SCIENCE (and common SENSE ) 39 



amateur photographer well knows. But the pointer reading of an 

 exposure meter yields an observation in which practically every- 

 one at once concurs. A second major gain: the judgment of "normal- 

 ity" is enormously simplified. However deviant from the norm the 

 observer may be, if he is not obviously lunatic or blind we feel that 

 his report of pointer position can be trusted. 



The use of instruments in general, and pointer-reading instruments 

 in particular, enormously facilitates the application in science of the 

 concurrence criterion of "fact" acknowledged by both science and 

 common sense. Such instruments oflFer us important new powers, 

 but not a general panacea. Instruments may be insufficient even to 

 resolve all problems of concurrence: the Maskeleyne-Kinnebrook 

 episode involved an instrumental observation closely akin to pointer 

 reading. And certainly the major problems of taxonomy seem un- 

 likely to be resolved by any conjectural "reduction" to pointer read- 

 ings. Finally, instruments cannot ensure "objectivity." "Pointer read- 

 ing" may offer so unequivocal a subject for observation that it does 

 not overtax the modest endowment of a Cyclopic moron who can 

 distinguish only black and white. But in principle his observation is 

 not one whit more "objective" than an observation in which we 

 deploy our sensory faculties more extensively. With our instruments 

 we more readily attain the "facts" in which all concur. Warranting 

 their impersonality, our concurrence cannot warrant their "objectiv- 

 ity." But have we need for any such warranty? However "objective" 

 or "subjective," all recurrent experience of which we can attain con- 

 current reports is potential subject matter for science. Whether it 

 becomes actual subject matter depends on a third criterion, to which 

 we now turn. 



REGULARITY 



In both science and common sense we work upon experience until it 

 has been reduced to an order on which predictions can be founded. 

 Data which seem to fall beyond any hope of such reduction are apt 

 to go neglected, regardless of their intrinsic interest. To such data we 

 may even deny status as fact— as when Bernard writes : 



. . . if a phenomenon, in an experiment, had such a contradictory ap- 

 pearance that it did not necessarily connect itself with determinate 

 causes, then reason should reject the fact as nonscientific. ... in the 

 presence of such a fact, men of science must never hesitate; they 



