CHAPTER XII 



TJw Beal World 



. . . that which I meditate and propound is not Acatalepsia, 

 but Eucatalepsia; not denial of the capacity to understand, 

 but provision for the understanding truly. —bacon 



ROM science I turn to cosmology, 

 to argue the case for belief that science discovers to us some- 

 thing of the nature of the real world. I find that belief beneficent, 

 and justified by no inconsiderable body of evidence. By positivists, 

 ■empiricists, instrumentalists, operationalists, phenomenalists, and 

 others of the Pyrrhonist tribe, the evidence is ignored, the belief dis- 

 missed as "meaningless," and reality cast aside as "only a comfort 

 ^vord." Bohr pronounced as well as any the central credo of this 

 philosophic extravagance. 



... in our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the 

 real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is 

 possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience. 



But science has not grown through rejection of the purpose "to dis- 

 close the real essence of the phenomena"— which purpose lies very 

 much at the focus of the work for which Bohr will be longest remem- 

 bered. The reach of science has ever exceeded its grasp, but only as 

 men have been bold enough to reach has their grasp been length- 

 ened. What has in the past, and will in the future, most stir men to 

 scientific achievement is not, I think, the cool disbelief of Bohr but 

 rather that intense conviction voiced by Polanyi. 



. . . personal knowledge in science is not made but discovered, and 

 as such it claims to establish contact with reality beyond the clues on 

 which it relies. It commits us, passionately and far beyond our com- 



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