Abstract
THE nine papers in volume 44 of the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society cover a wide range, of subjects, including logic, psychology, ethics, religion. Three are likely to be of special interest to scientific readers. Though the authors approach the subject in different ways and quite independently, they all attack the phenomenalist or positivist view of scientific knowledge. Mr. J. C. Gregory, writing on "Causal Efficacy", argues that those who treat causation as nothing but regularity of succession ignore the universal background of all thinking, primitive or advanced. The notion of activity or efficacy belongs to this background. Dr. J. O. Wisdom in an article on "The Descriptive Interpretation of Science" admits that, so far as it provides a maxim of caution against postulation of unnecessary entities, the descriptive interpretation is useful, but urges that it cannot possibly be taken as final. Experiments are made and experimental science exists only because of the expectation that things will behave in definite ways; an expectation which the descriptive view dismisses as groundless.
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
New Series, Vol. 44: Containing the Papers read before the Society during the Sixty-fifth Session, 1943–1944. Pp. xxx + 160. (London: Harrison and Sons, Ltd., 1944.) 25s. net.
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RITCHIE, A. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Nature 156, 33 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/156033a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/156033a0