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Chapter 15

between two facts immediately requires a critique of the two corresponding con-

cepts and the establishment of a new relation between them. The conditional reflex

is a discovery of a new fact by means of an old concept. We learned that mental

salivation develops directly from the reflex, more correctly, that it is the same reflex,

but operating under other conditions. But at the same time it is a discovery of a

new concept by means of an old fact: by means of the fact “salivation occurs at

the sight of food,” which is well known to all of us, we acquired a completely new

concept of the reflex, our idea of it diametrically changed. Whereas before, the

reflex was a synonym for a pre-mental, unconscious, immutable fact, nowadays the

whole mind is reduced to reflexes, the reflex has turned out to be a most flexible

mechanism, etc. How would this have been possible if Pavlov had only studied the

fact of salivation and not the concept of the reflex? This is essentially the same

thing expressed in two ways, for in each scientific discovery knowledge of the fact

is to the same extent knowledge of the concept. The scientific investigation of facts

differs from registration in that it is the accumulation of concepts, the circulation

of concepts and facts with a conceptual return.

Finally, the special sciences create all the concepts that the general science

studies. For the natural sciences do not spring from logic, it is not logic that provides

them with ready-made concepts. Can we really assume that the creation of ever

more abstract concepts proceeds completely unconsciously? How can theories, laws,

conflicting hypotheses exist without the critique of concepts? How can we create

a theory or advance a hypothesis, i.e., something which transcends the boundaries

of the facts, without working on the concepts?

But perhaps the study of concepts in the special sciences proceeds in passing,

accidentally as the facts are being studied, whereas the general science studies only

concepts? This would not be correct either. We have seen that the abstract concepts

with which the general science operates possess a kernel of reality. The question

arises what science does with this kernel—is it ignored, forgotten, covered in the

inaccessible stronghold of abstractions like pure mathematics? Does one never in

the process of investigation, nor after it, turn to this kernel, as if it did not exist

at all? One only has to examine the method of investigation in the general science

and its ultimate result to see that this is not true. Are concepts really studied by

pure deduction, by finding logical relations between concepts, and not by new in-

duction, by new analysis, the establishing of new relations, in a word—by work on

the real contents of these concepts? After all, we do not develop our ideas from

specific premises, as in mathematics, but we proceed by induction—we generalize

enormous groups of facts, compare them, analyze and create new abstractions. This

is the way general biology and general physics proceed. And not a single general

science can proceed otherwise, since the logical formula “A is B” has been replaced

by a definition, i.e., by the real A and B: by mass, movement, body, and organism.

And the result of an investigation in a general science is not new forms of inter-

relations of concepts, as in logic, but new facts: we learn of evolution, heredity,

inertia. How do we learn of this, how do we reach the concept of evolution? We

compare such facts as the data of comparative anatomy and physiology, botany and

zoology, embryology and photo- and zootechnics etc., i.e., we proceed as we proceed

with the individual facts in a special science. And on the basis of a new study of

the facts elaborated by the various sciences we establish new facts, i.e., in the proc-

ess of investigation and in its result we are constantly operating with facts.

Thus, the difference between the general and the special science as concerns

their goal, orientation, and the elaboration of concepts and facts, again appears to

be only quantitative. It is a difference of degree of one and the same phenomenon

and not of the nature of two sciences. It is not absolute or fundamental.