Many attempts have been made in recent months to throw light on the problem of vagueness. That perfect precision is an ideal not to be attained by any language seems clear. But the obvious fact is that words and sentences in our languages are not so precise as we should like to have them, and we are naturally concerned with finding some sort of device by which vagueness can, in the first place, be detected and measured, and, in the second (...) place, eliminated or reduced to a minimum. I shall not be concerned in what follows with these various special attempts to meet the problem. My task is the somewhat more general one of showing that there are other factors contributing to vagueness, one of which is of particular significance when we leave the realm of ostensively defined symbols and begin to concern ourselves with suppositional symbols, constructs and hypotheses. (shrink)

Every natural scientist, I should suppose, is an empiricist. But to say this is not to assert that he is consciously such. Very few scientists would presumably consider themselves qualified to state even what is involved in the term, and still fewer would be willing to admit that they are adherents of the position. One might say that natural scientists, in their general outlook, presuppose—in one of the many meanings of this term—the empirical point of view. This probably means that (...) if one could make clear to them what is meant by the term, and if one could convince them that it is proper for scientists to take sides on philosophical issues, they should probably be willing to call themselves empiricists. Expressed otherwise, the general temper and spirit of natural science are those which philosophers tend to identify with the empirical outlook. (shrink)

The term qittīer designates the act of burning the food offerings, the 'iššîm, within the ritual sequence of all three types of sacrifice, the zébach, the ōlāh, and the minchāh. Incense is not an 'iššeh substance and is never associated with this piel conjugation. Qittēr appears to have been limited to intransitive use, while the synonyms hiqtîr and heelāh were used predominantly in transitive constructions. By the exilic or post-exilic period, hiqtîr seems to have become the preferred form for intransitive (...) use as well, supplanting qittēr completely. The term has no overtones of illegitimacy, as commonly presumed. (shrink)

In what follows I shall consider symbols only in their function as conveyors of meanings. That symbols have emotive and volitional properties as well, that they have elaborate and complicated relations to the self which uses them, that they are themselves physical counters, i.e., noises, visual objects, etc.,—all of these facts I recognize but choose to neglect. When symbols are considered merely as instruments for the transfer of meanings, only one important assumption is involved, viz., symbols which are precisely defined (...) are to be preferred to symbols which either are undefined or are defined inadequately. In other words, the task of a theory of meaning is that of showing how symbols take on a maximum degree of precision in significance. (shrink)

It is helpful for any enterprise to stop occasionally and examine itself. Science has done this rather infrequently in its long and eventful history, and there has not been, in general, any continuity in these self-examinations. As a result the history of the philosophy of science has been a rather spotty affair. My belief is that the philosophy of science should also, at times, become self-critical. When a study is concerned primarily with methods of other disciplines it tends to underemphasize (...) the role played by the methods which it itself uses. What is the method of the philosophy of science, and is it justifiable? Can there be a satisfactory study of science and can this be scientific? (shrink)

I suppose it is generally agreed that the task of science is to render intelligible, or in some way account for, the objects and events of our experience. Usually we say that the job of science is to explain. While this is a satisfactory formulation for most purposes, it hides a difficulty. What is meant by “explanation”? The many interpretations of this word divide scientists and philosophers of science into sharply differentiated schools. For some “explanation” means answering the question, Why?; (...) for others it means merely describing. For some it means finding causes; for others it means finding effects or abandoning entirely the search for causes and effects. For some it means employing quantitative methods only; for others it means supplementing or replacing quantitative methods by qualitative. For some it means interpreting or understanding; for others it means merely adjusting oneself in a practical way. (shrink)

Some recent and historical writers in the philosophy of science have concerned themselves with a certain problem which seems to occupy, at least in the minds of those who have written about it, a position of peculiar importance. Whether the problem is really as significant as its authors maintain need not be decided here; certainly many writers in this area have either neglected it or made only vague allusions to it. It can best be described as the problem of the (...) development of science, and it is usually solved in terms of a certain theory that science passes in its growth, either naturally or under the control of conscious logical techniques, through various “stages” or “phases.” For some strange reason these levels are usually exactly three in number. One would like to believe that this number is not a magic one, but empirically demanded by the actual way in which the sciences develop. But the fact that the descriptions of these stages in the writings of the various authors appear to agree only in their triplicity, and not in content, would incline one to believe otherwise. There is, in fact, the slight suspicion that the number three has been preferred to the number two simply because a triad may be ordered in a way in which a couple may not, and to the number four or any larger number merely because of the preference for simplicity over complexity. (shrink)

The extent to which the scientific method has yielded to analysis in recent years serves only to emphasize by contrast the presence within that method of an irrational element. For it is becoming increasingly evident that whatever one may say of the logical and psychological character of the pre-inductive operations, of the formal processes involved in deducing the consequences of a given theory, of the technique of experimental corroboration, and of certain other aspects of the scientific method, there is one (...) phase of the movement which remains a surd. This is the act of the creative imagination through which hypotheses and theories are called into being. Its mysterious character is exhibited in the terminology which is employed in describing it, in the variety and inconstancy of the conditions which give rise to it, in the apparent impossibility of controlling it, and in the impossibility of recognizing completely the adequacy of its results when it does occur. It is variously described as an act of intuition, mystic revelation, divine insight, a flash of understanding; it arises out of the greatest variety of conditions: acute and prolonged attention to the data in the confinement of the laboratory, or the complete relaxation of a walk in the country, or the intense mental effort upon a problem in a wholly unrelated field; it forbids direction, in fact it seems to arise most readily when the element of effort and control is conspicuously absent; it cannot even be certainly identified, for many supposed acts of discovery prove later to have produced only groundless fancies and absurd creations of the unguided imagination. (shrink)