recognized, but the role with respect to (a) is not. Many, in science and philosophy, still hold to the notion of a non-evaluative, non-normative, purely objective, or what-have-you physical science. Professor Littauer, however, raised a critical problem in this regard: on what basis is the decision made to accept or reject a scientific hypothesis? We are in a position today to assert that such decisions do involve an evaluative judgment. Recent developments in mathematical statistics, as represented in Wald's On the Principles of Statistical Inference, indicate that the selection of the best statistical testing procedure involves at least a knowledge of the social consequences for the various mistakes one might make in using any specific testing procedure. The introduction of the “weight function” into the method for selecting among alternative hypotheses points in a striking way to one door through which knowledge and evaluation of possible social phenomena enters physical science. The social scientist is badly needed here. It is true that today this aspect of experimental method is seldom self-consciously faced. Where it is, the evaluations are generally intuitive and are not based on sound sociological knowledge. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the continued development of experimental methods in all sciences depends on our reducing the question of what constitutes a “best” test to experimental terms.