CHAPTER XVII 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF SPECULATIVE 



PROBLEMS 



Those problems in the philosophy of science which are 

 called "speculative" constitute a rather miscellaneous group 

 which defies precise demarcation from other problems and 

 permits almost no systematization or organization. One 

 might almost say that problems of this character are what 

 remain in the philosophy of science when the strictly logical 

 problems, and the problems of the meaning of the basic 

 concepts — both of which are capable of fairly precise formu- 

 lation — are removed. Speculative problems of the type to 

 be here discussed constitute a part of the field of the philos- 

 ophy of science, for they draw their data, at least apparently, 

 from the content and the methods of the sciences. They thus 

 build upon the sciences, and if the sciences were different 

 either as to content or as to procedure the speculative prob- 

 lems would also demand new solutions. Hence they require 

 a knowledge of the sciences for their solutions, yet they are 

 not themselves scientific problems in the strict sense of the 

 word. 



The essential reason why the classification of speculative 

 problems is difficult is that the systematization of such prob- 

 lems is itself a solution to the speculative problem. One of 

 the most important of the speculative problems, as will be 

 seen immediately, is that which revolves around the attempt 

 to classify and organize the sciences and thus to construct 

 a total picture of the various aspects of the universe in their 

 interrelations. If each of the sciences is a specialized ap- 

 proach to the world of events, a totalitarian view which 

 integrates the sciences into a systematic whole is clearly 

 required. But such an integrated view would be precisely 

 a classification of speculative problems, for it would attempt 



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