THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE 43 



logical justification of science itself. The two questions can 

 be formulated as follows: (a) What does the scientist actu- 

 ally assume, explicitly or implicitly, with reference to an 

 external world, the uniformity of nature, the structure of 

 knowing ? (b) What theory of the external world, the uni- 

 formity of nature, and the structure of knowing will actually 

 justify logically the procedure of the scientist? The answers 

 to both questions are difficult, though for different reasons. 

 On the one hand it is not easy to ascertain what beliefs the 

 scientist holds implicitly, both because they are vague and 

 because they differ from scientist to scientist. But on the 

 other hand it is not easy to construct a system of postulates 

 which will justify all science, for science is an extremely 

 complicated thing and an adequate postulate scheme would 

 necessarily involve complete solutions to some of the most 

 profound problems of philosophy. 



POSSIBILITY OF THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE 



Granting the importance of understanding the logical 

 structure of science, is such an understanding itself pos- 

 sible ? It seems clear that the only way to answer this ques- 

 tion is to plunge into the study of science and see whether 

 results which are at all satisfactory can be attained. It was 

 suggested at the end of the preceding chapter that there 

 can be no critique of knowing which precedes all knowing. 

 Hence one cannot demand that an empirical study of science 

 be preceded by an examination of the empirical method 

 itself. Since science is empirical, however, the presumption 

 is that this method is by and large satisfactory. It seems 

 reasonable to believe, therefore, that the method is the best 

 one to employ in studying science itself. If one wishes the 

 assumption to be made explicit he may state it as follows: 

 an empirical study of science is possible. This means essen- 

 tially that one may study science just as the scientist studies 

 nature. Supposing that the scientist is attempting to photo- 

 graph nature, one may also presume the legitimacy of at- 

 tempting to photograph the scientist in this act. But one 



