PREFACE

The ideas of this book have grown from the soil of a philosophic movement which, though confined to small groups, is spread over the whole world. American pragmatists and behaviorists, English logistic epistemologists, Austrian positivists, German representatives of the analysis of science, and Polish logisticians are the main groups to which is due the origin of that philosophic movement which we now call "logistic empiricism." The movement is no longer restricted to its first centers, and its representatives are to be found today in many other countries as well -- in France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Finland, Denmark, and elsewhere. Though there is no philosophic system which unites these groups, there is a common property of ideas, principles, criticisms, and working methods -- all characterized by their common descent from a strict disavowal of the metaphor language of metaphysics and from a submission to the postulates of intellectual discipline. It is the intention of uniting both the empiricist conception of modern science and the formalistic conception of logic, such as expressed in logistic, which marks the working program of this philosophic movement.

Since this book is written with the same intentions, it may be asked how such a new attempt at a foundation of logistic empiricism can be justified. Many things indeed will be found in this book which have been said before by others, such as the physicalistic conception of language and the importance attributed to linguistic analysis, the connection of meaning and verifiability, and the behavioristic conception of psychology. This fact may in part be justified by the intention of giving a report of those results which may be considered today as a secured possession of the philosophic movement described; however, this is not the sole intention. If the present book enters once more into the discussion of these fundamental problems, it is because former investigations did not sufficiently take into account one concept which penetrates into all the logical relations constructed in these domains: that is, the concept of probability. It is the intention of this book to show the fundamental place which is occupied in the system of knowledge by this concept and to point out the consequences involved in a consideration of the probability character of knowledge.

The idea that knowledge is an approximative system which will never become "true" has been acknowledged by almost all writers of the empiricist group; but never have the logical consequences of this idea been sufficiently realized. The approximative character of science has been considered as a necessary evil, unavoidable for all practical knowledge, but not to be counted among the essential features of knowledge; the probability element in science was taken as a provisional feature, appearing in scientific investigation as long as it is on the path of discovery but disappearing in knowledge as a definitive system. Thus a fictive definitive system of knowledge was made the basis of epistemological inquiry, with the result that the schematized character of this basis was soon forgotten, and the fictive construction was identified with the actual system. It is one of the elementary laws of approximative procedure that the consequences drawn from a schematized conception do not hold outside the limits of the approximation; that in particular no consequences may be drawn from features belonging to the nature of the schematization only and not to the co-ordinated object. Mathematicians know that for many a purpose the number pi may be sufficiently approximated by the value 22/7; to infer from this, however, that pi is a rational number is by no means permissible. Many of the inferences of traditional epistemology and of positivism as well, I must confess, do not appear much better to me. It is particularly the domain of the verifiability conception of meaning and of questions connected with it, such as the problem of the existence of external things, which has been overrun with paralogisms of this type.

The conviction that the key to an understanding of scientific method is contained within the probability problem grew stronger and stronger with me in the face of such basic mistakes. This is the reason why, for a long time, I renounced a comprehensive report of my epistemological views, although my special investigations into different problems of epistemology demanded a construction of foundations different from those constructed by some of my philosophical friends. I concentrated my inquiry on the problem of probability which demanded at the same time a mathematical and a logical analysis. It is only after having traced out a logistic theory of probability, including a solution of the problem of induction, that I turn now to an application of these ideas to questions of a more general epistemological character. As my theory of probability has been published for some years, it was not necessary to present it with all mathematical details once more in the present book; the fifth chapter, however, gives an abbreviated report of this theory -- a report which seemed necessary as the probability book has been published in German only.

It is this combination of the results of my investigations on probability with the ideas of an empiricist and logistic conception of knowledge which I here present as my contribution to the discussion of logistic empiricism. The growth of this movement seems to me sufficiently advanced to enter upon a level of higher approximation; and what I propose is that the form of this new phase should be a probabilistic empiricism. If the continuation suggested comes to contradict some ideas so far considered as established, particularly by positivist writers, the reader will bear in mind that this criticism is not offered with the intention of diminishing the historical merits of these philosophers. On the contrary, I am glad to have an occasion for expressing my indebtedness to many a writer whose opinions I cannot wholly share. I think, however, that the clarification of the foundations of our common conceptions is the most urgent task within our philosophic movement and that we should not recoil from frankly admitting the insufficiencies of former results -- even if they still find defenders within our ranks.

The ideas of this book have been discussed in lectures and seminars at the University of Istanbul. I welcome the opportunity to express my warmest thanks to friends and students here in Istanbul for their active interest which formed a valuable stimulus in the clarification of my ideas, especially to my assistant, Miss Neyire Adil-Arda, without whose constant support I should have found it very much harder to formulate my views. For help in linguistic matters and reading of proofs I am grateful to Miss Sheila Anderson, of the English High School at Istanbul; to Professor Charles W. Morris, Mr. Lawrence K. Townsend, Jr., and Mr. Rudolph C. Waldschmidt, of the University of Chicago; to Mr. Max Black, of the institute of Education of the University of London; and to Miss Eleanor Bisbee, of Robert College at Istanbul.

HANS REICHENBACH

UNIVERSITY OF ISTANBUL
TURKEY
July 1937

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Table of Contents -- Go to Chapter 1

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