THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE 399 



science flourishes because it rests on a salutary ignorance of 

 logic and a healthy contempt for the traditional philosophies ; 

 modern logic survives, together with the ancient philosophies it 

 springs from, because it has entrenched itself in a culpable 

 ignorance of science. It is in consequence of this specialism 

 that philosophers have been so slow to recognise the logical 

 value of the actual procedure of the sciences, while scientists 

 have hardly troubled as yet to appreciate the scientific import- 

 ance of the radical conversion of philosophers to empiricism 

 and Darwinism which goes under the name of Pragmatism. 



But to a pragmatist philosopher the scientific situation of the 

 present day is full of interest and stimulus, and beautifully con- 

 firms his generalisations about the real nature of scientific 

 method. Dogmas are no longer received on mere authority, 

 and are everywhere quoted at a discount. Experiment has 

 everywhere established its right to test assertions and to ques- 

 tion prejudices. Principles are no longer conceived as self- 

 evident and self-proving "intuitions" or immutable "necessities 

 of thought," but are everywhere treated as convenient postulates 

 or methodological assumptions, whose effective truth depends on 

 confirmation by experience rather than on a man's psycho- 

 logical willingness to accept them at a first hearing, so that their 

 real proof comes from their scientific services and their success 

 in handling the " facts " of the sciences that were boldly built 

 upon them. Hence the man of science has won great freedom 

 for himself in his attitude towards his " principles." It has 

 everywhere become permissible to discuss principles, to con- 

 sider what formulations of what principles are most useful, and 

 to suggest alternatives and improvements on those in use. As a 

 matter of fact the principles of most sciences have been greatly 

 modified, with the happiest effects. Those of biology have been 

 revolutionised by evolutionism, those of geometry by meta- 

 geometry, those of physics by radioactivity, those of mechanics 

 and chemistry by the electric theory of matter, etc., and even 

 such fundamental assumptions as the conservation of energy 

 and the indestructibility of matter have to submit to the indignity 

 of experimental verification. 



Nowhere can one see a set of principles, even in the sciences 

 which have not experienced such convulsions, that do not seem 

 to be essentially open to discussion and that merely force them- 

 selves upon the mind through our sheer inability to think of 



