ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS 237 



symbols have been obtained from events, and, consequently, 

 of the way in which they refer to events. Hence to tell 

 what events a symbol refers to is to tell only a part of the 

 story. 



The task of the analysis of scientific concepts can be 

 defined as the attempt to answer three questions with refer- 

 ence to each of the basic notions and each of the assumptions 

 of science. (1) To what, presumably, does the concept or 

 proposition in question ultimately refer in the realm of 

 events? This may be called the problem of the empirical 

 foundation, or of the descriptive reference of the symbol. 

 (2) What does science itself consider to be the meaning 

 and truth value of the symbol? This may be called the 

 problem of the scientific content, or the scientific status of 

 the symbol. (3) What is the character of the relation which 

 the symbol, considered in its scientific meaning and truth 

 value, bears to the realm of events? This may be called the 

 problem of the relation of the scientific content of the symbol 

 to its empirical foundation. 



A quotation from CD. Broad illustrates the problem as 

 thus formulated. He is discussing the character of our 

 knowledge of space as obtained through common sense. 

 "We notice that all the information gained in this way is 

 extremely crude, as compared with the concepts that we 

 use in geometry and apply in physics. We see and feel 

 finite surfaces and lumps of complicated shapes, not the 

 unextended points and the lines without breadth of the 

 geometers. And the spatial relations that we can immedi- 

 ately recognize between outstanding patches in our fields 

 of view are equally crude. They are not relations between 

 points and straight lines, but between rough surfaces and 

 volumes. . . . These crude objects of sense-awareness do 

 have properties that are evidently spatial, and ... we 

 can see in them the germs of the refined notions of points, 

 straight lines, etc. The question is: 'How are the refined 

 terms and their accurately definable relations, which we use 

 in our mathematics and physics, but cannot perceive with 



