My last communication dealt with the question of what is an atom. The answer was a proposal to define the atom as the terminus of a special sort of analysis, the atomistic-structural. This form of analysis was presented as a special way of treating a “material” system or situation. A formula was suggested which expressed matter or the material as the product of structure and atomicity, or M = SA. No limitation was placed on the factoring of M into other products, but this particular product was designated as the structural-atomistic analysis. The factors, S and A, constitute a conjugate pair, so chosen that each member of the pair is meaningless without the other. Atomicity, thus, is not a matter of size or of some sort of ultimateness, but corresponds to some level of being in empirical situations which also reveals structure.

The problem of the reality and nature of novelty in the universe has long engaged the attention of philosophers. “There is nothing new under the sun” is one ancient weighty utterance. On the other hand, “you cannot step twice into the same river”, said Heraclitus, for in the interval between your first and second steps, the river has changed and you have changed. One recent attempt to analyze this problem and other affiliated problems, is the theory of emergence.

In the practice of science lies the key to virtue. The proposition I have enunciated is not an obvious one. Its contradictory could conceivably be true. One might, for example, look upon the practice of science as a diabolical way of blinding one to the charms of virtue. One might look upon the practice of science as a deliberate plot to efface virtue, destroy it. Worse, one might look upon the practice of science as entirely apart from the issues of good and bad, of right and wrong, or of virtue and viciousness. The practice of science may be conceived as blind, itself vicious, or irresponsibly indifferent.

For a number of years I have been demonstrating at my seminars that the atom is no longer atomic, that mechanics is no longer mechanistic, and that similar paradoxes of advancing science can be formulated throughout its extent. The point has been reached, however, that a call for a revision of terms or some such reform should be issued. At one time, indeed, I gave a list of terms to be dropped altogether. They refused to be dropped. I ask now: Will they permit themselves to be modified or to be reallocated?

In this paper I attempt to trace certain aspects of the evolution of theories of space-time and mechanics as revealed by a brief comparative study of Newtonian theory, Robb's theory, general relativity, and Milne's kinematical relativity. The first object is to emphasise how each theory leaves us in a position in which the succeeding one appears as a perfectly natural next step in the development of ideas. The second object is to show how, in spite of superficial differences in character, the theories all necessarily possess the same general structure constituted by the presence of hypotheses, from which certain general mathematical relations are deduced, which in their turn are used to predict relations between observable quantities.

The meaning of emergence has been interpreted in a multitude of ways. What is it that emerges in turn from all this ado about emergence?

It is regrettable that the only distinctive overtone that seems to come forth is a lurking sense of mystery or mystification about unexpected or unforseen or “new” forms of organizations. This sense of mystery is conveyed most strongly by those who credit the alleged newness to some sort of subtle influence determined to make new things out of the old. Likewise it is also strongly suggested by those who pretend merely to stumble upon it as an “empirical” find,—but, oh, what a fantastic find!

The attribute of living is due either to a specific state of matter or to a distinctive kind of energy. All possible interpretations of these two concepts are materialistic with one exception. There is said to be a kind of energy apart from this world. Such an assumption is vitalistic.

No philosopher is needed to say where reality may be found. The fool no less than the wise man is in direct touch with real existence at every moment of his waking or dreaming life. To find reality might be a problem for timeless gods beyond the flux of nature—if timeless gods can be said to have problems—but natural creatures encounter reality at every turn. Nor need we look to the philosopher for knowledge. A division of labor having been made between philosopher and scientist, it is to the scientist that we turn for most of our knowledge. Nevertheless, tasks for the philosopher remain and one of these is to make clear what knowledge is, for, to have knowledge is one thing; to know what knowledge is, is another. Science, we may safely assume, constitutes our best claim to knowledge but not all who know their science can say why it is knowledge.

There is a considerable literature about causation. A great many investigators constantly employ the notion of causation in some form. But with the exception of a very few items, these investigators will find little of use in this literature.

As is rather generally admitted today, the terms of our language in scientific as well as in everyday use, are not completely precise, but exhibit a more or less high degree of vagueness. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the consequences of this circumstance for a series of questions which belong to the field of logic. First of all, the meaning and the logical status of the concept of vagueness will be analyzed; then we will try to find out whether logical terms are free from vagueness, and whether vagueness has an influence upon the validity of the customary principles of logic; finally, the possibilities of diminishing the vagueness of scientific concepts by suitable logical devices will be briefly dealt with.

Most words are like small vessels with constantly changing contents. Life does not wait for adjustments in language, but seeks to give an immediate solution to its most imperative needs and interests. It builds up and sometimes destroys. It is a panorama in flux.

In attempting to clarify the problem of personality integration the writer gained the impression that the difficulty of such a task does does not lie alone in the paucity of usable factual data but it is due, even to a greater extent, to the inadequacy of our logical tools. Such a handicap is felt not only in the study of personality, but in the study of wholes in general. Here the attempt will be made to develop some concepts which may be useful for the understanding of the structure of wholes.

We are accustomed to think and to speak of the physical universe as having objective existence, externally to ourselves; and as being in objective existence quite apart from any question of our perception of it. Even the idealistic philosopher regards the universe so, except when he is reflecting mentally upon other possibilities. The realistic view is the primary view. Idealism is an afterthought. And the idealist, if he is an investigator in physical science, cannot avoid acting upon the postulate of realism. Nothing else gives him a foothold for work. He has to regard the universe “as if” it were real. All our philosophies are necessarily based upon postulate; all our science is founded upon faith.

This paper is concerned with two closely related problems: the first is the general question of border-line cases; the second is a suggested identification of the notions of ambiguity and vagueness. In the first part of the paper I propose to discuss border-line cases in the following way: I shall say what is meant by “border-line cases,” discuss their genesis, enumerate and evaluate the different methods of resolving such cases, and make a brief comment or two the bearing, if any, that such cases have on logical theory. In the second part it will be suggested that the notion of vagueness can be reduced to the status of a special but important case of ambiguity; I hold that such a reduction would effect both an economy and a clarification.

The argument of this paper is intended merely as a reassertion of John Dewey's naturalistic thesis that value and existence cannot be separated; and that the traditional concept of science which separates them (and which originated before the advent of science) is vicious. But the writer is not at all sure that he has not perverted the ideas of Dewey beyond recognition. If so, he hopes he has perverted them away from truth, but he fears otherwise. For there is not much hope of “reforming” science; at least, not of cutting and stretching it to fit the Procrustian bed herein prescribed. But if science really does not need reform, the writer is more than willing to submit to the sword of Theseus along with all other marauders and disturbers of the peace.

What I propose to do in the present paper is to clarify critical realism on some crucial points. While such is my primary purpose, I also entertain the hope that logical positivists and pragmatists may be led to see in this form of realism a necessary supplementation to their emphases and insights. I am persuaded that there has been misunderstanding and prejudice at work partly because of verbal phobias in connection with such phrases as the copy-theory, representative perception, transcendence, the subjective, Cartesian dualism, etc., etc. So strong have these accumulated prejudices been that, in America at least, there has been a tendency to outlaw epistemology. I do not find the same situation in England for instance. Here it seems at times as though pragmatism and positivism have consciously “ganged up” against epistemology—in my opinion to the hurt of philosophy. I have the impression that the younger philosophers in America are bewildered and are largely drifting. Under these conditions it is the duty of any one who believes that he has a clear-cut epistemology capable of rising above these verbal phobias to seek to present it as precisely as possible.

Many attempts have been made in recent months to throw light on the problem of vagueness. That perfect precision is an ideal not to be attained by any language seems clear. But the obvious fact is that words and sentences in our languages are not so precise as we should like to have them, and we are naturally concerned with finding some sort of device by which vagueness can, in the first place, be detected and measured, and, in the second place, eliminated or reduced to a minimum. I shall not be concerned in what follows with these various special attempts to meet the problem. My task is the somewhat more general one of showing that there are other factors contributing to vagueness, one of which is of particular significance when we leave the realm of ostensively defined symbols and begin to concern ourselves with suppositional symbols, constructs and hypotheses.

General philosophy claims to be the critical subject which lays down for all of us what we may be allowed to think, and yet it has played no part whatever in the great revolutions of human thought of the present century—those connected with relativity and the quantum theory. It might have been expected that the scientists would have been constantly consulting the philosophers as to the legitimacy of their various speculations, but nothing of the kind has happened. Since no one can dispense with some sort of meta-physic, each scientist has made one for himself, and no doubt they contain many crudities, but it would seem that a deep interest in metaphysic is a disadvantage rather than an advantage to the physicist—at least I have the impression that those of my friends who are most inclined to speculate on the ultimate things appear to be the ones whose scientific work is most hampered by doing so. Now I propose to risk a similar indiscretion. I want to embody in it the practical philosophy of a physicist, and I do not mean it as an attack on the pure philosophers, who are very reasonable people, only chargeable with the minor offence of not having made me want to read their books!

Tradition usually assigns greater importance to the so-called laws of thought than to other logical principles. Since these laws could apparently not be deduced from the other principles without circularity and all deductions appeared to make use of them, their priority was considered well established. Generally, it was held that the laws of thought have no proof and need none, that as universal constitutive or transcendental principles they are self-evident.

It is with some trepidation that I am raising again this old problem, for it may well be said that nothing new could possibly be written on it. On the other hand it can scarcely be maintained that what has been written has left the problem in a satisfactory state. Moreover, it seems to me that some work which has been done recently on the nature of theoretical physics can be used to dispose of most of the difficulties, and it is partly in the hope of drawing attention to that work and its bearings on psychology that I am writing this paper.