CHAPTER VII 



The Princip les of Science 



BEGIN by distinguishing two cate- 

 gories of principles: a small group of regulative principles, with im- 

 plications for the conduct of science; and a much larger group of 

 substantive principles constituting "established knowledge" for the 

 scientists of an age. The substantive principles supply a point of de- 

 parture for scientific thought; the regulative principles sketch the 

 goals of such thought and, very tentatively, routes thereto. Thus, in 

 eflFect, the regulative principles assert something about the optimal 

 construction of science, whereas the substantive principles assert 

 something about the actual construction of the world. To be sure, this 

 distinction is not perfectly clean-cut. If we accept a particular regu- 

 lative principle, and seek to build scientific knowledge in certain 

 ways, we do so only because we also accept a certain conception of 

 the object of knowledge: the construction of the world. Nonetheless 

 I will maintain what seems to me this useful distinction between sub- 

 stantive and regulative principles: some haziness of classification 

 must, I think, be tolerated when we have to deal with the funda- 

 mental principles constituting that integral context of science of 

 which Nicod says : 



It stays in the shadow and yet guides us to the light; we know how 

 to use it, but we do not know how to analyze it. 



Beginning with the regulative principles, observe that they have 

 the function (but not the status) of Kant's a priori ideas. Kant sug- 

 gests that the multifarious data of human experience are in them- 



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