II

_Criticism of certain views concerning the hypothesis._--The explanation

we have given of the hypothesis will enable us to criticise the

treatment it has received from the empirical and the rationalistic

schools. We shall endeavor to point out that these schools have, in

spite of their opposed views, an assumption in common--something given

in a fixed, or non-instrumental way; and that consequently the

hypothesis is either impossible or else futile.

Bacon is commonly recognized as a leader in the reactionary inductive

movement, which arose with the decline of scholasticism, and will serve

as a good example of the extreme empirical position. In place of

authority and the deductive method, Bacon advocated a return to nature

and induction from data given through observation. The new method which

he advanced has both a positive and a negative side. Before any

positive steps can be taken, the mind must be cleared of the various

false opinions and prejudices that have been acquired. This preliminary

task of freeing the mind from "phantoms," or "eidola," which Bacon

likened to the cleansing of the threshing-floor, having been

accomplished, nature should be carefully interrogated. There must be no

hasty generalization, for the true method "collects axioms from sense

and particulars, ascending continuously and by degrees, so that in the

end it arrives at the most general axioms." These axioms of Bacon's are

generalizations based on observation, and are to be applied deductively,

but the distinguishing feature of Bacon's induction is its carefully

graduated steps. Others, too, had proceeded with caution (for instance

Galileo), but Bacon laid more stress than they on the subordination of

steps.

It is evident that Bacon left very little room for hypotheses, and this

is in keeping with his aversion to anticipation of nature by means of

"phantoms" of any sort; he even said explicitly that "our method of

discovery in science is of such a nature that there is not much left to

acuteness and strength of genius, but all degrees of genius and

intellect are brought nearly to the same level."[60] Bacon gave no

explanation of the function of the hypothesis; in his opinion it had no

lawful place in scientific procedure and must be banished as a

disturbing element. Instead of the reciprocal relation between

hypothesis and data, in which hypothesis is not only tested in

experience, but at the same time controls in a measure the very

experience which tests it, Bacon would have a gradual extraction of

general laws from nature through direct observation. He is so afraid of

the distorting influence of conception that he will have nothing to do

with conception upon any terms. So fearful is he of the influence of

pre-judgment, of prejudice, that he will have no judging which depends

upon ideas, since the idea involves anticipation of the fact.

Particulars are somehow to arrange and classify themselves, and to

record or register, in a mind free from conception, certain

generalizations. Ideas are to be registered derivatives of the given

particulars. This view is the essence of empiricism as a logical theory.

If the views regarding the logic of thought before set forth are

correct, it goes without saying that such empiricism is condemned to

self-contradiction. It endeavors to construct judgment in terms of its

subject alone; and the subject, as we have seen, is always a

co-respondent to a predicate--an idea or mental attitude or tendency of

intellectual determination. Thus the subject of judgment can be

determined only with reference to a corresponding determination of the

predicate. Subject and predicate, fact and idea, are contemporaneous,

not serial in their relations (see pp. 110-12).

Less technically the failure of Bacon's denial of the worth of

hypothesis--which is in such exact accord with empiricism in

logic--shows itself in his attitude toward experimentation and toward

observation. Bacon's neglect of experimentation is not an accidental

oversight, but is bound up with his view regarding the worthlessness of

conception or anticipation. To experiment means to set out from an idea

as well as from facts, and to try to construe, or even to discover,

facts in accordance with the idea. Experimentation not only anticipates,

but strives to make good an anticipation. Of course, this struggle is

checked at every point by success or failure, and thus the hypothesis is

continuously undergoing in varying ratios both confirmation and

transformation. But this is not to make the hypothesis secondary to the

fact. It is simply to remain true to the proposition that the

distinction and the relationship of the two is a thoroughly

contemporaneous one. But it is impossible to draw any fixed line between

experimentation and scientific observations. To insist upon the need of

systematic observation and collection of particulars is to set up a

principle which is as distinct from the casual accumulation of

impressions as it is from nebulous speculation. If there is to be

observation of a directed sort, it must be with reference to some

problem, some doubt, and this, as we have seen, is a stimulus which

throws the mind into a certain attitude of response. Controlled

observation is inquiry, it is search; consequently it must be search for

something. Nature cannot answer interrogations excepting as such

interrogations are put; and the putting of a question involves

anticipation. The observer does not inquire about anything or look for

anything excepting as he is after something. This search implies at once

the incompleteness of the particular given facts, and the

possibility--that is ideal--of their completion.

It was not long until the development of natural science compelled a

better understanding of its actual procedure than Bacon possessed.

Empiricism changed to experimentalism. With experimentalism inevitably

came the recognition of hypotheses in observing, collecting, and

comparing facts. It is clear, for instance, that Newton's fruitful

investigations are not conducted in accordance with the Baconian notion.

It is quite clear that his celebrated four rules for philosophizing[61]

are in truth statements of certain principles which are to be observed

in forming hypotheses. They imply that scientific technique had advanced

to a point where hypotheses were such regular and indispensable factors

that certain uniform conditions might be laid down for their use. The

fourth rule in particular is a statement of the relative validity of

hypothesis as such until there is ground for entertaining a contrary

hypothesis.

The subsequent history of logical theory in England is conditioned upon

its attempt to combine into one system the theories of empiristic logic

with recognition of the procedure of experimental science. This attempt

finds its culmination in the logic of John Stuart Mill. Of his interest

in and fidelity to the actual procedure of experimental science, as he

saw it, there can be no doubt. Of his good faith in concluding his

_Introduction_ with the words following there can be no doubt: "I can

conscientiously affirm that no one proposition laid down in this work

has been adopted for the sake of establishing, or with any reference for

its fitness in being employed in establishing, preconceived opinions in

any department of knowledge or of inquiry on which the speculative world

is still undecided." Yet Mill was equally attached to the belief that

ultimate reality, as it is for the human mind, is given in sensations,

independent of ideas; and that all valid ideas are combinations and

convenient ways of using such given material. Mill's very sincerity made

it impossible that this belief should not determine, at every point, his

treatment of the thinking process and of its various instrumentalities.

In Book III, chap. 14, Mill discusses the logic of explanation, and in

discussing this topic naturally finds it necessary to consider the

matter of the proper use of scientific hypotheses. This is conducted

from the standpoint of their use as that is reflected in the technique

of scientific discovery. In Book IV, chap. 2, he discusses "Abstraction

or the Formation of Conceptions"--a topic which obviously involves the

forming of hypotheses. In this chapter, his consideration is conducted

in terms, not of scientific procedure, but of general philosophical

theory, and this point of view is emphasized by the fact that he is

opposing a certain view of Dr. Whewell.

The contradiction between the statements in the two chapters will serve

to bring out the two points already made, viz., the correspondent

character of datum and hypothesis, and the origin of the latter in a

problematic situation and its consequent use as an instrument of

unification and solution. Mill first points out that hypotheses are

invented to enable the deductive method to be applied earlier to

phenomena; that it does this by suppressing the first of the three

steps, induction, ratiocination, and verification. He states that:

The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first

sight confused, set of appearances is necessarily tentative; we

begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what

consequences will follow from it; and by observing how these

differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make

in our assumption.... _Neither induction nor deduction would

enable us to understand even the simplest phenomena_, if we did

not often commence by anticipating the results; by making a

provisional supposition, at first essentially conjectural, as to

some of the very notions which constitute the final object of the

inquiry.[62]

If in addition we recognize that, according to Mill, our direct

experience of nature always presents us with a complicated and confused

set of appearances, we shall be in no doubt as to the importance of

ideas as anticipations of a possible experience not yet had. Thus he

says:

The order of nature, as perceived at a first glance, presents at

every instant a chaos followed by another chaos. We must decompose

each chaos into single facts. We must learn to see in the chaotic

antecedent a multitude of distinct antecedents, in the chaotic

consequent a multitude of distinct consequents.[63]

In the next section of the same chapter he goes on to state that, having

discriminated the various antecedents and consequents, we then "are to

inquire which is connected with which." This requires a still further

resolution of the complex and of the confused. To effect this we must

vary the circumstances; we must modify the experience as given with

reference to accomplishing our purpose. To accomplish this purpose we

have recourse either to observation or to experiment: "We may either

_find_ an instance in nature _suited to our purposes_, or, by an

artificial arrangement of circumstances, _make_ one" (the italics in

"suited to our purpose" are mine; the others are Mill's). He then goes

on to say that there is no real logical distinction between observation

and experimentation. The four methods of experimental inquiry are

expressly discussed by Mill in terms of their worth in singling out and

connecting the antecedents and consequents which actually belong

together, from the chaos and confusion of direct experience.

We have only to take these statements in their logical connection with

each other (and this connection runs through the entire treatment by

Mill of scientific inquiry), to recognize the absolute necessity of

hypothesis to undertaking any directed inquiry or scientific operation.

Consequently we are not surprised at finding him saying that "the

function of hypotheses is one which must be reckoned absolutely

indispensable in science;" and again that "the hypothesis by suggesting

observations and experiments puts us on the road to independent

evidence."[64]

Since Mill's virtual retraction, from the theoretical point of view, of

what is here said from the standpoint of scientific procedure, regarding

the necessity of ideas is an accompaniment of his criticism of Whewell,

it will put the discussion in better perspective if we turn first to

Whewell's views.[65] The latter began by stating a distinction which

easily might have been developed into a theory of the relation of fact

and idea which is in line with that advanced in this chapter, and indeed

in this volume as a whole. He questions (chap. 2) the fixity of the

distinction between theory and practice. He points out that what we term

facts are in effect simply accepted inferences; and that what we call

theories are describable as facts, in proportion as they become

thoroughly established. A true theory is a fact. "All the great theories

which have successively been established in the world are now thought of

as facts." "The most recondite theories when firmly established are

accepted as facts; the simplest facts seem to involve something of the

nature of theory."

The conclusion is that the distinction is a historic one, depending upon

the state of knowledge at the time, and upon the attitude of the

individual. What is theory for one epoch, or for one inquirer in a given

epoch, is fact for some other epoch, or even for some other more

advanced inquirer in the same epoch. It is theory when the element of

inference involved in judging any fact is consciously brought out; it is

fact when the conditions are such that we have never been led to

question the inference involved, or else, having questioned it, have so

thoroughly examined into the inferential process that there is no need

of holding it further before the mind, and it relapses into

unconsciousness again. "If this greater or less consciousness of our own

internal act be all that distinguishes fact from theory, we must allow

that the distinction is still untenable" (untenable, that is to say, as

a fixed separation). Again, "fact and theory have no essential

difference except in the degree of their _certainty and familiarity_.

Theory, when it becomes firmly established and steadily lodged in the

mind becomes fact." (P. 45; italics mine.) And, of course, it is equally

true that as fast as facts are suspected or doubted, certain aspects of

them are transferred into the class of theories and even of mere

opinions.

I say this conception might have been developed in a way entirely

congruous with the position of this chapter. This would have happened if

the final distinction between fact and idea had been formulated upon the

basis simply of the points, "relative certainty and familiarity." From

this point of view the distinction between fact and idea is one purely

relative to the doubt-inquiry function. It has to do with the evolution

of an experience as regards its conscious surety. It has its origin in

problematic situations. Whatever appears to us as a problem appears as

contrasted with a possible solution. Whatever objects of thought refer

particularly to the problematic side are theories, ideas, hypotheses;

whatever relates to the solution side is surety, unquestioned

familiarity, fact. This point of view makes the distinctions entirely

relative to the exigencies of the process of reflective transformation

of experience.

Whewell, however, had no sooner started in this train of thought than he

turns his back upon it. In chap. 3 he transforms what he had proclaimed

to be a relative, historic, and working distinction into a fixed and

absolute one. He distinguishes between sensations and ideas, not upon a

genetic basis with reference to establishing the conditions of further

operation; but with reference to a fundamentally fixed line of

demarkation between what is passively _given_ to the mind and the

_activity_ put forth by the mind. Thus he reinstates in its most

generalized and fixed, and therefore most vicious, form the separation

which he has just rejected. Sensations are a brute unchangeable element

of fact which exists and persists independent of ideas; an idea is a

mode of mental operation which occurs and recurs in an independent

individuality of its own. If he had carried out the line of thought with

which he began, sensation as fact would have been that residuum of

familiarity and certainty which cannot be eliminated, however much else

of an experience is dissolved in the inner conflict. Idea as hypothesis

or theory would have been the corresponding element in experience which

is necessary to redintegrate this residuum into a coherent and

significant experience.

But since Whewell did not follow out his own line of thought, choosing

rather to fall back on the Kantian antithesis of sense and thought, he

had no sooner separated his fact and idea, his given datum and his

mental relation, than he is compelled to get them together again. The

idea becomes "a general relation which is imposed upon perception by an

act of the mind, and which is different from anything which our senses

directly offer to us" (p. 26). Such conceptions are necessary to connect

the facts which we learn from our senses into truths. "The ideal

conception which the mind itself supplies is superinduced upon the facts

as they are originally presented to observation. Before the inductive

truth is detected, the facts are there, but they are many and

unconnected. The conception which the discoverer applies to them gives

them connection and unity." (P. 42.) All induction, according to

Whewell, thus depends upon superinduction--imposition upon sensory data

of certain ideas or general relations existing independently in the

mind.[66]

We do not need to present again the objections already offered to this

view: the impossibility of any orderly stimulation of ideas by facts,

and the impossibility of any check in the imposition of idea upon fact.

"Facts" and conception are so thoroughly separate and independent that

any sensory datum is indifferently and equally related to any

conceivable idea. There is no basis for "superinducing" one idea or

hypothesis, rather than any other, upon any particular set of data.

In the chapter already referred to upon abstraction, or the formation of

conceptions, Mill seizes upon this difficulty. Yet he and Whewell have

one point in common: they both agree in the existence of a certain

subject-matter which is given for logical purposes quite outside of the

logical process itself. Mill agrees with Whewell in postulating a raw

material of pure sensational data. In criticising Whewell's theory of

superinduction of idea upon fact, he is therefore led to the opposite

assertion of the complete dependence of ideas as such upon the given

facts as such--in other words, he is led to a reiteration of the

fundamental Baconian empiricism; and thus to a virtual retraction of

what he had asserted regarding the necessity of ideas to fruitful

scientific inquiry, whether in the way of observation or

experimentation. The following quotation gives a fair notion of the

extent of Mill's retraction:

The conceptions then which we employ for the colligation and

methodization of facts, do not develop themselves from within,

_but are impressed upon the mind from without_; they are never

obtained otherwise than by way of comparison and abstraction, and,

in the most important and most numerous cases, are evolved by

abstraction _from the very phenomena which it is their office to

colligate_.[67]

Even here Mill's sense for the positive side of scientific inquiry

suffices to reveal to him that the "facts" are somehow inadequate and

defective, and are in need of assistance from ideas--and yet the ideas

which are to help out the facts are to be the impress of the unsure

facts! The contradiction comes out very clearly when Mill says: "The

really difficult cases are those in which the conception destined to

create light and order out of darkness and confusion has to be sought

for among the very phenomena which it afterward serves to arrange."[68]

Of course, there is a sense in which Mill's view is very much nearer the

truth than is Whewell's. Mill at least sees that "idea" must be relevant

to the facts or data which it is to arrange, which are to have "light

and order" introduced into them by means of the idea. He sees clearly

enough that this is impossible save as the idea develops _within_ the

same experience in which the "dark and confused" facts are presented. He

goes on to show correctly enough how conflicting data lead the mind to a

"confused feeling of an analogy" between the data of the confused

experience and of some other experience which is orderly (or already

colligated and methodized); and how this vague feeling, through

processes of further exploration and comparison of experiences, gets a

clearer and more adequate form until we finally accept it. He shows how

in this process we continually judge of the worth of the idea which is

in process of formation, by reference to its appropriateness to _our

purpose_. He goes so far as to say: "The question of appropriateness is

relative to the _particular object we have in view_."[69] He sums up his

discussion by stating: "We cannot frame good general conceptions

beforehand. That the conception we have obtained is the one we want can

only be known when we have _done the work for the sake of which we

wanted it_."[70]

This all describes the actual state of the case, but it is consistent

only with a logical theory which makes the distinction between fact and

hypothesis instrumental in the transformation of experience from a

confused into an organized form; not with Mill's notion that sensations

are somehow finally and completely given as ultimate facts, and that

ideas are mere re-registrations of such facts. It is perfectly just to

say that the hypothesis is impressed upon the mind (in the sense that

any notion which occurs to the mind is impressed) _in the course_ of an

experience. It is well enough, if one define what he means, to say that

the hypothesis is impressed (that is to say, occurs or is suggested)

through the medium of given facts, or even of sensations. But it is

equally true that the _facts_ are presented and that _sensations_ occur

within the course of an experience which is larger than the bare facts,

because involving the conflicts among them and the corresponding

intention to treat them in some fashion which will secure a unified

experience. Facts get power to suggest ideas to the mind--to

"impress"--only through their position in an entire experience which is

in process of disintegration and of reconstruction--their "fringe" or

feeling of tendency is quite as factual as they are. The fact that "the

conception we have obtained is the one we want can be known only when we

have done the work for the sake of which we wanted it," is enough to

show that it is not bare facts, but facts in relation to want and

purpose and purpose in relation to facts, which originate the

hypothesis.

It would be interesting to follow the history of discussion of the

hypothesis since the time of Whewell and of Mill, particularly in the

writings of Jevons, Venn, and Bosanquet. This history would refine the

terms of our discussion by introducing more complex distinctions and

relations. But it would be found, I think, only to refine, not to

introduce any fundamentally new principles. In each case, we find the

writer struggling with the necessity of distinguishing between fact and

idea; of giving the fact a certain primacy with respect to testing of

idea and of giving the idea a primacy with respect to the significance

and orderliness of the fact; and of holding throughout to a relationship

of idea with fact so intimate that the idea develops only by being

"compared" with facts (that is, used in construing them), and facts get

to be known only as they are "connected" through the idea--and we find

that what is a maze of paradoxes and inconsistencies from an absolute,

from a non-historic standpoint, is a matter of course the moment

it is looked at from the standpoint of experience engaged in

self-transformation of meaning through conflict and reconstitution.

But we can only note one or two points. Jevons's "infinite ballot-box"

of nature which is absolutely neutral as to any particular conception or

idea, and which accordingly requires as its correlate the formation of

every possible hypothesis (all standing in themselves upon the same

level of probability) is an interesting example of the logical

consequences of feeling the need of both fact and hypothesis for

scientific procedure and yet regarding them as somehow arising

independently of each other. It is an attempt to combine extreme

empiricism and extreme rationalism. The process of forming hypotheses

and of deducing their rational consequences goes on at random, because

the disconnectedness of facts as given is so ultimate that the facts

suggest one hypothesis no more readily than another. Mathematics, in its

two forms of measurements as applied to the facts, and of calculation as

applied in deduction, furnishes Jevons the bridge by which he finally

covers the gulf which he has first himself created. Venn's theory

requires little or no restatement to bring it into line with the

position taken in the text. He holds to the origin of hypothesis in the

original practical needs of mankind, and to its gradual development into

present scientific form.[71] He states expressly:

The _distinction between what is known and what is not known is

essential to Logic_, and peculiarly characteristic of it in a

degree not to be found in any other science. Inference is the

process of passing from one to the other; from facts which we had

accepted as premises, to those which we have not yet accepted,

_but are in the act of doing so by the very process in question_.

No scrutiny of the facts themselves, regarded as objective, can

ever detect these characteristics of their greater or less

familiarity to our minds. We must introduce also the subjective

element if we wish to give any adequate explanation of them.[72]

Venn, however, does not attempt a thoroughgoing statement of logical

distinctions, relations, and operations, as parts "of the act of passing

from the unknown to the known." He recognizes the relation of reflection

to a historic process, which we have here termed "reconstruction," and

the origin and worth of hypothesis as a tool in the movement, but does

not carry his analysis to a systematic form.