bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Concerning an Essential Condition of Cooperative Work
Authors: Preston Malcolm G.
Published: November 2002

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.
Science and Social Responsibility
Authors: Butts Carl F.
Published: November 2002

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.
Do the Natural Sciences Have Need of the Social Sciences?
Authors: Sellars Roy Wood
Published: November 2002

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?
On the Contribution of Sociology to the Physical Sciences
Authors: Hartung Frank E.
Published: November 2002

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.
Discussion
Authors: Ackoff Russell L.
Published: November 2002

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

(1)

the needs of the physical sciences which the social sciences should fulfill, and

(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.
Some Aspects of Theoretical Biology
Authors: Lillie Ralph S.
Published: November 2002

A theory in natural science is a comprehensive formula or doctrine which describes and correlates in a unified abstract form of statement the general determining factors of some special group of natural facts. It is at once inclusive, realistic and understandable. If a theoretical statement holds good, the existence and characteristics of many individual events can be inferred deductively from it. It thus gives a logical basis for empirical fact. But it is based on experience of nature, and must conform to the facts of nature; these are primary, and a valid theory, no matter how broad it may be, is to be considered as itself a statement of fact, i.e., a true description of some condition which has a real and stable existence in the natural world. In its scientific usage, the term “fact” refers primarily to some datum of experience having the special character of permanence or regular recurrence; this is why scientific facts are verifiable; in this respect they differ from the passing individual events of history. Any scientific theory presupposes the stability and unequivocality of the natural facts. Hence if a theory is sound, it furnishes a reliable basis for prediction, discovery and invention. Scientific or technological creation then becomes possible; modern engineering and medicine could never have become what they are without a background of theoretical physics and biology. Obviously any natural science must always have at its disposal an ample body of observational and experimental data, but in most cases the work of collecting and verifying these is carried out under the guidance of theory.
Studies in the Logic of Explanation
Authors: Hempel Carl G. , Oppenheim Paul
Published: November 2002

To explain the phenomena in the world of our experience, to answer the question “why?” rather than only the question “what?”, is one of the foremost objectives of all rational inquiry; and especially, scientific research in its various branches strives to go beyond a mere description of its subject matter by providing an explanation of the phenomena it investigates. While there is rather general agreement about this chief objective of science, there exists considerable difference of opinion as to the function and the essential characteristics of scientific explanation. In the present essay, an attempt will be made to shed some light on these issues by means of an elementary survey of the basic pattern of scientific explanation and a subsequent more rigorous analysis of the concept of law and of the logical structure of explanatory arguments.
The Wholeness of the Living Organism
Authors: Agar W. E.
Published: November 2002

The idea of organism, which of recent years has bulked so largely in scientific, and especially in biological, theory has been developed mainly in reference to living organisms, and has been extended to cover such systems as human societies, crystals, molecules and atoms—and indeed the whole universe has been interpreted as an organism. This use of the term, however, includes different ways in which parts may be together in a system. The belief that the principle of organism has been wrongly extended to explain certain co-ordinations of vital processes which require a different type of explanation is the reason for this addition to the immense literature on the subject of organism.
The Unique and The General: Toward a Philosophy of Sociology
Authors: Wolff Kurt H.
Published: November 2002

1. Philosophy of Science. The term “philosophy of science” is used here to refer to the study of the approaches and methodologies of the sciences. By “approach” is understood the totality of the presuppositions of a given science (or body of sciences, or scientific product): more precisely, both philosophical and scientific presuppositions—that is, categories, postulates, and premises as conditions—and “existential” presuppositions (organic, geographic, socio-cultural). By “methodology” is understood the intellectual-emotional structure of a given science—that is, its categories, postulates, and premises as characteristics, as well as its concepts, methods, and techniques. Further, I advocate understanding a given science (or body of sciences, or scientific product) through a study of its approach and of its methodology. Finally, I submit that the best understanding of either of the two is impossible without the study of the other. More specifically, I advocate the consideration of a particular science (or body of sciences, e.g., the “social sciences,” or scientific product) as a given, and the interpretation of its intellectual structure or methodology (“immanent interpretation”); and then the study of its presuppositions or underlying approach (“transcendent interpretation”).
Absolute Truth and the Shadow of Doubt
Authors: Williams Gardner
Published: November 2002

1. An epistemological integration. Any proposition which is entertained in any mind will be represented by four points, one located on each of four scales, symbolizing truth, belief, probability, and conviction.
Indeterminacy and Economic Development
Authors: Feuer Lewis S.
Published: November 2002

It is widely believed that a study of the dynamics of capitalist development eventuates in a determinate law of economic evolution. If we trace the origins of this assumption, we find that it stems from the influence of the Hegelian dialectic upon economic theory. The metaphysic of determinism has thus obtruded its way into social science, and brought with it the corollary that economic analysis yields an insight into the necessary pattern of capitalist development.
Some Philosophical Aspects of Economics
Authors: Becker Arthur Peter
Published: November 2002

The naive misunderstanding among economists of the relationship between economics and philosophy is as profound as it is prevalent. To be sure, economists have concerned themselves with the philosophy of economics only so much as to familiarize themselves with methodology and its application to economic inquiry. Since economics is the oldest and perhaps the most “respectable” of the social sciences its scholars have developed a phobia for anything they might suspect to be even remotely unscientific. Consequently, they have erroneously narrowed their understanding of the nature of economics. This narrowness prevails largely because most economists possess little or no training in general philosophy and especially in the philosophy of science. As a result of this apparent deficiency there exists in the minds of these economists confusion and inability to distinguish between teleology, axiology, and ethics as they do or do not apply to economics.
Taxonomic Note on the Gnosology of Modern Science
Authors: Ledgerwood Richard
Published: November 2002

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.
Statistics, Pragmatics, Induction
Authors: Churchman C. West
Published: November 2002

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.
The Place of Logic and Metaphysics in the Advancement of Modern Science
Authors: Frank Philipp
Published: November 2002

The original stimulus for the choice of this topic was a book on intellectual history. One of the most brilliant authors in this field, Carl Becker, claims that the most important event in the intellectual history of modern time was the shift in the place of logic in science. According to Becker, the high esteem for logic which the scientist had in the age of St. Thomas Aquinas and through all the Middle Ages declined in the period of Galileo and Newton. But at that time this decline was not yet fully understood. “The marriage of fact and reason” as Becker expresses himself “proved to be somewhat irksome in the nineteenth century and was altogether dissolved in the twentieth century.” The modern, twentieth century, physicist lives in an “atmosphere, which is so saturated with the actual that we can easily do with a minumum of theoretical” … “We have long since learned not to bother much with reason and logic.” To describe the spirit of twentieth century physics which emphasizes facts and minimizes reason Becker says: “Experiments seem to show that an electron may, for reasons best known to itself, be moving at two orbits at the same time. To this point Galileo's common sense method of noting the behavior of things, of sticking close to the observable facts has brought us. It has at last presented us with a fact that common sense repudiates.”
Concepts as Involving Laws and Inconceivable Without Them
Authors: Sellars Wilfrid
Published: November 2002

Formal implication is usually represented by symbolization such as ‘(x) φx ⊃ Ψx,’ which may be read, “for all values of ‘x’, φx (materially) implies Ψx.” If the values of the variable ‘x’, in ‘φx’ and ‘Ψx’ be ‘x1’ ‘x2’ ‘x3’, etc., then … ‘φx’ formally implies ‘Ψx’ if and only if, whatever values of ‘x’, ‘xn’, be chosen, ‘φxn’ materially implies ‘Ψxn’ …

However, this still leaves it doubtful which of two possible interpretations of expressions having the form ‘(x) φx ⊃ Ψx’ is to be taken as correct. … It means one thing to say, “Every existent having the property φ … has also the property Ψ,” and it means quite a different thing to say, “Every thinkable thing which should have the property φ must also have the property Ψ.” The second of these holds only when having the properly φ logically entails having the property Ψ; when ‘Ψx’ is deductible from ‘φx’. … The first of them, however, holds not only in such cases … but also in every case where among existent things, one property is universally accompanied by another. (C. I. Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Evaluation, pp. 217–8. I am responsible for the italicizing of the sentence, otherwise the italics follow Lewis.)
The Philosophical Relevance of a “Behavioristic Semiotic”
Authors: Storer Thomas
Published: November 2002

As everyone who has looked into almost any philosophical journal within the last year is aware, Charles Morris has written a book on signs. (Signs, Language and Behavior, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1946, hereafter abbreviated “SLB”) More precisely, he has elaborated a strain of thought found in his very earliest writings. A first, partial culmination of these ideas is his monograph Foundations of the Theory of Signs (FTS). Since the publication of FTS, Morris has conducted experiments relative to human sign behavior. SLB, I believe, is a revision and expansion of FTS to take into account new material supplied by these experiments and increased insight into the nature of behavior psychology. For Morris now asserts explicitly, what before he only hinted: that “Semiotic thus becomes a part of the empirical science of behavior, and can utilize whatever principles and predictions the general theory of behavior has attained or can attain.” (SLB p. 19)
Comments on Mr. Storer's Paper
Authors: Morris Charles
Published: November 2002

Mr. Thomas Storer does not believe that a science of signs is of basic importance to philosophy, for philosophy, he holds, is not a formal or a factual science but an activity of clarifying meaning and building linguistic systems. I should like to defend the relevance to philosophy of a science of signs even when philosophy is so conceived, and then to question this conception of philosophy itself.
Can We Save Science?
Authors: Williams Elgin
Published: November 2002

Everyone is agreed that mankind today finds itself virtually swimming in crises. The typical discussion of every world problem is so fraught with a sense of urgency, so steeped in the hyperbole of danger, that the discussions would be funny were they not so tragic.
Rejoinder to “Can we Save Science?”
Authors: Lundberg George A.
Published: November 2002

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.
Comments on “Studies in The Logic of Explanation”
Authors: MILLER David L.
Published: November 2002

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.
Reply to David L. Miller's Comments
Authors: Hempel Carl G. , Oppenheim Paul
Published: November 2002

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.
Descriptions in Nonextensional Contexts
Authors: Bergmann Gustav
Published: November 2002

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

(A)

George IV. wished to know whether Scott was the author of Waverley

(B)

Scott is the author of Waverley

(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.
The Place of the Expert in a Democratic Society
Authors: Frank Jerome
Published: November 2002

In their adversely critical attitude towards administrative agencies, many lawyers and judges disclose a distrust of the expert, the specialist. That distrust is curious, for the position of our profession in society rests on the fact that we ourselves are specialists.

In the famous colloquy (perhaps partly apocryphal) which is said to have occurred about three hundred years ago between King James I and Judge Coke, the King remarked that, if “law was founded upon reason, he and others could reason as well as the judges,” and Coke loftily replied that lawsuits “are not to be decided by natural reason, but by the artificial reason and judgement of the law, which law is an art that requires long study and experience before that a man can attain to the cognizance of it.” The King, an intelligent amateur, was angered, for doubtless he saw that, as McIlwain observes, “if ... the law was to be supreme, at the same time a mystery open only to the initiated, it is clear that, if the claim of the lawyers were to be admitted, the supreme authority would be their exclusive possession.” Demos, now King, sometimes echoes James’ anger at the idea of a government of lawyers, not of men.
The Social Neurosis: A Study in “Clinical Anthropology”
Authors: Burrow Trigant
Published: November 2002

“The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so that the individual may reach the fullest and highest life attainable by man. The rules of conduct by which this end is to be attained are discoverable-like the other so-called laws of Nature-by observation and experiment, and only in that way.”

THOMAS HUXLEY

The present moment is a portentous one in the history of human relations. Only yesterday the armies of half the world were locked in a death struggle with the armies of the other half. And even now, as the representatives of the various governments gather together in attempts to organize an international State, the shadow of a weapon that threatens to end all life upon this earth lies athwart their deliberations. The moment with which we are faced is the more portentous because of the persistent hope man vainly entertains that a world of wholeness and peace will somehow issue out of these two warring and divided half-worlds. Even the student of behavior fondly believes that out of this divided world an undivided peace will come. Along with the rest of mankind even the seasoned psychiatrist fails to see that the overwhelming impetus to man's behavior—to his feeling and thinking—now stems from a social artifact of division. He does not see that, owing to a discrepancy in man's mental and social processes, the artificial world man has created is necessarily a world of conflict. In this hour of universal confusion and discord it would appear that we who study the problems of human adaptation are confronted with nothing less than a false, unilateral principle of motivation affecting the organism of man throughout.
Formal and Non-Formal
Authors: Rudner Richard
Published: November 2002

In some ways, I think, the analytic method in philosophy and science suffers from an embarrassment of riches. It has too many distinctions—in the sense that any distinction which is infirm, but which is yet carted about along with the necessary apparatus of a method, is (at its most innocuous) superfluous. In these pages I propose to examine one such distinction.

A principle which is subscribed to by almost all of the “analysers” with whose work I am acquainted is that which is constituted by a certain kind of dichotomization between what we may for the present loosely characterize as the “formal” and the “non-formal.” Sometimes this distinction is presented as one existing between the “formal sciences” and the “non-formal sciences”; more frequently, perhaps, it is taken as a distinction holding between certain kinds of expressions, i.e., analytic and synthetic statements. It will be the thesis of this paper that there are good reasons for believing that this distinction in either of its forms is not a cogent one.
Subjectivity in Philosophy
Authors: Jones Philip Chapin
Published: November 2002

So obviously and blatantly real is the world around us—our own bodies and all things within reach of our senses—that from time immemorable man has tended to give it exclusive status—to feel that things in and related by space are the only realities. Such a belief is adequate for all practical affairs, but philosophers have always recognized that something is lacking in it. The very statement of the existence and reality of the external world brings in a second element: the mind that recognizes and admits it; the agent that by its own consciousness establishes the contrast of internal and external. This mind—the group of all our interrelated mental faculties, conceptions, and perceptions, and our consciousness of them—is definitely not something external, not something in space that can be handled physically, and studied in its mechanical and geometrical relationships. It is completely invisible, intangible, and inaudible, and obviously we neither taste nor smell it. It forms no part of the external world, and yet the very fact that we are conscious of the world is a tacit recognition of the mind that perceives it. An inevitable dualism seems to result between the internal mind and the external world it perceives, between the subjective and the objective.
The Logical Analysis of Kinship
Authors: Greenberg Joseph H.
Published: November 2002

The present attempt to indicate the general manner in which the kinship system of a people can be stated as an interpreted axiomatic system, with utilization of the symbolism of modern mathematical logic, is intended as a demonstration of the applicability of contemporary logical methods to problems in the social sciences. Aside from the obvious general advantages in the way of clarity and logical rigour to be gained by an application of axiomatic method, there emerges as by-products a convenient system of kinship symbolization and what is believed to be a solution to the long-standing controversy concerning the use of the terms ‘descriptive’ and ‘classificatory’ in reference to kinship systems. Since kinship terms are words in languages, the present exposition is perhaps of interest in that it shows how meaning in a semantic field of related terms can be defined by logical methods. So all the directional or temporal terms in a specific language might be treated as kinship terms are here. The possibility of a systematic treatment of the semantic aspects of linguistics which so far have resisted this type of treatment should be of interest to linguists.
Language Analysis and Metaphysical Inquiry
Authors: Copilowish Irving M.
Published: November 2002

The traditional attitude of philosophers towards the analysis of language is that it may have some corrective value, but can make no positive contribution to philosophy. The world must be investigated in itself: an analysis of the language in which we describe it will perhaps give us greater insight into the description, but not into what is described. Many philosophers have been suspicious of language, considering it a hindrance rather than an aid in philosophical investigation. This tradition has a long history, some of whose high points we can mention briefly.
Two Criteria For an Ideal Language
Authors: Bergmann Gustav
Published: November 2002

The lucidity of Mr. Copilowish's argument makes the task of the reviewer very pleasant, even if he disagrees as completely as I do with the conclusion, which is the main thesis Mr. Copilowish attempts to prove. Only at one minor point does his exposition not quite suit my taste. He chose to preface his argument with a string of quotations supposedly supporting the position he wishes to defend. It seems to me that with the proper historical precautions these passages allow for a very different interpretation. Yet I shall not pursue this matter, partly because I believe that Mr. Copilowish merely followed a literary stereotype, but mainly because the issue ought to be discussed on its merits rather than through the clouds of witness one could adduce on either side.
Coherence Theory Reconsidered: Professor Werkmeister on Semantics and on the Nature of Empirical Laws
Authors: Brodbeck May
Published: November 2002

Werkmeister's new book, The Basis and Structure of Knowledge is the second major attempt in recent years to defend the idealistic theory of knowledge. The first was Blanshard's Nature of Thought; and it is worth noticing that both authors, in undertaking the defense of a position long in the shadows, are well aware of contemporary developments in logic and technical philosophy. Werkmeister freely acknowledges his debt to Blanshard; yet his work differs in scope from the latter's in at least two ways. Firstly, the more recent book is concerned largely with the epistemological analysis of meaning and truth and hardly at all with what an older generation called “philosophical psychology,” while philosophical psychology fills all of the first and part of the second volume of Blanshard's work. In my opinion, this is all to the good. (That our generation inverts the error and too often indulges in psychological philosophy is another story!) Secondly, Werkmeister presents us with detailed analyses of scientific method, of the structure of scientific theories, and of mathematics, all three areas to which Blanshard pays virtually no attention.
Hume on Scientific Law
Authors: Ruddick Chester T.
Published: November 2002

For many years now a “principle of uncertainty” has played a major role in all discussion of the problem of scientific law as description of nature. That this principle had its origin in the efforts of science to describe nature is entirely appropriate; that it has had so immediate an effect on philosophic thought is inevitable.

It is also inevitable that questions should be raised concerning the meaning of certainty and its reference to descriptive law. Such questions are bound to occur to one who is concerned about the kinds of law in terms of which nature might be described. If these kinds can be considered to be two, one “mechanical,” the other “statistical,” it appears to be an easy step from the assertion of a principle of uncertainty which requires that the description of elemental processes and facts of nature be statistical—in terms of probabilities, that is—to a further assertion that after all a strictly mechanical description of nature is impossible, since the observational data which constitute its material are approximate and probable, and because the laws which provide the formal element of that description can never be more than approximately or probably true. It is concluded, then, that no element of certainty attaches to the so-called mechanical laws, any more than to others that are avowedly statistical. When a prediction is based on either sort of law, it is taken to be a prediction that an event will probablyoccur.
On the Fourth Figure of the Syllogism
Authors: Henle Paul
Published: November 2002

Perhaps the strangest controversy in the history of logic is that over the fourth figure of the syllogism. There was never any argument as to what syllogisms are valid, but merely as to how they should be arranged. Aristotle had divided syllogisms into figures according to whether the middle term was subject of one premiss and predicate of the other, or predicate of both premisses, or subject of both. Theophrastus and Eudemus subdivided the first figure into those moods in which the middle term was subject of the major premiss (and predicate of the minor) and those moods in which the middle was predicate of the major premiss (and subject of the minor). The latter moods were termed indirect. Galen said they constituted a separate figure; and so the controversy started. It has continued to the present with many writers objecting to the fourth figure, generally on grounds that it does not represent a genuine process of thought, and even ascribing this objection to Aristotle. The issue has been joined by writers who believe that it does represent a genuine process of thought.
Dialectical Materialism and Soviet Science
Authors: Feuer Lewis S.
Published: November 2002

There is a sense in which a philosophic theory can be confirmed. We may ask what its effects were on the development of scientific theory,—did it clarify ideas and help open up new areas of research, or did it constrain the work of science? In this essay, we shall try to judge the significance of dialectical materialism from this standpoint. We shall be concerned with the bearing of this philosophy on scientific work, especially in the Soviet Union.

Now dialectical materialism is not a “philosophy” in the same sense which the word has when applied to, let us say, logical empiricism. The difference is evident when a writer like Haldane asks, for instance, how far scientific discoveries have verified the principles of dialectical materialism.' We could not ask in a similar way whether scientific discoveries have confirmed the principles of logical empiricism. For the latter affirms no factual propositions concerning the world; it enunciates solely the principle of verifiability, and there is clearly no scientific discovery which could possibly refute the requirement of verification. If it makes sense to ask how far scientific discoveries verify dialectical materialism, then the latter must obviously contain factual propositions concerning nature which should be stated in a way to permit of confirmation of rejection.
Ideology and the Intellectual: A Study of Thorstein Veblen
Authors: Metzger Walter P.
Published: November 2002

Another critical analysis of the intellectual antecedents or the logical structure of Thorstein Veblen's thought is hardly needed. Since his death—iconoclasm's reward is often posthumous—a goodly number of such studies has appeared. I do not intend to add to the pile, but rather to analyze Veblen's work as representative of the response of “intellectuals” to specific ideologies and to ideology in general. This is a subject that has not received the direct attention it deserves, and, to my knowledge, Veblen has never been studied in this connection.

By “ideology” I mean a system of beliefs that presents value-judgments as empirical truths in order to justify, with or without conscious intent, a particular socio-economic group's claim to material and prestigial rewards. The valuejudgments in an ideology fall into two categories: those which have to do with a hero-subject, individual or group, whom the ideologue believes worthy of the rewards, and those which concern a villain-subject, individual or group, whom the ideologue believes unworthy. To win general acceptance of these valuejudgments an ideology also contains a set of reality-statements. These, in purporting to tell the “truth” about the world—about men, nature, God—serve to objectify, and thus justify, the choice of the hero and villain-subjects.
The Paradox of Measurement
Authors: Ballard Edward G.
Published: November 2002

A brief analysis of the processes of measurement common to any science reveal a paradox. This paradox is encountered when one tries to make clear how formal statements are related to experience in such a way that factual statements, such as statements about measurements, result. I believe that this paradox bears an analogy to the “fallacy of the third man” which disturbed Plato. Be that as it may, this paradox has not been satisfactorily solved in modern times, although a full comprehension of the processes of measurement would require its solution. In this paper I wish to do nothing more than present a statement of the difficulty.
The Problem of the Morning Star and the Evening Star
Authors: Fitch Frederic B.
Published: November 2002

An argument opposing the unrestricted use of quantification in modal logic has been put forward by Quine. Central to this argument are the two phrases,

(1) The Morning Star,

(2) The Evening Star.

One form of the argument is obtained by considering the following two statements:

(3) It is necessary that the Morning Star is identical with the Morning Star.

(4) It is not necessary that the Evening Star is identical with the Morning Star.
The Role of Applied Social Science in the Formation of Policy: A Research Memorandum
Authors: Merton Robert K.
Published: November 2002

Although the application of social science to practical problems of policy and action is still in its early stages, a large body of experience has been accumulated. Social science has been applied, in diverse spheres and with diverse results. The experience is there, but it has not been systematically reviewed and codified. Consequently, no one knows the present status of applied social science or, more importantly, its potentialities.
Natural Science and Value-Policy
Authors: Bain Read
Published: November 2002

No final statement can be made regarding the relations between science and policy-making. Knowledge, values, and techniques are interrelated, cumulative, and constantly changing. They are derived from man's responses to the complicated interactions between physical, biological, and cultural phenomena. Final answers are impossible because the answers themselves are part of the world and therefore are factors in changing it. We see through a glass darkly, whether it be the giant glass of Palomar or the eye-piece of the electron microscope.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology
Authors: Cartwright Dorwin
Published: November 2002

In the acute social crisis of our time many people are turning to social science for the solution of our social problems. Society seems to be saying, in effect, “Scientific methodology in the natural sciences and their accompanying technologies has brought us to the brink of extinction; let it save us through the social sciences and their technologies.” The great foundations, governmental agencies, business organizations, and the universities are repsonding to this demand by directing increasing amounts of money and personnel to activities dealing with human relations, intergroup relations, and social “problems” generally.
Social Science and Social Engineering
Authors: Hauser Philip M.
Published: November 2002

There should be no disagreement with the proposal for research into the role of applied social science in the formation of policy. The relation between social science and the formation of social policy and social action is, in fact, one of the more important areas of study in the general field of social control. The outline for research prepared by Mr. Merton constitutes a good framework for the investigation of important aspects of the relationship between social science and the world of practical affairs. But there is room for vigorous disagreement with a fundamental assumption about the role of applied social science with which he starts, and there are various broad considerations of importance in framing the proposed study which merit mention or greater elaboration. It is to these matters that this essay is addressed.
Social Science and Social Policy
Authors: Shils E. A.
Published: November 2002

The line of thought from which contemporary Social Science has come forth was occupied with problems of public policy in a way which has since become very much less prominent in the work of social scientists. The classic figures of social thought —Aristotle, Plato, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, Ricardo, Hobbes and Locke, Burke, Machiavelli and Hegel—were all involved in the consideration of the fundmental problems of policy from the point of view of the man who had to exercise power and to make practical decisions. Even where they themselves lived in remoteness from practical affairs the clarification of the standards for the judgment and guidance of public policy was always close to the centre of their attention. The politician's problems, reduced to fundamentals, were their problems. The problem of maintaining order through the prince's exercise of power was the point of departure of classical political philosophy; it was extended by modern liberalism to the maintenance of liberty in a framework of order. Political philosophy was regarded by those who professed it, as a means of enlightening rulers—and citizens—as to the right ends and the approximate means. The great ancestor of modern empirical social research, Sir William Petty, who regarded his task as the quantitative matter-of-fact description of what existed, viewed his problem as set by the prince's need to safeguard and maximise his power. Early economic theory accepted the same task. Even after mercantalism gave way to liberalism, economic theory was still intended to be a guide to policy.
A Clinical Method in Applied Social Science
Authors: Ulrich David N.
Published: November 2002

In his memorandum, “The Role of Applied Social Science in the Formation of Policy,” Professor Merton has stated that “… all applied social science involves advice (recommendations for policy).” While this statement obviously does not mean that the social scientist is limited solely to giving advice, it does imply a frame of reference in which the primary function of the social scientist appears to be obtaining information, analyzing it, and presenting the results to the policy-maker.
General Mensurational Gestaltism
Authors: Rusk George Y.
Published: November 2002

We live in a circular universe, of which each item must be defined in terms of other items, ultimately of its complement-opposite, by their mutual limitation. The employment of abstract, formally consistent, thought in this work is quite inadequate. Abstract thought is not metaphysically valid, because its formal consistency forces it to ignore—which in the realm of pure reason is tantamount to denying—some pertinent elements of reality—experience, and then implicitly at once and perhaps explicitly later to recognize the ignored elements, and thus be unconsciously inconsistent with itself. Therefore mankind is forced to undertake the monumental task of constructing a philosophical method of thought which does not strive after formal consistency and so which is able as constantly as may be consciously to express both (1) the recognized and the (complementary-opposite) ignored elements of reality—experience, that is, in ontological terms, being and non-being, and (2) the consistent and the inconsistent elements in thought. This the needed method can do only by relating items by their mutual restraint or measurement of various kinds and degrees, as will be explained below. To put the essential matter bluntly: philosophers must seek to learn discursively what scientists have always known intuitively—that the ultimate method of discovering truth is measurement, not abstract consistency. The proposed method must not, however, interfere with the rhetorical ordering of material, which must contain a conscious element of pure consistency, as will also be explained below.
On the Process of Measurement in Quantum Mechanics
Authors: Jordan P.
Published: November 2002

It is the purpose of this note to comment on some important problems which have been already vividly discussed by several authors. Besides the well known former discussions of Schrödinger and J. v. Neumann I should like to mention here especially H. Margenau's article, “Critical Points in Modern Physical Theory,” (3) which strongly influenced my present discussion.
Concepts and Reality in Quantum Mechanics
Authors: Lenzen Victor F.
Published: November 2002

A physical theory is a construction of thought which is founded on experience so as to constitute knowledge of the natural world. Propositions in physics are constituted of concepts which express the properties and processes of the physical world. For purposes of record and communication concepts are designated by the terms of a language, such as mathematical symbols, and philosophical discussion may be based on linguistic forms. In this essay, however, the element of discussion will be the concept as a mode of thought through which are grasped the attributes of physical things and the relations exemplified in physical processes. The present philosophical analysis of a physical theory, quantum mechanics, is to be carried out by critical analysis of its basic concepts. In particular, the program is to show that in quantum mechanics the concept of physical object exhibits the characters of discontinuity, complementarity, and relativity.