The following definitions and explanations are decisions formulated arbitrarily in a sense. However, the underlying assumptions serving as a guide to their formulation are found in both pragmatism and logical positivism. Yet there has been some confusion of the difference between definitions, axioms, postulates, etc., and as a result there is a confusion of certain phases of formal and factual knowledge. For example, one notices in C. I. Lewis' works that all formal statements are thought of as “definitive.” A more effective word, I believe, is “prescriptive.” Axioms are prescriptive, yet, as will be seen below, they are not definitions, and no one in practice conceives of them as such, as can be seen in mathematical works. Axioms prescribe the logical relationship between two or more concepts or words. If interpreted, the factual referents of the words, whose logical relations have been prescribed in axioms, are different. This is not the case with definitions.

Becoming is interpreted by various sciences. The exact sciences, physics, and chemistry, interpret this universal becoming or change of all things on the model of mathematical equations. In such an equation of quantities or magnitudes, one side always balances the other. We call such a process “circular”. Numbers may be subdivided or contracted, they may change their places or positions, but the sum total of the whole equation remains immutably the same. In this manner mechanics constructs change as a change of positions of unchanging particles in a continuous but divisible space and in a continuous but divisible time. Chemistry constructs qualitative change as a change of unchanging elements in such a fashion that the sum total of the elements involved in such transactions is always completely accounted for. But in the twentieth century becoming entered these closed systems. There are no unchanging atoms now, and no unchanging chemical elements. Both the physical atom and the chemical element, thought immutable before, are now seen to disintegrate, to radiate, to change their character according to their position in the “field” of energy in which they occur.

This is a brief sketch of the form which the analysis of the concept of identity would take under the impact of the most recent phase of Scientific Empiricism. The frame of reference is thus that of Carnap's Introduction to Semantics. Most characteristic of this approach is that it reaches its main clarifications by distinguishing between the various connotations of the traditional terms along the three lines of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The notion of truth, for instance, must be split into syntactical truth or analyticality, semantical truth, and pragmatical truth. Only the last has something to do with belief and verification. In a somewhat similar manner identity splits, upon closer examination, into three radically different meanings, but it will be seen that the third one has nothing to do with either pure or applied pragmatics. Some of the points I am trying to make have been dealt with, in an interesting manner, in a recent paper by Quine.

The importance of Cassirer's extensive contributions to the philosophical comprehension of mathematics and mathematical physics is generally recognized to be second to none. Nevertheless few indeed in the English speaking world have apparently paid much attention to the penetrating criticisms of Russellian mathematical logic interspersed throughout his works, and formulated in such a way as to bring his own doctrines into that much clearer focus and to render his own position the more convincing.

The last two words of the title for this essay are taken from a paper by R. S. Lillie, and the first phrase is also taken by implication from the same source. The study of chemical phenomena in life has progressed far enough so that underlying chemical causes, involved in Professor Lillie's picture of Biological Causation, may in part be discussed in general terms, and apart from the mass of detail known about the agents and processes involved. Moreover, this mass of detail is now great enough so that even though we are far from having a complete or even a comprehensive picture of these causes at least some of the fundamental principles involved in the chemical aspects of biological causation are clearly revealed.

The determination of the place of life in nature has been a major philosophic issue. Some, in their attempt to show the continuity of nature, have resorted to the reductive method and have argued that the living differ in no significant sense from the non-living, unless it be in their complexity; others, in their desire to emphasize the qualitatively varied aspects of nature, have drifted to disjunctive method and have claimed that there is an unbridgeable gap between the living and the non-living. Yet life in its natural setting presents both continuity with the physical world and a distinctive difference from it. One need neither sunder the continuity in nature nor deny the empirically observable qualitative differences. It is this principle that will guide the present discussion of life.

The supposed communication of one mind with another at a distance, without any means known to physical or psychological science, is a generally accepted definition of telepathy. Thus when persons sensorially isolated from each other experience congruence and coincidence of thoughts, emotions or actions they are considered as being in telepathic communication. Clairvoyance surmises the apprehension of particular objects and stimuli also without the employment of any of the agencies of the five senses. Although telepathy and clairvoyance have been thus recognized as distinct conjectures, either or both comprise features of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP). Both are conceived of as transcending the anatomical structures and physiological functionings that comprise the five senses. They therefore constitute a mysterious, additional sense which as yet cannot be ascribed to material bases or causes. However, the operations, if not the exact natures, of these recondite abilities have been, it is claimed, experimentally and precisely ascertained.

Psychological research and theory has been in the past, and is at present, vitiated by three groups of presuppositions and tendencies. Firstly, by a rigid ideal of preciseness, which produces in the mind of psychologists a biased predilection for selecting and emphasizing those facts which lend themselves best to a precise investigation, and for neglecting those facts with which this is not the case. Secondly, by certain psychological presuppositions rooted in the ideological background of the society to which the psychologist himself belongs; these presuppositions induce him often to state, unwittingly, certain of his problems along the lines suggested by the predominant ideology. And thirdly, by the tendency to overlook, or to neglect, certain very important facts because these facts appear to be quite “obvious”.

A problem of tremendous import confronts the social scientists of our day. Having accumulated a vast amount of detailed data on human relations the social scientists are now being asked about the significance of their data. Two major aspects of this questioning are these: How can we synthesize all available scientific data on human relations so that this knowledge can be successfully applied to the solution of current social problems; and secondly, since some of the data accumulated so far has been defined and organized in terms of concepts imitative of older (Newtonian) physical (and sometimes biological) concepts—the appropriateness of which to human relations as subject matter is questionable—should we not evaluate these basic concepts with a view to laying new conceptual foundations for our knowledge of human relations? Thus we shall open the way for new social research and at the same time develop a methodologically sounder basis for our knowledge of human relations. Briefly, our knowledge of human relations at present is at loose ends, and in this condition is not as applicable to the solution of pressing social problems as it would be if it were unified into a comprehensive and more flexible science of human behavior. Such a unification would demand not only a synthesis of the data of the social sciences but also the critical evaluation of many of the basic concepts of these sciences.