Science and Logic
Few persons care to study logic, because everybody conceives himself to be proficient enough in the art of reasoning already. But I observe that this satisfaction is limited to one’s own ratiocination, and does not extend to that of other men.
We come to the full possession of our power of drawing inferences the last of all our faculties, for it is not so much a natural gift as a long and difficult art. The history of its practice would make a grand subject for a book. The mediæval schoolmenaCollected Papers 5.359 reads “The medieval schoolman”, without marking a change., following the Romans, made logic the earliest of a boy’s studies after grammar, as being very easy. So it was, as they understood it. Its fundamental principle, according to them, was, that all knowledge rests on eitherbLater revised to “rests either on”. Collected Papers 5.359. authority or reason; but that whatever is deduced by reason depends ultimately on a premisecCollected Papers 5.359 spells this word “premiss” (plural “premisses”), here and in the rest of the essay, without marking a change. derived from authority. Accordingly, as soon as a boy was perfect in the syllogistic procedure, his intellectual kit of tools was held to be complete.
To Roger Bacon, that remarkable mind who in the middle of the thirteenth century was almost a scientific man, the schoolmen’s conception of reasoning appeared only an obstacle to truth. He saw that experience alone teaches anything—a proposition which to us seems easy to understand, because a distinct conception of experience has been handed down to us from former generations; which to him alsodLater revised to “to him likewise”. Collected Papers 5.360. seemed perfectly clear, because its difficulties had not yet unfolded themselves. Of all kinds of experience, the best, he thought, was interior illumination, which teaches many things about Nature which the external senses could never discover, such as the transubstantiation of bread.
Four centuries later, the more celebrated Bacon, in the first book of his “Novum Organum,” gave his clear account of experience as something which must be open to verification and reëxamination. But, superior as Lord Bacon’s conception is to earlier notions, a modern reader who is not in awe of his grandiloquence is chiefly struck by the inadequacy of his view of scientific procedure. That we have only to make some crude experiments, to draw up briefs of the results in certain blank forms, to go through these by rule, checking off everything disproved and setting down the alternatives, and that thus in a few years physical science would be finished up—what an idea! “He wrote on science like a Lord Chancellor,” indeed.eLater revised to “indeed, as Harvey, a genuine man of science said.” The added words date from about 1910. Collected Papers 5.361.
The early scientists, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, andfLater revised to “Galileo, Harvey, and Gilbert”. Collected Papers 5.362. Gilbert, had methods more like those of their modern brethren. Kepler undertook to draw a curve through the places of Mars;1Not quite so, but as nearly so as can be told in a few words. andgLater revised to “the places of Mars, and to state the times occupied by the planet in describing the different parts of that curve; but perhaps his greatest service”; the words “and to state . . . curve” date from about 1910. Collected Papers 5.362. his greatest service to science was in impressing on men’s minds that this was the thing to be done if they wished to improve astronomy; that they were not to content themselves with inquiring whether one system of epicycles was better than another, but that they were to sit down to the figures and find out what the curve, in truth, was. He accomplished this by his incomparable energy and courage, blundering along in the most inconceivable way (to us)hAccording to the editors of Collected Papers, Peirce deleted “in . . . us” (that is, “in the most inconceivable way (to us)”) about 1910; their text keeps the words. Collected Papers 5.362., from one irrational hypothesis to another, until, after trying twenty-two of these, he fell, by the mere exhaustion of his invention, upon the orbit which a mind well furnished with the weapons of modern logic would have tried almost at the outset.
In the same way, every work of science great enough to be rememberediLater revised to “great enough to be well remembered”. Collected Papers 5.363. for a few generations affords some exemplification of the defective state of the art of reasoning of the time when it was written; and each chief step in science has been a lesson in logic. It was so when Lavoisier and his contemporaries took up the study of chemistry. The old chemist’s maxim had been, “Lege, lege, lege, labora, ora, et relege.” Lavoisier’s method was not to read and pray, not to dreamjCollected Papers 5.363 reads “pray, but to dream”, without marking a change. that some long and complicated chemical process would have a certain effect, to put it into practice with dull patience, after its inevitable failure to dream that with some modification it would have another result, and to end by publishing the last dream as a fact: his way was to carry his mind into his laboratory, and to make of his alembicskLater revised to “and literally to make”. Collected Papers 5.363. and cucurbits instruments of thought, giving a new conception of reasoning, as something which was to be done with one’s eyes open, bylLater revised to “eyes open, in manipulating”. Collected Papers 5.363. manipulating real things instead of words and fancies.
The Darwinian controversy is, in large part, a question of logic. Mr. Darwin proposed to apply the statistical method to biology. The same thing hadmCollected Papers 5.364 reads “The same thing has been done”, without marking a change. been done in a widely different branch of science, the theory of gases. Though unable to say what the movements of any particular molecule of a gasnCollected Papers 5.364 reads “molecule of gas”, without marking a change. would be on a certain hypothesis regarding the constitution of this class of bodies, Clausius and Maxwell were yet able,oLater revised to “were yet able, eight years before the publication of Darwin’s immortal work, by the application”. The added words date from about 1910. Collected Papers 5.364. by the application of the doctrine of probabilities, to predict that in the long run such and such a proportion of the molecules would, under given circumstances, acquire such and such velocities; that there would take place, every second, such and such a numberpLater revised to “such and such a relative number”. Collected Papers 5.364. of collisions, etc.; and from these propositions were able to deduce certain properties of gases, especially in regard to their heat-relations. In like manner, Darwin, while unable to say what the operation of variation and natural selection in any individual case will be, demonstrates that in the long run they will adaptqLater revised to “they will, or would, adapt”. Collected Papers 5.364. animals to their circumstances. Whether or not existing animal forms are due to such action, or what position the theory ought to take, forms the subject of a discussion in which questions of fact and questions of logic are curiously interlaced.