The Gracious TouchAuthor(s): EdsSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 59, No. 5 (Nov., 1944), p. 403Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/18311 .

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COMMENTS AND CRTTTICTIM

The Gracious Touch We are obliged to Mr. James Paul Stoakes of

Huntington, W. Va., for letting us know, through the medium of a letter to THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY,

about Don Guilermo Bonitto. . . . Altogether Don Guilermo strikes us as the perfect weatherman, and if we had him, or someone like him, to do our fore- casting in Washington, it would make even this climate almost tolerable.-From an editorial in The Washington Post, August 15, 1944.

But something has been done about the weather in Washing,ton. See "Moonlight and Roses," The Readers' Digest, October, 1944.-EDS.

Philosophy and the Supernatural

The simultaneous publication of Carlson's article

"'.Science and the Supernatural" and Bergmann 's ''An Empiricist's System of the Sciences " in the August '44 issue was thought provoking.

While Carlson's excellent article rejects irrefutably the supernatural as a means of knowledge, this re- jection does not appear to me to have exhausted the subject. Any phase of human behavior and its moti- vation deserves the attention of science as a phe- nomenon of human nature. Why then should we ignore, by rejection, the supernatural ? This is a source of human motivation so strong that it perse- veres in spite of science, and indeed as Carlson points out, in opposition to it. I do not mean to imply that science shall continue to apply its method to alleged manifestations of the supernatural; for this can lead back only to Carlson 's position. I suggest, rather, that by the application of historical and psycholog- ical data (for lack of as yet unobtainable mathe- matical data), the scientist may qualify the supernat- ural with reference to the other phenomena of human behavior.

It would require very little investigation along this line to reveal that the supernatural is but a vaporous screen concealing behind it the phenomena of phi- losophy and religion. Now there can be no difficulty in relating religion with the supernatural for the very obvious reason that all religious tenets are premised on the supernatural. But what possible relationship could be found to exist between philoso- phy and the supernatural? Philosophy has often paid tribute to science. Was it not indeed the parent of science However that may be, I may certainly be allowed to declare that all three, religion, phi- losophy and science are rooted commonly in man's earliest efforts at orientation. Furthermore, it is a more or less unchallenged truism that with the pas- sage of centuries, each of these has gone its separate wTn.v Whila mrntinno t,hc trith of this for spiepne.

I should like to contend that it is not true for religion and philosophy. Specifically, the contention is that philosophy is still tainted with a fundamentally re- ligious concept.

Consider, for example, Bergmann's application of empiricism to a system of science. (It may be granted, I think, that empiricism, for the scientific mind, is the most acceptable brand of philosophic thought.) Beginning from the position of "common sense,'" Bergman states ''. . . With respect to the physical sciences the problem now stands as follows: How can our narrow criterion, according to which all the scientist verifies are simple statements about the positions of pointers and the shapes of instru- ments, be reconciled with the obvious fact that physi- cists very confidently and successfully use such ab- stract things as 'electrical field' and 'elasticity co- efficient' and such theoretical conceptions as 'atom' . . . which nobody ever expects to see or touch like physical things . . . II

This statement, from the philosophical viewpoint, poses a perfectly valid epistemological problem. Yet to a scientist unfamiliar with the dignity bestowed upon it by age, this question must appear naive, if not obstructive. The scientist, unless he consults the works of scientific psychologists, will restate the ques- tion for himself thus: How can I know about any- thing that I cannot reach directly with my five senses? He will reply immediately with the declara- tion that because he does know about things out- side the reach of his senses, he can know about them. Furthermore, he will assume the existence of an organic relationship between his senses and his thought processes and will set about finding proof for his assumption. In doing so, he will be well within the precincts permitted by the discipline of science.

Now, when a question is asked, it is because a questionable situation exists to ask about. What, then, is the questionable situation existing in the physical sciences which prompted Bergmann's ques- tion? Clearly there is none, since the abstracts used by the scientists are used "confidently and success- fully." For lack of any other reason, it may be assumed that Bergmann 's question is rhetorical and was posed only for the purpose of breaking down the methodological structure of science the better to study its components. From this process, the concept of "operationism" is seen to emerge. By this, it is understood, that in the formulation of any scientifie law, the scientist must have observed in operation every component of the phenomenon, regardless of the degree of divergence of its manifestations. Stated simply, and reduced to its essence, this means that the components of a phenomenon must be given their validlitv vti n th .Rn R. f^as a

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