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On the Possible Philosophies of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

William Marias Malisoff
William Marias Malisoff*
Affiliation:
Essex College of Medicine and Surgery Newark, New Jersey
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Extract

The use of the word “possible” without qualification invariably leads us to the endless, or at least well beyond our finite powers of analysis. Yet, to qualify possibility may itself become an endless task, if only because of the multitude of the available modes of approach. Somewhere in the middle of the realm of possibility one must parachute down and start ordering the scattered riches for our finite purposes with our limited and only newly acquired perspectives. What we have glimpsed of the realms of possibility before our descent may still be of use, but our immediate tasks will bind us to the sternly empirical gravitational pulls of what happens to have erupted in the historical fields of discovery.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 1945 , pp. 231 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1945

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References

Notes

1 Presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sep. 13, 1944, at Cleveland, O.

2 See my articles: Emergence without Mystery, Phil. Sci., Vol. 6, No. 1, Jan. 1939; What is an Atom? Vol. 6, pp. 261–5; What is a Gene? Vol. 6, pp. 385–9; What is a Monad? Vol. 6, pp. 1–6; What is Insight? Vol. 7, pp. 135–9; What is Freedom? Vol. 7, No. 3, July 1940.