MODERN SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 99 



the scientific method to problems of conduct which is known as prag- 

 matism. 



Pragmatism distinguishes itself at once from the synthetic philoso- 

 phy in that it is non-systematic. Instead of an interest in a formulated 

 body of knowledge it appears to possess an insatiable desire to determine 

 practical choices. Given a problem of conduct, the solution unknown; 

 what shall be the line of action ? Here one perceives a strictly scientific 

 situation that emphasizes the practical value of the hypothesis. The 

 problem is to find a satisfactory path into a new region. And the an- 

 swer that pragmatism gives is, trust to luck and your past experience. 

 The truth, says James, is the hypothesis that will work. The truth, 

 says Dewey, if I rightly apprehend him, is the hypothesis that you can 

 work with. There is a suggestion of permanency, of stability, of future 

 significance in the latter phrase that makes it, to my mind, more felici- 

 tous. But I do not care to dwell upon that point. What comes closer 

 to my purpose is to point out that here is no faith in final causes, here 

 is no suspicion even of that innocuous phantom, the unknowable. Here 

 is no. distinction between science and philosophy — if indeed pragmatists 

 are philosophers, in spite of the fact that, in one form or other, they fill 

 several of the chairs of philosophy now in our universities. Here is a 

 faith that facts will tell their tale — will inevitably condition the move- 

 ment of ideas, that one's imagination content is derivable from one's 

 effective experience. Here is a philosophy that is working a transfor- 

 mation on the thought of the day. How? By abandoning the search 

 for lofty peaks of final causation, from which to triangulate the uni- 

 verse according to logical necessity ; by emphasizing ideas that shall not 

 only square with the facts as we find them, but shall create others. 



Such I conceive to be the most significant effects of modern scientific 

 thought upon philosophy. They are characteristic tendencies of the 

 present day. How one may evaluate them, however, is a problem which, 

 for the purposes of this discussion, I have already promised to avoid. 



