MS 447-454 (1903) - Lowell Lecture I

But they not only have no definite idea of what good logic is, but they have a definite opiion that here is no such thing. men who would never dream of taking up an experimental research,- only a little different in its nature from that to which they are accustomed, without the most through study of and training in the theory and practice of the new experiments, - take up entirely new problems of reasoning with a light and airy confidence that that is the one business in which special expertise is needless and can, in fact, only do harm. Their notion is that science is evolved little by little. That the way for a scientist to do it to study what other men's work has been building up and to ass another grain of sand to their heap, and so follow out the development of science if they think you cannot at all tell beforehand (what thought will prove groundless and what less

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else to designate in a single word. The effect of it in the philosophical professors is to make them prone to be drawn into fallacies. For fallacies are usually due to something like pedentry. The German mind is also very subjective in its tendencies, so that while the correctness of reasoning is really a question of fact and has nothing to do with how we think, the German naturally expects to find the secret of reasoning in the mind. This inclines him to this particular fallacy. Owing to the manner in which German professors are paid, there is a great deal of fashion, of gregariousness in the opinions that prevail throughout the universities of Germany, and owing to the necessity of writing huge books, details are more throughly examined than first principles. In that way this fallacy, or others closely resembling it, has become prevalent among German logicians eho naturally influence the scientific professors in opinions about reasoning. Now German's lead the world in most branches of science, and have thus aquired an authority which ought not to be accor-

sound, that you must add your little contribution, the smaller the safer, and time alone will show how long the theory will last. Every proposition is doomed to destruction eventually. There is no such thing as truth and the best one can do is to prefer the falsity that seems to weather the best. You will find big books discussing real problems and never from cover to cover once advancing any argument except this: "This is the way that thought has been tending. Let us go one little step further." In arguing for or against action at a distance, or any such question of physical fact, they will quote to you what Gassendi and Descartes thought what Malebranche and Spinoza thought, waht Jeckte and Jacobe and Shelling and Hegel and Herbert and Schleieronacher and Baader thought, what Schopenhauer + Hartmann thought, what Duhring and Nietsehe amd Michowitz thought, - not one of whom

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ded to any man in science. This gives the scientific men the idea that reasoning is not of muh value. You must remember that the scientific man has very little time for reasoning. He is mostly worked to death preparing for observations. Moreover, in these days a great proportion of the scientific men have little mental training outside of a narrow line of work. The result of all this is that there is a growing tendency to undervalue reasoning ans deliberately to adopt the logical theory that the best way is to adopt whatever views are most advanced on go a little further in the direction in which opinion seems to be advancing.

Now it it perfectly true that it is not absolutely essential to the advance of sci-