[Undated]: Metatheory. Cogitations

In the following pages there are grouped together a number of propositions under a few specific headings. The headings, together with the descriptive matter, are brief to a point that makes me fear they may be regarded as cryptic; even so, for the purpose they are to serve they are far more lengthy, complex and imprecise than they should be, compared with their nearest counterparts in other scientific disciplines. For the functions they are to serve approximate to those that are performed by the lemma (proposition taken for granted) in Greek geometry, the postulate, the definitory hypothesis used as a premise, the hypothesis taken from one scientific deductive system to act as a premise in another, and even the word, regarded (as I think it can be) as a hypothesis as it is understood in the light of the constant conjunction theory of Hume. It may be thought that this is a condemnation of these groups of propositions, but although I am aware of their defects I am doubtful whether these defects are not inherent in the task I have set myself, rather than in my performance of it.

The discoveries of psychoanalysis make it no longer possible to be satisfied with the methodology of scientists or philosophers of science even in the refinements of method they have produced to counter their own dissatisfaction. The psychoanalyst is in the curious position of studying a subject that illuminates the most ineradicable source of unscientific inquiry, namely the human mind, using that same mind as his scientific instrument, and having to do so without the comfort of thinking his observations are made by an inanimate machine that, by virtue of being dead, must be objective. But clearly an inability to be satisfied that the methods of scientists of other disciplines are scientific decreases rather than increases the psychoanalyst's hope to be more successful. Yet the attempt must be made to use psychoanalytic experience to improve on classical scientific method, and to use such impro