THE UNIQUENESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL 



what follows I claim proprietary rights only in what may be 

 mistaken. 



The currency of science consists of statements about 'matter 

 of fact and existence** — propositions, they are often called, to 

 distinguish them from questions, orders, outcries and sugges- 

 tions, and some forms of the expression of abuse. But scientific 

 knowledge is something more than the assembly of the facts 

 reported by such statements: it has a corporate structure, a 

 certain internal order and coherence of its own. There are 

 several ways in which an order might be imposed upon them. 

 For example, a man who wished to write a textbook about 

 boron might begin by collecting under that heading all true 

 statements made about it. This would not give the facts a 

 peculiarly scientific structure, because the man who wrote the 

 author*'s obituary notice would be expected, mutatis mutandis, 

 to do very much the same for him. The grouping of statements 

 by their subjects, objects, form or syntax, or the chronological 

 order of the events recorded in them, though each has its 

 special purpose, does not confer the structure of a theory upon 

 them. Theories are sets of statements put into order by the 

 relationship of entailing, and statements entailed are said to be 

 •"explained' by those they follow from. Statements at the head 

 end of the entailing are variously called premisses, axioms, 

 postulates, or hypotheses — a luxuriant s^Tionymy, since all are 

 in effect, though not in form of origin, the same. Some attempt 

 should be made to share out their legacy of meaning without 

 spreading dissatisfaction equally among them all. We assert a 

 postulate, and take an axiom for granted; hypotheses we merely 

 venture to suggest. 'Premisses'*, when other people''s, are usually 

 so spoken of when not believed in. Scientists speak as a rule of 

 their hypotheses. Some scientists seem to use the word 'theory"* in- 

 terchangeably with 'hypothesis'*, but this wastes a good word and 

 should not be encouraged. A theory is the whole system of state- 

 ments comprising hypotheses and the statements they entail. 



72 



