The Antinomy of Science Examples of the scientific assertion S is P: The square of the time of revolution of any planet is proportional to the cube of the mean distance from the sun. (Kepler’s third law of planetary orbits) The force of attraction between two bodies is in direct proportion to the product of…
The Antinomy of Language Examples of the linguistic assertion S is P. Dr. ltard writes in The Savage of Aveyron that he tried to teach Victor the wild boy the word for milk, lait, as a sign of a biological need, by withholding the milk and uttering the word in its absence. This failed: After…
THE ANTINOMIES OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN ITS GRASP OF CULTURE Kant believed that when “pure reason” ventures beyond the manifold of experience, it falls into an antinomy. That is to say, equally valid trains of argument lead to contradictory conclusions. Now, apart from the truth or falsity of Kant’s argument, the fact is that…
For Walker Percy, philosophy and fiction were both tools for diagnosing the human condition, just as his medical training had taught him about tools for diagnosing the human body. His aim was nothing less than trying to understand how we fit into the cosmos. This collection of essays is a fascinating and worthy exploration of…
CULTURE AS A SUBJECT OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD What happens when the functional method of the sciences is applied to cultural phenomena? Does culture lend itself to such an understanding? If there are difficulties in the cultural sciences, are the difficulties due to the complexity of the material, as is often alleged, or are the…
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SYMBOLIC ASSERTION AND A SPACE-TIME EVENT If one examines the characteristic moments of the scientific method, one will discover that they are basically assertions. Even if one happens to be an operationalist and maintains that the business of science is defining the physical operations by which concepts are arrived at and…
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD issues in statements about the world. Whether one is a realist, pragmatist, operationalist, or materialist, one can hardly doubt that the various moments of the scientific enterprise–induction, hypothesis, deduction, theory, law–are all assertions of sorts. Even observation and verification are in the final analysis not the physiological happenings in which the retina…
A Tertium Quid: The Lady Novelist? Tolstoy once said that a talented lady novelist could spend five minutes looking through the window of a barracks and know all she needed to know about soldiering. If she can see so much in five minutes, how much more must the talented therapist see after, say, a hundred…
The question must arise then: If triadic activity is overt behavior and as such is the proper object of investigation of a factual behavioral science and is not formulable by the postulates and laws of conventional behaviorism, what manner of “postulates” and “laws,” if any, would be suitable for such a science? Or is the…
Looking forward to reading Jessica’s new book which arrived today. A great impetus to my long overdue return to thinking about Dostoevsky. Fyodor Dostoevskyjessica hooted wilsonphilosophical literatureWalker Percy
manwithoutqualities 