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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
The problem of this paper is the discovery of criteria to identify conventions and the description of some of the more general properties of conventions with particular reference to scientific inquiry. Numerous specialized methodological investigations testify to the importance of conventions in inquiry, but none provide a general account of their operation. This paper aims to provide a necessary, if not sufficient, basis for such an account. The discussion falls into three parts: (I) common senses of the term ‘convention’, (II) a provisional formulation of conditions under which a certain type of behavior, which we shall call conventional, occurs, as well as a description of its characters, and (III) a brief consideration of one context of inquiry in which it appears.
1 Fundamental investigations include: the formulation of conditions for spatial congruence by H. Helmholtz in “Ueber die Thatsachen, die der Geometrie zum Grunde liegen” and other papers in Wissen-Abhand. Bd. 2, Leipzig, 1883; Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science (transl. by Halsted) passim, N. Y., 1913; Reichenbach, Hans. Philosophie der Raum-Zeit Lehre, especially Part I and Sec. 19; Berlin, 1928.
2 This paper is part of a more extended investigation into the role of conventions in scientific inquiry.
3 Ginsberg, Morris. Article on “Social Convention”; Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences.
4 Lowes, John L. Convention and Revolt in Poetry. New York, 1919, p. 48.
5 Durkheim, Émile. Les Règies de la Méthode Sociologique. Paris, 1907, p. 6.
6 Lowes. Op. cit., p. 49-50.
7 Ginsberg. Op. cit. in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences.
8 Hamilton, Walton. The Pattern of Competition. New York, 1940, p. 6.
9 Ibid., p. 7.
10 This approach is suggested in Tolman, E. C. “Physiology, Psychology, and Sociology.” Psychological Review, 1938.
11 Helmholtz. Op. cit., p. 615.
12 See Quine, Willard V. “Truth by Convention” in Philosophical Essays for A. N. Whitehead, N. Y., p. 123.
13 See usage (3) in I.
14 For example, independence, consistency, and completeness in deductive systems. See Tarski, A. Introduction to Logic. Ch. VI.
15 Paris, 1901.
16 Necessary and sufficient conditions for an explanation to be mechanical are a) that two functions which are parts of the total energy, exist and satisfy the Lagrange equations, and b) that the experimental laws of the subject matter be formulable in the form of the Lagrange equations. See Poincaré for detail.
17 P. 40, v. I of Treatise in Electricity and Magnetism, 3rd Ed., London, 1892.
18 Poincaré. Ibid.
19 Quoted in D'Abro, Decline of Mechanism in Modem Physics. New York, 1939, p. 108.
