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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.
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