YERIFICATORY TECHNIQUES 223 



made in terms of further high abstractions but must be 

 made through concretions (e.g., balls rolling down inclined 

 planes); verifications of microscopic phenomena (e.g., mole- 

 cules) cannot be made in terms of further microscopic 

 phenomena but must be made through macroscopic objects 

 (e.g., expanding bodies); verifications of idealizations (e.g., 

 perfect levers) cannot be made in terms of other idealizations 

 but must be made through actual objects (e.g., real levers). 

 In every case the language of the hypothesis must be 

 "translated" into the language of empirical data. Nor- 

 man Campbell 1 suggests that every theory contains a "dic- 

 tionary' by which ideas inside of the theory are related 

 to other ideas whose truths are determined independently 

 of the theory. It is by means of a dictionary that one passes 

 from mathematical equations containing only numbers to 

 the objects of which the numbers represent measured values. 

 This is merely an alternative formulation of the necessity 

 for providing a technique by means of which the essentially 

 unverifiable entities constituting the hypothesis can be re- 

 lated to more empirical entities. It is an additional corrobo- 

 ration of the thesis, already insisted upon in Chapter X, 

 that every rational science must retain its empirical refer- 

 ence; without the descriptive propositions from which it 

 has been derived and in terms of which it is verified it 

 becomes purely arbitrary; it has the same status as an 

 hypothesis which has not been verified. 



CONFIRMATION AND INFIRMATION 



Confirmation and infirmation are the operations by which 

 the predictions from hypotheses are established or dises- 

 tablished. The scientific procedure as a whole is essen- 

 tially a series of inductions and deductions, guesses and 

 corroborations, flights and perchings. The confirmatory- 

 infirmatory movement is that part of this total movement 

 by which the imagination is restrained and kept relevant 

 to the data. It is the act in which the scientist endeavors 



1 Physics, the Elements, pp. 122 el seq. 



