34 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 



mean only that the study should be pursued with unusual 

 caution, and that its results should not claim to be more 

 than conjectures substantiated to a greater or lesser degree. 



The second aspect of the philosophy of science may be 

 called the logic of science, or the philosophy of method. It 

 differs from traditional logic in its insistence that science 

 offers, by and large, the most effective method for acquiring 

 knowledge. Hence the task of philosophy toward science 

 is the analysis and criticism of its method, with a view to 

 estimating its scope and determining its limitations, with a 

 view to exposing its errors and revealing its criteria of valid- 

 ity, with a view to the clarification of the assumptions about 

 symbols, meaning, and language which are involved. This 

 is the fundamental part of what Broad calls critical philos- 

 ophy. 'It deals with such concepts as truth, implication, 

 probability, class, etc. In fact it may be defined as the sci- 

 ence which deals with propositional forms, their parts, their 

 qualities, and their relations." 1 



The third aspect of the philosophy of science may be 

 called the metaphysics of science, or metaphysical science. 

 It is closely connected with the logic of science, and is in- 

 cluded by Broad under critical philosophy. "Common- 

 sense constantly makes use of a number of concepts, in 

 terms of which it interprets its experience. It talks of things 

 of various kinds; it says that they have places and dates, 

 that they change, and that changes in one cause changes 

 in others, and so on. . . . Science takes over these concepts 

 from common-sense with but slight modification, and uses 

 them in its work. . . . The most fundamental task of 

 Philosophy is to take the concepts that we daily use in 

 common life and science, to analyze them, and thus to de- 

 termine their precise meanings and their mutual relations." 

 Though the scientist may and does pursue this analysis, 

 whenever he 'begins to discuss the concepts of his science 

 in this thorough and disinterested way we begin to say that 

 he is studying, not so much Chemistry or Physics, as the 



1 Ibid., p. 23. 



