20 COMMON SENSE ( AND SCIENCE) 



ness of the relation has nothing to do with "dread" construed as 

 cause. 7/ a child has suflFered a burn, then he is not thereafter likely 

 to be found in the immediate vicinity of fires. The original burning 

 and the subsequent avoidance of fires are the observational terms to 

 which the relation gives order, and through which it yields pre- 

 dictions. By supplying an understandable link between the two ob- 

 sen^ational terms, the hypothesis of "dread" may serve a mnemonic 

 function— it also permits terse statement of this common-sense maxim. 

 The same two values are conveyed by the word "seeks" in the 

 maxim: "Water seeks its own level." But the function of the colliga- 

 tive relation is entirely independent of the imputation of purpose, as 

 it is of cause. 



Whatever the form of their verbal statement, colligati^^e relations 

 have value for common sense if reducible to the form: "If A, then 

 B." We predict the future situation B on the basis of past or present 

 observation that situation A obtains. Purposive behavior becomes 

 possible: wishing to bring about situation B we work to realize situa- 

 tion A. Desiring to halve the volume of a gas, I seek to double the 

 pressure on it. The conceptual formulation of the relation renders it 

 both brief and general, terse and pithy, abstract and broadly applica- 

 ble. The relation constitutes communicable knowledge, where the 

 encyclopedic enumeration required for statement of a purely phe- 

 nomenologic relation would be, practically, incommunicable. 



Denotation."^ We see "things," no two exactly alike, and arrive at 

 concepts of classes of things essentiaUy alike. Observing things in 

 \'arious situations we pass, by a further creative act, to colligative 

 relations the extreme abstractness of which is generally masked by 

 our familiarity with them. However, if such relations are to have the 

 slightest value to a common sense, usable by all, their conceptual 

 terms must meet one essential criterion: The concepts that figure in 

 the colligative relations of common sense (and science) must have 

 associated with them reasonably unequivocal experiential denota- 

 tions. Only by virtue of such denotations can we get back from the 

 abstraction of the conceptual statement to the "hard realities" of pur- 

 posi\'e action to produce a predictable end. The statement that water 



* Following Webster, I will use denotation to signify "tlie class of individuals or 

 instances falling under a conception or named by a term. . . . The denotation of 

 a word is its actual meaning; its connotation that which it suggests or imphes in 

 addition to its actual meaning." 



