158 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 



rowly conceived than Pearson's. For this reason Bridgman's 

 position offers a convenient transition to the consideration 

 of the modified positivisms or fictionalisms. 



CONSTRUCTIONALISM 



The term " constructionalism ' has been employed in the 

 table to characterize, perhaps not very aptly, a large num- 

 ber of theories which are not sharply differentiated from 

 positivism of the type exhibited by Pearson. The common 

 feature of such positions is the more or less conscious recog- 

 nition that "knowing makes a difference." They are dis- 

 tinguished from the more "pure'' positivisms in their 

 insistence that the knower has something more to do in sci- 

 ence than to record in shorthand the succession of sense- 

 impressions. They recognize that the knower is unavoidably 

 active, and in his very attempt to record introduces in 

 spite of himself changes of a significant character. They 

 maintain, therefore, that representation usually involves 

 construction — a term which may be here used to describe a 

 variety of mental acts such as abstraction, idealization, 

 serial extension, and association. The presumption is that 

 these operations are all of a more significant character 

 than mere classification and description, hence the task of 

 science cannot be formulated merely in terms of these 

 latter processes. 



Though E. W. Hobson considers himself to have adopted 

 a position similar to that of Pearson, there are outstanding 

 differences. Most important of these is Hobson's insistence 

 that the mental operations employed in building up a con- 

 ceptual scheme involve more than classification. These 

 operations are variously described as "constructive," "ab- 

 stractive," "synthetic," "selective," and "idealizing." Laws 

 are not discovered, but constructed. "The discovery, or 

 rather construction, of a scientific law involves that syn- 

 thetic activity of thought which manifests itself in a con- 

 structive process in which actual percepts are employed 

 only as the raw material and starting point of the mental 



