TYPE ANALYSIS IN THE SCIENCES 233 



many thinkers, like Cohen, who have pointed out that the mind 

 often travels 'not from the particular to the universal but from 

 the vague to the definite.' ^^ The only possible remedy for these 

 inevitable dangers of abstraction would seem to be constant 

 critical examination of our theoretical apparatus, to supplement 

 the usual processes of empirical verification. 



However, abstraction is surely necessary, since it is only 

 through synthesis of knowledge, and through such concepts as 

 'atomic weight' and 'mammal', that science has been able to 

 progress beyond its most primitive stages. As Cohen says in his 

 discussion of 'Reason in Social Science': 'An intelligent use of 

 type analysis therefore depends upon this very ability of neglecting 

 in the phenomena before us all that is irrelevant and non-typical. 

 . . . The weakness of the ordinary account of induction is that it 

 minimizes this inventive genius.' 12 



The ultimate issue at stage is the status of the type, the role it 

 plays in our understanding of nature. Though Darwin has made 

 us wary of premature generalizations and aware of the fact of 

 development, evolution has not destroyed the fact that species 

 exist. That hydrogen is hydrogen and not carbon — 'A rose is a 

 rose is a rose' — is not a judgment of value, but a stubborn fact. 

 There are discontinuities, as well as continuities in nature: 

 'Thus we could never recognize any biologic species if there were 

 not gaps between certain classes of animals (or plants) and 

 others.' 13 



NOTES 



1 Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Springfield, 

 Mass., 1 93 1. 



2 For some of the more recent complications of the species concept, see 

 Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species, New York: Columbia, 1942, 

 especially Chapter V, 'The Systematic Categories and the New Species 

 Concept'. 



^ The original, scholastic meaning of the word species had to do with 'image' 

 or 'idea', coming from the Latin word for 'look'. 



^ Reason and Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Scientific Method, p. 98 (cf. our 

 Chapter XI, Note 53). 



5 Ibid.y p. 390, our italics. 



6 Ibid., p. 365. 



'^ An Introduction to Metaphysics, especially p. 27 ff. Quote from p. 34. 

 8 Cf. How We Think, Chapter X, 'Concrete and Abstract Thinking'. 



