Part 34 (1/2)
Instead of trying to fit all unusual, contradictory, or exceptional facts into _a priori_ ideas based on miscellaneous and unsifted facts, it starts without any _fixed_ conclusions beforehand, but carefully observes all the facts which it can secure with reference to a particular problem, deliberately seeking the exceptional and unusual as crucial instances. Thus in a sociological inquiry, the scientist, instead of accepting ”common-sense” judgments (based on a variety of miscellaneous, incomplete, and unsifted facts) that certain races are inferior or superior, tries, by specific inquiries, to establish the facts of racial capacities or defects. Instead of accepting proverbial wisdom and popular estimates of the relative capacities of men and women, he tries by careful observation and experiment accurately to discover all the facts bearing on the question, and to generalize from those facts.
Scientific method thus discounts prejudice or dogmatism.
A prejudice is literally a pre-judgment. Common sense sizes up the situation beforehand. Instead of examining a situation in its own terms, and _arriving_ at a conclusion, it _starts_ with one. The so-called hard-headed man of common sense _knows_ beforehand. He has a definite and stereotyped reaction for every situation with which he comes in contact.
These rubber-stamp responses, these unconsidered generalizations, originate in instinctive desires, or in preferences acquired through habit. Common sense finds fixed pigeon holes into which to fit all the variety of specific circ.u.mstances and conditions which characterize experience. ”When its judgments happen to be correct, it is almost as much a matter of good luck as of method.... That potatoes should be planted only during the crescent moon, that near the sea people are born at high tide and die at low tide, that a comet is an omen of danger, that bad luck follows the cracking of a mirror,” all these are the results of common-sense observation.
Matters of common knowledge are thus not infrequently matters of common misinformation.
Common-sense knowledge is largely a matter of uncritical belief. When there is absent scientific examination of the sources and grounds of belief, those judgments and conclusions are likely to be accepted which happen to have wide social currency and authority. In an earlier chapter, it was shown how the mere fact of an opinion prevailing among a large number of one's group or cla.s.s gives it great emotional weight. Where opinions are not determined by intelligent examination and decision, they are determined by force of habit, early education, and the social influences to which one is constantly exposed.
The scientific spirit is a spirit of emanc.i.p.ated inquiry as contrasted with blind acceptance of belief upon authority.
The phenomenal developments of modern science began when men ceased to accept authoritatively their beliefs about man and nature, and undertook to examine phenomena in their own terms. The phenomenal rise of modern science is coincident with the collapse of unquestioning faith as the leading ingredient of intellectual life.
Common sense renders men peculiarly insensitive to the possibilities of the novel, peculiarly susceptible to the influence of tradition. It was common sense that credited the influence of the position of the stars upon men's welfare, the power of old women as witches, and the unhealthiness of night air. It was common sense also that ridiculed Fulton's steamboat, laughed at the early attempts of telegraphy and telephony, and dismissed the aeroplane as an interesting toy. The characteristic feature of common sense or empirical thinking is its excess traditionalism, its wholesale acceptance of authority,[1]
its reliance upon precedent. Where beliefs are not subjected to critical revision and examination, to the constant surveillance of the inquiring intelligence, there will be no criterion by which to estimate the true and the false, the important and the trivial. All beliefs that have wide social sanction, or that chime in with immediate sense impressions, established individual habits, or social customs will be accepted with the same indiscriminate hospitality. To common sense the sun _does_ appear to go round the earth; the stick _does_ appear broken in water. Thus ”totally false opinions may appear to the holder of them to possess all the character of rationally verifiable truth.”
[Footnote 1: ”Authority” in this sense of social prestige must be distinguished from ”authority” in the sense of scientific authority. The acceptance of the authority of the expert is the acceptance of opinions that we have good reason to believe are the result of scientific inquiry.]
The dangers and falsities of common-sense judgments are conditioned not only by expectations and standards fixed by the social environment, but by one's own personal predilections and aversions. Recent developments in psychology have made much of the fact that many of our so-called reasoned judgments are rationalizations, secondary reasons found after our initial, primary, and deep-seated emotional responses have been made. They are the result of emotional ”complexes,” fears, expectations, and desires of which we are not ourselves conscious.[1] It is from these limiting conditions of personal preference and social environment that scientific method frees us.
[Footnote 1: ”When a party politician is called upon to consider a new measure, his verdict is largely determined by certain constant systems of ideas and trends of thought, const.i.tuting what is generally known as 'party bias.' We should describe these systems in our newly acquired terminology as his 'political complex.' The complex causes him to take up an att.i.tude toward the proposed measure which is quite independent of any absolute merits that the latter may possess. If we argue with our politician, we shall find that the complex will reinforce in his mind those arguments which support the view of his party, while it will infallibly prevent him from realizing the force of the arguments propounded by the opposite side. Now, it should be observed that the individual himself is probably quite unaware of this mechanism in his mind. He fondly imagines that his opinion is formed solely by the logical pros and cons of the measure before him. We see, in fact, that not only is his thinking determined by a complex of whose action he is unconscious, but that he believes his thoughts to be the result of other causes which are in reality insufficient and illusory. This latter process of self-deception, in which the individual conceals the real foundation of his thought by a series of advent.i.tious props, is termed 'rationalization.'
”The two mechanisms which manifest themselves in our example of the politician, the unconscious origin of beliefs and actions, and the subsequent process of rationalization to which they are subjected, are of fundamental importance in psychology.”
(Bernard Hart: _The Psychology of Insanity_, pp. 64-66.)]
Again, even where common-sense judgments are not particularly qualified by such conditions, they are frequently based upon the observation of purely accidental conjunctions of circ.u.mstances. A sequence once or twice observed is taken as the basis of a causal relation. This gives rise to what is known in technical logic as the _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ fallacy; that is, the a.s.sumption that because one thing happens after another, therefore it happens _because_ of it. Many superst.i.tions probably had their origin in such chance observations, and belief in them is strengthened by some accidental confirmation. Thus if a man walks under a ladder one day and dies the next, the believer in the superst.i.tion that walking under a ladder brings fatal results will find in this instance a clear ratification of his belief. There seems to be an inveterate human tendency to seek for causes, and by those who are not scientific inquirers causes are lightly a.s.signed. It is easiest and most plausible to a.s.sign as a cause an immediately preceding circ.u.mstance. Exceptional or contradictory circ.u.mstances are then either unnoticed or pared down to fit the belief.
Scientific method does not depend on such chance conjunctions of circ.u.mstance, but controls its observations or experimentally arranges conditions so as to discover what are the conditions necessary to produce given effects, or what effects invariably follow from given causes. It does not accept a chance conjunction as evidence of an invariable relation, but seeks, under regulated conditions, to discover what the genuinely invariable relations are. This method of controlling our generalizations about the facts of experience, we shall presently examine in some detail.
CURIOSITY AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY. Curiosity, the instinctive basis of the desire to know, is the basis of scientific inquiry.
Without this fundamental desire, there could be no sustaining motive to deep and thoroughgoing scientific research, for theoretical investigations do not always give promise of immediate practical benefits. The scientific interest is a development of that restless curiosity for a knowledge of the world in which they are living which children so markedly exhibit.
Beginning as a kind of miscellaneous and omnivorous appet.i.te for facts of whatever description, it grows into a desire to understand the unsuspected and hidden relations between facts, to penetrate to the unities discoverable beneath the mysteries and multiplicities of things.
The scientific mood is thus in the first place a sheer instinctive curiosity, a basic pa.s.sion for facts. It is this which sustains the scientific worker in the sometimes long and dreary business of collecting specimens, instances, details. Many of the most notable scientific advances, as Lord Kelvin pointed out, must be attributed to the most protracted and unmitigated drudgery in the collection of facts, a thoroughgoing and trying labor in which the scientific worker could persist only when fortified by an eager and insistent curiosity. This ”hodman's work” is the basis of the great generalizations which const.i.tute the framework of the modern scientific systems. ”The monotonous and quant.i.tative work of star-cataloguing has been continued from Hipparchus, who began his work more than a century before Christ, work which is continued even to the present day. This work, uninspiring as it seems, is yet an essential basis for the applications of astronomy, the determination of time, navigation, surveying.
Furthermore, without good star places, we can have no theory of the motions of the solar system, and without accurate catalogues of the stars we can know nothing of the grander problems of the universe, the motion of our sun among the stars, or of the stars among themselves.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Hinks: _Astronomy_, p. 162.]
Not only is curiosity a sustaining motive in the drudgery of collection and research incident and essential to scientific generalization; it alone makes possible that suspense of judgment which is necessary to fruitful scientific inquiry. This suspense is, as we have already seen, difficult for most men.
Action demands immediate decision, and inquiry deliberately postpones decision. It is only a persistent desire to ”get at the bottom of the matter” that will act as a check upon the demands of social life and of individual impatience which rush us to conclusions. In most men, as earlier noted, the sharp edge of curiosity becomes easily blunted. They are content, outside their own immediate personal interests, ”to take things for granted.” They glide over the surfaces of events, they cease to query the authenticity of facts, or to examine their relevance and their significance, or to be concerned about their completeness. For an example, one has but to listen to or partake in the average discussion of any political or social issue of the present day. There are few men who retain, even as far as middle life, a genuinely inquiring interest in men and affairs. Their curiosity is dulled by fatigue and the pressure of their own interests and preoccupations, and they allow their prejudices and formulas to pa.s.s for judgments and conclusions.
The scientist is the man in whom curiosity has become a permanent pa.s.sion, who, as long as he lives, is unwilling to forego inquiry into the processes of Nature, or of human relations.
THINKING BEGINS WITH A PROBLEM. While the general habit of inquiry is developed in the satisfaction of the instinct of curiosity, any particular investigation begins with a felt difficulty. By difficulty is not meant one of an imperative and practical kind, but any problem whether theoretical or practical. For many men, it is true, thinking occurs only when instinct and habit are inadequate to adjust them to their environment. Any problem of daily life affords an example. To borrow an ill.u.s.tration from Professor Dewey:
A man traveling in an unfamiliar region comes to a branching of the roads. Having no sure knowledge to fall back upon, he is brought to a standstill of hesitation and suspense. Which road is right? And how shall the perplexity be resolved? There are but two alternatives. He must either blindly and arbitrarily take his course, trusting to luck for the outcome, or he must discover grounds for the conclusion that a given road is right.[1]
[Footnote l: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 10.]
To the inquiring mind, purely theoretical difficulties or discrepancies will provoke thought. To the astronomer an unaccounted-for perturbation in the path of a planet provokes inquiry; the chemist is challenged by a curious unexplained reaction of two chemical elements, the biologist, anterior to the discovery of micro-organisms, by the putrefaction of animal tissues. The degree to which curiosity persists and the extent of training a man has had in a given field largely determine the kind of situations that will provoke inquiry.
”A primrose by the river's brim” may be simply a primrose to one man, while to another, a botanist, it may suggest an interesting and complex problem of cla.s.sification.
But however remote and recondite thinking becomes, however far removed from immediate practical concerns, it occurs essentially in a situation a.n.a.logous to the ”forked-road situation”