Since the turn of the century there has been a strong trend to break through the wall which has separated philosophy from the “special sciences” and to investigate the problems which require a good judgment in both philosophy and science. The evolution of science itself and the increasing relevance of science in human life have given immense momentum to this trend. But this momentum could not be appreciated in its actual strength because scientists who wanted to raise their voices had trouble in finding a Journal where they could communicate with the people who were interested, for almost all the scientific journals were devoted exclusively to technical papers. In founding Philosophy of Science Dr. Malisoff started the construction of a channel by which this important flow of scientific investigation could reach its public. This line of thought found in the journal a possibility of self-expression and it became a real force in the life of the community of scientists and scholars, and even of educated men in general. From the first volume, papers were published which have later been quoted in every discussion about the philosophy of science. I mention, as an example only, R. Carnap's paper on Testability and Meaning. Nobody who has wanted information and stimulation in this modern field of investigation could get it without looking into Malisoff's Philosophy of Science.

Since Protagoras' classic “man is the measure of all things,” claims of relativism and counter-claims have been tendered. The nineteenth century saw Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Westermarck, Pareto, Marx, and others, suggesting that institutions, customs, moral codes, and the like, are “relative” both to the culture and to the time. At the crest of this wave of “relativism” surged a vicious claim: that truth and knowledge itself were merely functions of particular conditions. The “validity” of knowledge was said to be at the whim of historic, social factors. Not only is no theory really true; no particular statement is ever so. Not only is no theory or statement really true; no theory of knowledge has thus far ever been free from the bias of its genesis. There have been no absolute insights for epistemology. Or so, at least, it was claimed.

Prior to statistical mechanics and especially before the advent of the new quantum mechanics, it was traditionally held, following in the main the Kantian philosophy, that the task of science is to attain a unique quantitative representation of reality. It was thought—and with justifiable zeal—that a scientific discipline is exact to the extent to which a mathematical pattern yielding quantitative relations can be applied to its subject matter. This view was based on the implicit assumptions that functional relatedness conducive to quantitative evaluation is bound to reveal the most generic, and hence, the most essential traits of events.

There are three elements involved in physical time. The most primitive of the three is the fact of extension in time. We express this fact by saying that things “endure” in time, or by saying that the universe is not an event of one moment only. Extension in time is such a fundamental and pervasive element of our experience, that we can hardly define it other than by denotatively indicating it. Time extension is basic to the other two elements of time.

The term science is used to cover three separate categories, to which throughout this paper we shall give three separate names. There is (1) the field in which science operates. This is the external world of natural phenomena, partly uniform and partly chance. There is (2) the science itself. This is the laboratory of instruments, techniques, operations, the method by which the field is studied. Finally, there is (3) the laws. This is the level of abstractions, of causal laws or of statistical probability averages, invariant or approaching invariance, mathematically expressed. The three, of course, belong together. Science carries the activity; it studies the field to find the laws.

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.

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.

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?

If I miss not the tenor of points and counterpoints, a recent discussion in this journal has been a novelly natural transaction in behalf of a great question at which many philosophers have labored—What is the place of Mind? R. S. Lillie, an eminent physiologist has been working toward a philosophical justification of certain biological key-facts, and H. Heath Bawden, a pioneer naturalist in philosophy and psychology, has been urging a physiological counter-statement. Both are logical men of science and aim to rest on facts. Why do they define and value the “psychical” differently?