[bowman] fundamental PROCESSES IN HISTORICAL SCIENCE 545 



similar failures. A correct process, according to the 3rd fundamental 

 principle of science, is one that rightly followed leads necessarily to a 

 correct result, but the method of formulating historical or other con- 

 clusions on the basis of probability rightly followed leads only (except 

 in averaged results) to the most probable conclusion, and not to one 

 that is necessarily correct. For this reason, barring averaged results, 

 no ground could ever be found in experience for considering the 

 above method to have been established as correct, and therefore it has 

 never reached, and cannot reach, a standing which would permit of its 

 being tested by the 4th methodic principle. Were such a standing 

 conceded to it against the facts and against possibility, it would fall 

 at once before this test. Where but a single failure is registered against 

 a process having this standing, the 4th methodic principle requires 

 that the process be condemned and abandoned unless a controllable 

 cause of the failure can be located and the process so adjusted as to 

 prevent similar failures. In the above method any one of the con- 

 tinual instances where a most probable conclusion fails to stand before 

 additional evidence, would constitute such a failure. These in- 

 stances occur continually, and in none of them is there a controllable 

 cause of the failure, because probable conclusions rest on the action of 

 favorable against unfavorable chances, and chance is not controllable. 

 Were such control possible and an adjustment actually made to 

 prevent similar failures, the process would then have ceased to be one 

 based on probability. 



III. THE FUNCTION OF REASONED, PURE AND FORMAL 



PROBABILITY IN SCIENCE AND THE RIGHTS 



OF PROBABLE CONCLUSIONS TO PUBLICITY. 



(a). Reasoned Probability (the Inferior Measure). 



Probability of the inferior measure, or the balancing of reasons 

 pro and con, which may be termed for convenient identification 

 "reasoned probability," has (1) a positive function in the accumulation 

 of evidence, and (2) a negative function in the formulation of the 

 final conclusions designed for publicity. The evidence available at 

 any given point in an investigation will establish ordinarily a certain 

 body of necessary conclusions; and at the same time it will suggest 

 to the investigator, through his faculty of imagination, a certain 

 number of probable conclusions, theories or hypotheses, some brilliant, 

 and all of more or less interest. None of them, not even the brilliant, 

 have scientific value in themselves. Their usefulness lies in the spur 

 to the investigator to search for further evidence, which will test these 



Sec I and II, 1916—36 



