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The patient said he couldn't find a pot to harmonize all the things in his studio. This would be a vagina or womb; an object like that sought by Poincaré [Science and Method, p. 30] which
must unite elements long since known, but till then scattered and seemingly foreign to each other, and suddenly introduce order where the appearance of disorder reigned. Then it enables us to see at a glance each of those elements in the place it occupies in the whole. Not only is the new fact valuable on its own account, but it alone gives a value to the old facts it unites. Our mind is frail as our senses are; it would lose itself in the complexity of the world if that complexity were not harmonious; like the short-sighted, it would only see the details, and would be obliged to forget each of these details before examining the next, because it would be incapable of taking in the whole.
He adds the opinion that “the only facts worthy of our attention are those that introduce order into this complexity and so make it accessible to us”.
How can something people ‘feel’ be measured? By postulating temperature after ridding oneself of prejudice of pairs of opposites. Then it is found that things, inanimate objects, are sensitive to temperature though they do not feel ‘heat and cold’. What about love and hate? Are they not ‘prejudices’? Should it not simply be ‘x’ – the amount of x, like the amount of temperature? Then one might be able to measure x even if one cannot measure love and hate, or heat and cold.
Braithwaite talks about scientific deductive systems in his Scientific Explanation. He says, “A scientific system consists of a set of hypotheses which form a deductive system; that is, which is arranged in such a way that from some of the hypotheses as premises all the other hypotheses logically follow.” These are arranged in an order of levels such that the hypotheses at the highest level are those that occur only as premises in the system. Those at the lowest
level occur only as c