Science, Logic and Philosophy*

Abstract

SO long as an idealist confines himself to the description of sensations and to the construction of his ideal world, he can dispense with the theory of probability, but at the cost of having to reconstruct his world with every observation that does not happen to fit his laws exactly. An idealist that does not accept the theory of probability could expect the sun to rise in the west to-morrow, and nobody believing otherwise could make the slightest contact with him such as could alter his opinion. But he has no basis for inferring new sensations without it, because an infinite number of laws can always be made to fit any finite number of data. Without some rule for selecting the most suitable laws there is no reason to prefer any one prediction to any other, whether one is an idealist or a realist.