22 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 



is description leads imperceptibly to the view that all knowl- 

 edge is description, and that problems of explanation and 

 interpretation are pseudo-problems. The claim that science 

 employs quantitative methods to understand qualities passes 

 gradually into the position which insists that when qualities 

 have been explained they have been explained away, hence 

 there is nothing left for philosophy. Or, on the other hand, 

 if philosophy knows things immediately and intuitively, 

 then science, which knows things only mediately and symbol- 

 ically, must be pseudo and illusory. 



It was readily seen that no permanent harmony could be 

 established by means of such a reconciliation. But it was 

 also apparent that the very attempt to decide questions of 

 the importance of the scientific method as over against the 

 philosophical method, questions of the legitimacy of the 

 two types of problem, questions of the truth of the knowl- 

 edge obtained through the respective approaches, gave rise 

 to interesting speculations and, in many cases, to significant 

 answers. The suspicion immediately arose that the investiga- 

 tion of the methods of science and philosophy, of the limits 

 of the respective fields, and of the relative importance of 

 the two types of knowledge might itself become a discipline 

 with significant results to offer toward the solution of the 

 ultimate problem of knowledge. Since the method and sub- 

 ject matter of science seemed more definite than the method 

 and subject matter of philosophy, this new discipline was 

 called " the philosophy of science." The task of this new en- 

 terprise was the critical study of science from the point of 

 view of its presuppositions and unanalyzed notions, from 

 the point of view of its techniques and methods, and from 

 the point of view of the limits of its problems. By this means 

 a more or less permanent reconciliation was brought about, 

 for if philosophy is the study of science just as science is 

 the study of nature, there can no more be a conflict between 

 science and philosophy than there can between science and 

 nature. There can be no question of the relative importance 

 of the two disciplines for they are, so to speak, upon different 



