PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 37 



but by the philosophically minded scientist and the scien- 

 tifically minded philosopher. 



Granting the legitimacy of such a discipline as the phi- 

 losophy of science, an important difficulty arises. What is 

 to be its method? Unfortunately it does not follow that a 

 philosophy of science will always be a scientific philosophy. 

 As Cohen insists, it often requires a specialist to know what 

 the results of the special sciences are, hence any synthesis 

 of these conclusions must be regarded as tentative and 

 subject to continual revision. 1 The philosophy of science 

 is not for the lovers of fixed systems. Furthermore, as 

 Broad points out, the actual synthetic act is almost certain 

 not to be scientific since it passes immediately to broad 

 and sweeping generalizations and attempts to recognize the 

 claims of the emotions. Cohen asserts that it is dominated 

 more by "practical, dramatic, and aesthetic than by scien- 

 tific motives." 2 The philosophy of science runs these same 

 risks in its other aspects, though not to so great a degree. 

 Hence the problem arises as to how to pursue these precarious 

 studies with a hope of maximum success. 



The answer, in lieu of anything better, must be that the 

 same cautious method which has characterized science itself 

 should be the method of the philosophy of science. For any 

 study a method must be presupposed, since a method cannot 

 be used and critically examined at the same time. If science 

 has attained a measure of success by means of its own 

 method, the presumption is that the method may itself be 

 examined in the same way. This does not mean that ex- 

 perimentation, measurement, and other laboratory tech- 

 niques must be employed in the philosophy of science. It will 

 be shown in the course of the following studies that these are 

 not the distinguishing features of the scientific method. Science 

 proceeds, rather, by formation of hypotheses which are based 

 upon clearly formulated data and verified in terms of conse- 

 quences. This must be the method of the philosophy of science. 



1 M. R. Cohen, Reason and Nature (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931), p. 147. 



2 hoc. cit. 



