32 JOHN A. OESTERLE 



predication, as we have suggested, need not be reserved to 

 cases that are certain. Mere likeliness may suffice to posit 

 propositions in that mode, such as " man came about by 

 mutations that occurred in lower living beings," but they will 

 be 'posited and require further proof. In other words, the 

 universal ut nunc appears both in the order of simple appre- 

 hension and in the order of composition and division, with all 

 that this entails in the order of argumentation. 



Now there is a further aspect to this type of universality. 

 It is, in a sense, pragmatic: we may have to do something 

 about it. This " doing " can mean a speculative operation, as 

 when we are inclined to believe that there is no last prime 

 number: the statement is a challenge that sets us on to attempt 

 a proof. But the doing may also be more strictly a practical 

 operation, such as experimentation, or careful isolation for 

 further induction. And this brings us face to face with an 

 important distinction. Suppose that we have laid down a 

 thermodynamic theory, which is a coordinated ensemble of 

 posits, and construct on the basis of it a machine that works. 

 Does this prove that the theory is true.^^ Pragmatically, it does. 

 It is in this sense that as to truth, scientific theories are in 

 the main pragmatic. But so far as sheer knowledge is con- 

 cerned, pragmatic proof can do no more than indicate that as 

 to speculative truth the theories are on the right track, that 

 we are moving in the direction of the truth, not that we possess 

 it. The whole point is, then, that we would not be moving on 

 toward the truth if we did not take the liberty of constructing 

 posits in the mode of universal terms and universal proposi- 

 tions for the immediate purpose of seeing what happens when 

 we do this. 



If our mind had to confine itself to terms and propositions 

 that we know well and could only use these for further argu- 

 ment, there is very little that we could ever come to know.^ 



This would not only preclude advances in scientific knowing, but also in vast 

 areas of what we now regard as philosophy, for the " eternal truths " of philosophy 

 occupy a relatively small position in relation to the whole. Indeed, it might be said 



