The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science Science and Method Part 44

Perhaps, says he (I well believe that this was a concession), it is not the scientist that creates the fact in the rough; it is at least he who creates the scientific fact.

This distinction between the fact in the rough and the scientific fact does not by itself appear to me illegitimate. But I complain first that the boundary has not been traced either exactly or precisely; and then that the author has seemed to suppose that the crude fact, not being scientific, is outside of science.

Finally, I can not admit that the scientist creates without restraint the scientific fact, since it is the crude fact which imposes it upon him.

The examples given by M. LeRoy have greatly astonished me. The first is taken from the notion of atom. The atom chosen as example of fact! I avow that this choice has so disconcerted me that I prefer to say nothing about it. I have evidently misunderstood the author's thought and I could not fruitfully discuss it.

The second case taken as example is that of an eclipse where the crude phenomenon is a play of light and shadow, but where the astronomer can not intervene without introducing two foreign elements, to wit, a clock and Newton's law.

Finally, M. LeRoy cites the rotation of the earth; it has been answered: but this is not a fact, and he has replied: it was one for Galileo, who affirmed it, as for the inquisitor, who denied it. It always remains that this is not a fact in the same sense as those just spoken of and that to give them the same name is to expose one's self to many confusions.

Here then are four degrees:

1. It grows dark, says the clown.

2. The eclipse happened at nine o'clock, says the astronomer.

3. The eclipse happened at the time deducible from the tables constructed according to Newton's law, says he again.

4. That results from the earth's turning around the sun, says Galileo finally.

Where then is the boundary between the fact in the rough and the scientific fact? To read M. LeRoy one would believe that it is between the first and the second stage, but who does not see that there is a greater distance from the second to the third, and still more from the third to the fourth.

Allow me to cite two examples which perhaps will enlighten us a little.

I observe the deviation of a galvanometer by the aid of a movable mirror which projects a luminous image or spot on a divided scale. The crude fact is this: I see the spot displace itself on the scale, and the scientific fact is this: a current pa.s.ses in the circuit.

Or again: when I make an experiment I should subject the result to certain corrections, because I know I must have made errors. These errors are of two kinds, some are accidental and these I shall correct by taking the mean; the others are systematic and I shall be able to correct those only by a thorough study of their causes. The first result obtained is then the fact in the rough, while the scientific fact is the final result after the finished corrections.

Reflecting on this latter example, we are led to subdivide our second stage, and in place of saying:

2. The eclipse happened at nine o'clock, we shall say:

2_a_. The eclipse happened when my clock pointed to nine, and

2_b_. My clock being ten minutes slow, the eclipse happened at ten minutes past nine.

And this is not all: the first stage also should be subdivided, and not between these two subdivisions will be the least distance; it is necessary to distinguish between the impression of obscurity felt by one witnessing an eclipse, and the affirmation: It grows dark, which this impression extorts from him. In a sense it is the first which is the only true fact in the rough, and the second is already a sort of scientific fact.

Now then our scale has six stages, and even though there is no reason for halting at this figure, there we shall stop.

What strikes me at the start is this. At the first of our six stages, the fact, still completely in the rough, is, so to speak, individual, it is completely distinct from all other possible facts. From the second stage, already it is no longer the same. The enunciation of the fact would suit an infinity of other facts. So soon as language intervenes, I have at my command only a finite number of terms to express the shades, in number infinite, that my impressions might cover. When I say: It grows dark, that well expresses the impressions I feel in being present at an eclipse; but even in obscurity a mult.i.tude of shades could be imagined, and if, instead of that actually realized, had happened a slightly different shade, yet I should still have enunciated this _other_ fact by saying: It grows dark.

Second remark: even at the second stage, the enunciation of a fact can only be _true or false_. This is not so of any proposition; if this proposition is the enunciation of a convention, it can not be said that this enunciation is _true_, in the proper sense of the word, since it could not be true apart from me and is true only because I wish it to be.

When, for instance, I say the unit for length is the meter, this is a decree that I promulgate, it is not something ascertained which forces itself upon me. It is the same, as I think I have elsewhere shown, when it is a question, for example, of Euclid's postulate.

When I am asked: Is it growing dark? I always know whether I ought to reply yes or no. Although an infinity of possible facts may be susceptible of this same enunciation, it grows dark, I shall always know whether the fact realized belongs or does not belong among those which answer to this enunciation. Facts are cla.s.sed in categories, and if I am asked whether the fact that I ascertain belongs or does not belong in such a category, I shall not hesitate.

Doubtless this cla.s.sification is sufficiently arbitrary to leave a large part to man's freedom or caprice. In a word, this cla.s.sification is a convention. _This convention being given_, if I am asked: Is such a fact true? I shall always know what to answer, and my reply will be imposed upon me by the witness of my senses.

If therefore, during an eclipse, it is asked: Is it growing dark? all the world will answer yes. Doubtless those speaking a language where bright was called dark, and dark bright, would answer no. But of what importance is that?

In the same way, in mathematics, _when I have laid down the definitions, and the postulates which are conventions_, a theorem henceforth can only be true or false. But to answer the question: Is this theorem true? it is no longer to the witness of my senses that I shall have recourse, but to reasoning.

A statement of fact is always verifiable, and for the verification we have recourse either to the witness of our senses, or to the memory of this witness. This is properly what characterizes a fact. If you put the question to me: Is such a fact true? I shall begin by asking you, if there is occasion, to state precisely the conventions, by asking you, in other words, what language you have spoken; then once settled on this point, I shall interrogate my senses and shall answer yes or no. But it will be my senses that will have made answer, it will not be _you_ when you say to me: I have spoken to you in English or in French.

Is there something to change in all that when we pa.s.s to the following stages? When I observe a galvanometer, as I have just said, if I ask an ignorant visitor: Is the current pa.s.sing? he looks at the wire to try to see something pa.s.s; but if I put the same question to my a.s.sistant who understands my language, he will know I mean: Does the spot move? and he will look at the scale.

What difference is there then between the statement of a fact in the rough and the statement of a scientific fact? The same difference as between the statement of the same crude fact in French and in German.

The scientific statement is the translation of the crude statement into a language which is distinguished above all from the common German or French, because it is spoken by a very much smaller number of people.

Yet let us not go too fast. To measure a current I may use a very great number of types of galvanometers or besides an electrodynamometer. And then when I shall say there is running in this circuit a current of so many amperes, that will mean: if I adapt to this circuit such a galvanometer I shall see the spot come to the division _a_; but that will mean equally: if I adapt to this circuit such an electrodynamometer, I shall see the spot go to the division _b_. And that will mean still many other things, because the current can manifest itself not only by mechanical effects, but by effects chemical, thermal, luminous, etc.

Here then is one same statement which suits a very great number of facts absolutely different. Why? It is because I a.s.sume a law according to which, whenever such a mechanical effect shall happen, such a chemical effect will happen also. Previous experiments, very numerous, have never shown this law to fail, and then I have understood that I could express by the same statement two facts so invariably bound one to the other.

When I am asked: Is the current pa.s.sing? I can understand that that means: Will such a mechanical effect happen? But I can understand also: Will such a chemical effect happen? I shall then verify either the existence of the mechanical effect, or that of the chemical effect; that will be indifferent, since in both cases the answer must be the same.

And if the law should one day be found false? If it was perceived that the concordance of the two effects, mechanical and chemical, is not constant? That day it would be necessary to change the scientific language to free it from a grave ambiguity.

And after that? Is it thought that ordinary language by aid of which are expressed the facts of daily life is exempt from ambiguity?

_Shall we thence conclude that the facts of daily life are the work of the grammarians?_

You ask me: Is there a current? I try whether the mechanical effect exists, I ascertain it and I answer: Yes, there is a current. You understand at once that that means that the mechanical effect exists, and that the chemical effect, that I have not investigated, exists likewise. Imagine now, supposing an impossibility, the law we believe true, not to be, and the chemical effect not to exist. Under this hypothesis there will be two distinct facts, the one directly observed and which is true, the other inferred and which is false. It may strictly be said that we have created the second. So that error is the part of man's personal collaboration in the creation of the scientific fact.

But if we can say that the fact in question is false, is this not just because it is not a free and arbitrary creation of our mind, a disguised convention, in which case it would be neither true nor false. And in fact it was verifiable; I had not made the verification, but I could have made it. If I answered amiss, it was because I chose to reply too quickly, without having asked nature, who alone knew the secret.

When, after an experiment, I correct the accidental and systematic errors to bring out the scientific fact, the case is the same; the scientific fact will never be anything but the crude fact translated into another language. When I shall say: It is such an hour, that will be a short way of saying: There is such a relation between the hour indicated by my clock, and the hour it marked at the moment of the pa.s.sing of such a star and such another star across the meridian. And this convention of language once adopted, when I shall be asked: Is it such an hour? it will not depend upon me to answer yes or no.

Let us pa.s.s to the stage before the last: the eclipse happened at the hour given by the tables deduced from Newton's laws. This is still a convention of language which is perfectly clear for those who know celestial mechanics or simply for those who have the tables calculated by the astronomers. I am asked: Did the eclipse happen at the hour predicted? I look in the nautical almanac, I see that the eclipse was announced for nine o'clock and I understand that the question means: Did the eclipse happen at nine o'clock? There still we have nothing to change in our conclusions. _The scientific fact is only the crude fact translated into a convenient language._

It is true that at the last stage things change. Does the earth rotate?

Is this a verifiable fact? Could Galileo and the Grand Inquisitor, to settle the matter, appeal to the witness of their senses? On the contrary, they were in accord about the appearances, and whatever had been the acc.u.mulated experiences, they would have remained in accord with regard to the appearances without ever agreeing on their interpretation. It is just on that account that they were obliged to have recourse to procedures of discussion so unscientific.

This is why I think they did not disagree about a _fact_: we have not the right to give the same name to the rotation of the earth, which was the object of their discussion, and to the facts crude or scientific we have hitherto pa.s.sed in review.

After what precedes, it seems superfluous to investigate whether the fact in the rough is outside of science, because there can neither be science without scientific fact, nor scientific fact without fact in the rough, since the first is only the translation of the second.

And then, has one the right to say that the scientist creates the scientific fact? First of all, he does not create it from nothing, since he makes it with the fact in the rough. Consequently he does not make it freely and _as he chooses_. However able the worker may be, his freedom is always limited by the properties of the raw material on which he works.

After all, what do you mean when you speak of this free creation of the scientific fact and when you take as example the astronomer who intervenes actively in the phenomenon of the eclipse by bringing his clock? Do you mean: The eclipse happened at nine o'clock; but if the astronomer had wished it to happen at ten, that depended only on him, he had only to advance his clock an hour?

But the astronomer, in perpetrating that bad joke, would evidently have been guilty of an equivocation. When he tells me: The eclipse happened at nine, I understand that nine is the hour deduced from the crude indication of the pendulum by the usual series of corrections. If he has given me solely that crude indication, or if he has made corrections contrary to the habitual rules, he has changed the language agreed upon without forewarning me. If, on the contrary, he took care to forewarn me, I have nothing to complain of, but then it is always the same fact expressed in another language.

In sum, _all the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it_. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not.

What then remains of M. LeRoy's thesis? This remains: the scientist intervenes actively in choosing the facts worth observing. An isolated fact has by itself no interest; it becomes interesting if one has reason to think that it may aid in the prediction of other facts; or better, if, having been predicted, its verification is the confirmation of a law. Who shall choose the facts which, corresponding to these conditions, are worthy the freedom of the city in science? This is the free activity of the scientist.