Reason and Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Scientific Method

497 Pages·2018·55.849 MB·English

by  Morris R. Cohen

Routledge Revivals
REASON AND NATURE

REASON AND NATURE
MORRIS R. COHEN
First published in 1931 by Harcourt, Brace and Company
This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge
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A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 31008779
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-31057-5 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-31058-2 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-429-45934-4 (ebk)
REASON AND NATURE
AN ESSAY ON THE MEANING OF
SCIENTIFIC METHOD
by
MORRIS R. COHEN
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1931» BY
MORRIS R. COHEN
Second printing, April, 1931
All rights reserved, including
the right to reproduce this hook
or portions thereof in any form.
Typography by Robert S. Josephy
punted in thb united states of ameiica
BY QUINN * BODE* COltPANy, INC,, BAHWAY, N. J.
TO MR. JUSTICE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The Courageous Thinker and Loyal Friend

Preface
T he distinctive intellectual traits of Western civilization, or of
what is sometimes called the modern mind, have been largely
moulded by the appeal to nature against conventional taboos
and by the appeal to reason against arbitrary authority. That nature and
reason, like warmth and light, may be intimately joined was made evi­
dent in the Hellenic ideal of science as a free inquiry into nature and
of ethics as concerned with a rational plan for attaining the natural
goods of life. Unfortunately for the career of liberal civilization, how­
ever, various circumstances have brought about a mutual hostility be­
tween these two appeals to what are popularly called the heart and the
mind. The appeal to nature is frequently a form of sentimental irra­
tionalism, and the appeal to reason is often a call to suppress nature in
the interest of conventional supernaturalism. To understand fully the
grounds, causes, and effects of this conflict would involve a thorough
survey of contemporary civilization and carry us far into the complexity
of the human mind. One of the elements, however, in such a survey is
a right understanding of the general bearing or meaning of scientific
method, i.e., of the principles of procedure according to which scientific
results are obtained and according to which these results are being con­
stantly revised. In developed natural science, reason and nature are
happily united.
Such a study of the principles of science I began some twenty years
ago. Untoward circumstances have prevented the continuous toil neces­
sary for such a task. Different parts of this work have been written at
widely different times and in somewhat different keys. But the favour­
able reception accorded to those portions of it which have been published
from time to time, and the insistence of friends whose judgment com­
pels respect, induce me somewhat reluctantly to publish the present essay
rather than wait any longer for the completion of a more satisfactory
systematic treatise. I am induced to do this not only by a sense of the
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