6 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



logician thinks it a part of his duty to teach us how to measure masses and 

 motions of matter by the &quot; method of means,&quot; the &quot; method of least squares,&quot; 1 

 etc., may we not reasonably expect from him an equally detailed code of 

 directions in the task, let us say, of estimating the value of the historical evi 

 dence for and against the alleged fact so momentous in human history that 

 Christ rose from the dead after His crucifixion ? 



The logician is no more debarred from dealing with the methodology of 

 &quot; metaphysical,&quot; or &quot;ethical,&quot; or &quot;historical&quot; truth, than he is from investi 

 gating the methods of discovering and establishing &quot; physical &quot; truths. Truths 

 and theories, facts and phenomena, whether real or alleged, whether &quot;re 

 ligious &quot; or &quot; scientific,&quot; forming, as they all do, the common data of philosophy, 

 fall equally within the sphere of logic. They are all subjects of human investi 

 gation : and it ought to be, therefore, the function of general logic, not to 

 teach us how to explore the hidden recesses of any particular department, but 

 rather to give us a general training in the method of discovering and proving 

 truth : a training which will help us equally well all round, which will aid us 

 in determining whether God exists and has spoken to us through Christ, no 

 less than in determining whether radium cures cancer, or whether alleged 

 &quot; telepathic &quot; phenomena are mere coincidences. 



The logician must, of course, ultimately use his own discretion in deter 

 mining whether he ought in a general way to indicate the main methods in use 

 in this or that special department of science ; and it is just here, in judging 

 which departments are worthy of a more detailed attention, that he will be 

 influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the general trend of intellectual 

 activity in his own time and country. In this way he is exposed to the danger 

 of unduly emphasizing the scope and import of certain special methods of 

 scientific research, or even of setting them up as the only methods of attain 

 ing to scientific truth. 



Now, modern inductive logic shows pretty clear evidence of suffering from 

 an undue bias of the sort just outlined : it has concerned itself somewhat too 

 exclusively with the mathematically exact quantitative methods of the physical 

 sciences, and it has thus fostered an unwholesome tendency to conceive and 

 treat all human experience as amenable to the laws and methods of mechanics. 

 It has been more or less obsessed by the rigid determinism of the &quot;mechanical 

 theory of the universe,&quot; which was so much in vogue about half a century 

 ago. 



There is something one-sided in this tendency to cultivate the positive, 

 physical sciences, on the lines of mechanically exact, quantitative laws, and to 

 develop, in logic, a corresponding methodology of them to the exclusion of 

 the human sciences, the knowledge of man s nature, origin, and destiny, of 

 his conduct and religion, of his social activity and its history. The intellectu 

 ally cogent evidence of the &quot;exact &quot; sciences mathematics, whether pure or 

 applied to physics lends itself, of course, most readily to clear, logical 

 treatment. But the &quot; exact &quot; sciences are not the only sciences, nor is the 

 assent which is given on intellectually cogent evidence the only assent that 

 deserves to be called scientific. Assents that are freely given may be scientific 

 and certain, provided that the evidence is as strong as can be reasonably ex 

 pected in the matter under consideration. And even where these assents do fall 



1 Cf. WELTON, Logic, ii., 158; JOYCE, Logic, p. 368. 



