[Undated] [5]. Cogitations

Ultimately, a science stands or falls in proportion as it is a valid technique for discovery, and not by virtue of the ‘knowledge’ gained. This last is always subject to supersession; indeed, supersession of findings by new findings is the criterion by which vitality of the subject is judged.

A generalization is induced from many (number not specified) instances – until presumably we get, ‘All men are mortal’, as our premise. But this seems to me to be a hypothesis like any other: a hypothesis that is then used as a premise in a deductive system no doubt, but a hypothesis none the less. And it derives from other hypotheses; for example, ‘men’. But are any words that are not nouns hypotheses? All? Mortal? Are? If sounds can be combined to make words, then words can be combined to make further hypotheses.

The statement, ‘All men are mortal: Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal’, is supposed to be a deduction from the premise, ‘All men are mortal’. But the premise is supposed to be arrived at by a process of induction. That is to say that a great number of people are known to have died, and from this, inductive reasoning leads to the generalization that ‘All men are mortal’. It is my contention that this is false. I do not believe anyone has ever thought that a lot of people have died and then have begun to suspect that men die, until the suspicion begins to harden into a conviction and at some given moment the generalization flashes into existence – all men are mortal.

My theory is that contact with reality induces questions, and that the process of induction gives rise to questions. The hypothesis is inspired by the need to deal with – not necessarily to answer – the question. It may still be true that the hypothesis does answer the

question, but that may only be because in a particular instance there is an answer that would deal with the question.

The question may be of little social significance. That is to say it may, like instances of sense imp