56 PART II. SOME IMPORTANT METHODOLOGICAL TERMS. 



separate and durable existence. Plato's permanent types do not 

 appear therefore to receive any warrant from an analysis of 

 the term Object, and Kant's Thing-in-itself apparently dissolves 

 in the examination. 



Science is concerned with objects, and consequently it is 

 important that we should be methodologically aware of the 

 artificiality, ambiguity, or arbitrariness of the term Object. In 

 applying, therefore, methodological canons, we should assume 

 that the phenomenon we are scrutinising has only a separate 

 or definite existence in a very limited sense, and that we 

 should hence beware of isolating it too rigidly in our thought. 1 

 (The general nature of a given object is defined in Conclusion 3, 

 and some of the main practical difficulties encountered in de- 

 fining an object will be discussed in Conclusion 17.) 



20. (B) FACT. Consonant with the preceding analysis 

 of the term Object, a fact may be defined as a valid theory - 

 in regard to the exact nature and relations of a certain portion 

 of reality. That the sun gives light, that fire burns, that we 

 are breathing, may appear to be occurrences so certain that 

 the expression "valid theory" hardly does justice to them. 

 Error, however, not only tends to invade the most unexpected 

 places, as men of science will be the first to admit, but dreams 

 and mental disorders further warn us against indulging in 

 absolutist statements. Giddings says in his Inductive Sociology 

 (p. 13): "A fact, in the scientific sense of the word, is the 

 close agreement of many observations or measurements of the 

 same phenomena." 



21. (C) ENVIRONMENT. We may state that that which 

 surrounds any fact constitutes its environment. Thus the indi- 

 vidual's environment is the Universe minus himself, whilst he 

 forms the environment for the world external to him. In the 

 realm of ideas the same definition applies. When it is said, 

 therefore, that man is a creature of his environment, it should 

 be borne in mind that, being an integral part of the Universe, 

 he shares power and influence with his environment. Similarly, 

 when his impotence is sought to be demonstrated by fatalists 

 on the assumption that he is a product of antecedent causes, 

 we are bound to observe that as a component of the Universe 

 he also is a cause. The law of action and reaction applies 

 here. 



* In his highly suggestive volume {'Evolution creatrice, M. Henri Bergson 

 provides good grounds for believing that it is only the practical nature of 

 our intelligence, aiming as it does commonly at results and not at knowledge, 

 which renders us sometimes forgetful of the fact that reality is in great 

 measure a flux, and that definite objects, spaces, and times are unreal or, 

 let us say, artifacts. Conclusion 27 emphasises, by its method of degree- 

 determination, the need of doing justice to this flux. Complete indefiniteness, 

 however, would be indistinguishable from blank nescience. 



- "In its most proper acceptation, theory means the completed result of 

 philosophical induction from experience." (Mill, Logic.) 



