The Aim and Achievements of Scientific Method; An Epistemological Essay (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: whole world of psychical existents, whose very nature it is to appear in the " panorama" surrounding a single centre only. Not a single feature of such facts can be excluded from the operations of Science, yet how can they be regarded as " the same for all" ? Only, I submit, by a kind of extrapolation from that part of the Objective?" physical reality "? which, as a matter of fact, is the same for all. We must say, that is, of such experiences, not that being the same for all they become Objective, but that being Objective (simpliciter) they are regarded as the same for all, and therefore, part of the proper subject matter of Science. Being experiences whose content announces itself as independent of the self of the moment over against which they are set, they may be thought of as occurring with an identical character in any centre. They become, that is, objects whose features, like those of " material objects " are capable of exact determination without reference to their presentation at all?although, of course, their position as a class of existents is fixed by their peculiar relation to the " finite centre " in which they occur. . The actual contents of the Objective must be reviewed very briefly. " Everyone except a philosopher," says Mr. Eussell, " can see the difference between a post and my idea of a post." I ignore this uncomplimentary reservation and assume that we are all prepared to admit not only that they are existents of different orders, but also that both have (like all existents) the character of Objectivity?the post, because it would be the particular thing which it is, even if I did not happen to see it; the idea because it would be an idea with just that particular content, even if I did not happen to perceive that I had " had " it. Difficulty only aris...