CHAPTER VI 



Empirical Tools and 

 Empincism 



ciENCE purports to speak of the 

 world of experience; the devices of empiricism safeguard its contact 

 with that world. To be sure, not all scientific concepts are linked to 

 obser\ables with exactly equal clarity and directness. Thus, for ex- 

 ample, many of the ( explicati\'e ) concepts figuring in the postulates 

 of highly abstract theories will be so linked only indirectly— by way of 

 colligative relations derivative from those postulates. Nevertheless, 

 among scientific concepts generally, we find a remarkable reconcilia- 

 tion, of great abstraction and great clarity of denotation, highly char- 

 acteristic of science— because completely unparalleled in common 

 sense, philosophy, mathematics, or any other human endeavor. At the 

 most fundamental level this union develops from the power of the em- 

 pirical devices deployed by scientists: their special materials and 

 specimens, procedures and techniques, instruments and equipment. 



INSTRUMENTS 



In Chapter II we saw how instruments may facilitate the concur- 

 rence of multiple observers of the "same thing." You and I will agree 

 on the magnitude of some particular "light intensity" as soon as we 

 agree to adopt a denotation that points us toward a straightforward 

 observable, such as the scale reading of a light meter. Even a notably 

 abstract scientific concept may thus acquire a clarity of denotation 



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