30 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 



bearing upon his own subject matter. The result is that the 

 individual scientist feels quite justified in neglecting con- 

 siderations of the following kind: the conclusions in any 

 field other than his own; the nature of the relationships 

 holding between his field and other fields, and between the 

 other fields themselves; the character of the total world 

 which has thus been departmentalized for purposes of study. 



2. Another important feature is that the scientist, as 

 such, is not a logician, i.e., he is not clearly aware of the 

 method which he is employing and of the criteria in terms 

 of which its validity should be judged. The scientist proceeds 

 largely by hunches and guesses, by trial and error, by in- 

 tuition, by unconscious inferences and techniques based 

 primarily on habit. The point is not that these are bad 

 methods, but that they are accepted uncritically. It is not 

 unusual, for example, to find teachers of science advising 

 students against taking a course in logic on the grounds that 

 they become so much concerned with what is going on in 

 their minds that they are no longer able to observe what is 

 taking place before their eyes. Fortunately this extreme 

 attitude is not taken by the greater number of scientists. 

 But there is unanimity in the view that the techniques of 

 science should not be examined until there is an obvious 

 breakdown, indicating a fundamental weakness in the struc- 

 ture. On such an occasion either the scientist or the phi- 

 losopher may undertake the reconstruction, but if the scien- 

 tist does it he is not acting as a scientist but as a philosopher. 



3. Still another feature is the scientist's acceptance of 

 many concepts without a careful analysis of their meaning, 

 and many beliefs without a careful justification of their 

 truth. These are often called the presuppositions or the 

 foundations of his system. It is not the task of the biologist, 

 for example, to examine the concept of matter, nor of the 

 psychologist to examine the concept of life, nor of the 

 physicist to examine the concepts of number and order, 

 nor of any of the scientists to examine the concepts of rela- 

 tion, quality, event. Nor is it the task of the individual 



