FACT OF EVOLUTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTIONISM 333 



justment, this formula is found in the classical text-books on 

 the methodology^ not only of physics and chemistry, but of 

 the biological, anthropological, psychological and sociological 

 sciences as well. ^Miatever the technique of elaborating laws 

 and theories — which might be proper to each discipline — one 

 might suppose that a " scientific fact " would be an event, or 

 thing, or deed which could be i m mediately and certainlv ob- 

 served, or inferred with certitude from technical observation. 

 So the classical methodologies of the 19th and early 20th Cen- 

 turies seemed to view the use of the term " fact." 



But with the rapid re\'i5ion in the methodology of particle 

 physics (micro-physics) due to the indirect techniques neces- 

 sary to handle the data, manv remarkable changes have taken 

 place in the canonized terms of classical macro-physics, biolog}', 

 and the human sciences. Classical meanings attached to such 

 terms as causality, fact, law, hj'pothesis, probability, etc. ceased 

 to correspond simply with the concepts introduced by the 

 micro-physicist. On his level of research, the observations of 

 the facts themselves, because of the very indirect techniques of 

 experiment he is forced to employ, cannot be disengaged from 

 the concepts, assumptions, constructs, analogies and extra- 

 polations used to set up the operation of discovery. The 

 "thing" studied became a spatio-temporal measurement; its 

 " properties " became a description of the processes by means 

 of which these measurements are made.^* Fact and inference, 

 technique of observation and the event or thing observed, were 

 so blended that the classical meanings were radically altered 

 in the direction of subjective analog}*. In the light of the 

 methodolog^' of micro-physics: 



Observations, evidence, facts; these notions, if drawn from the 

 '■ catalogue sciences " of school and undergraduate text-books, will 

 ill prepare one for understanding the foundations of particle theory. 

 So too with the ideas of theory, h^-pothesis, law. causality and 

 principle. In a growing research discipline, inquire- is directed not 

 to rearranging old facts and explanations into more elegant 



"F. Renoirte. Cosmology (New York, 1950) p. 118. 



