Human Knowledge: A Classic Statement of Logical Empiricism

Preface by Eino Kaila

This book is meant as a guide for anyone who takes pleasure in the pursuit of philosophical problems. It is also intended to be an academic textbook in scientific philosophy as well as a systematic introduction to ‘logical empiricism’ for professional philosophers. Here I offer a few words to these three circles of potential readers.

A reader in the first group, before beginning a detailed study of this book, may wish to know what requirements the book will impose. To this we reply that it presupposes no special knowledge over and above what is included in standard secondary school education. But it will require sustained work and independent thinking on the part of the reader. Here ‘secondary school education’ is understood to include an introduction to the elements of philosophy and its history, as well as the basics of logic. The reader who lacks any of these may do well to gather the relevant information before picking up this book. Even a concise textbook in the history of philosophy or an introduction to philosophy will suffice, especially if it addresses developments in the history of scientific ideas.

As a textbook in scientific philosophy, this book is meant to provide a systematic description of what is involved in the concept of knowledge, to clarify, in light of the history of scientific ideas, the developments that this concept has undergone and, finally, to justify important results that contemporary logical analysis has achieved on the questions of what human knowledge is and what it is not.

Finally, with regard to the needs of professional philosophers, the goal has been to fill a gap in the existing philosophical literature. As yet there exists no systematic introduction to logical empiricism, that is, an introduction that, while admitting no compromises in scientific accuracy on any important point, could nevertheless be understood even by a reader with no experience in exact logic or ‘logistic’. For this reason, the book includes a summary of the elements of logistic mainly as presented by Hilbert, though concentrating upon points that are significant in epistemological applications.

Some of the basic principles of logical empiricism are to be found in the ‘Galilean’ concept of knowledge that is part and parcel of modern science. It was first developed by Galileo and Newton, who not only founded their research on this conception but also endeavored to explicitly formulate this conception. In the late nineteenth century and at the turn of the century, a number of distinguished mathematicians, among them Ernst Mach and Henri Poincaré, developed it further in important respects. Nevertheless, the type of philosophical research that is best known as ‘logical empiricism’ has received its contemporary form only after philosophers have begun to appreciate—and this development has taken place mainly after the Great War—how important exact logic is to their work. Exact logic, that reform in logical thought that can ultimately be traced back to ideas of Leibniz, has been quietly taking place in the course of the last century

This book attempts to synthesize the most important results of logical empiricism into a systematic whole, the core of which is to be found in four fundamental theses of logical empiricism. These will be worked out and given a justification in the course of the following investigations. Apart from a few details, my own contribution is confined to this systematization and a number of insights and observations relating to it; these have to do, mainly, with a number of questions belonging to the psychology and history of knowledge and constituting the background for logical empiricism. In light of these insights, the logical empiricist conception of knowledge is the culmination of two and a half millennia of development in human ideas.

In the references found at the end of the book* I have mentioned the most important advocates of logical empiricism together with their most significant works. The list is by no means exhaustive; it mentions those sources from which the present author has benefited the most, on the one hand, and those, on the other, that the reader is likely to find useful for more deeply understanding the issues introduced here.

This work was prompted by my experiences as an academic teacher. In this capacity I have on a few occasions addressed issues examined on the following pages and they have led me to numerous exchanges of thoughts with my students. I have not always been only on the giving end of these exchanges. Now that this book, which means a great deal to me, is to be brought before the public, part of the gratitude that I feel belongs therefore to some of my pupils. As a teacher I have occasionally felt as if the light from the logical height that I have seen moving upon the face of the deep was visible to my audience, too. If this book gives the reader a similar glimpse of clarity, its purpose will have have been served.

Christmas, 1938

The Author

* Not included in the present volume.—Eds.

Human Knowledge

Part I. Theory Formation

Chapter 1

Search for Invariances

Were one to ask, What are the aims of the human pursuit of knowledge? the answer could be given in one word: invariances. What do we mean by this word to which we attach so much importance? A short answer would be: by ‘invariance’ we mean regularity, or lawfulness. The meaning that we naturally associate with these words, however, does not quite capture the quite general meaning of ‘invariance’. And, it may be asked, shouldn’t the concepts ‘regularity’ and ‘lawfulness’ themselves be explained? Let us begin then by giving some examples of what we mean by invariances.

Of all invariances, the most important are the so-called laws of nature, that is, constant regularities between events. Another important class of invariances is constituted by so-called physical objects, or material objects. After all, every object contains a regularity, for objects are constituted by distinct properties that hold together in a regular manner. Space is a system of invariances; it is part of our conception of space that it possesses a structure described by a certain geometry, a structure that remains the same everywhere, does not vary, and is therefore invariant. Every science, be it physics, psychology, or something else, is concerned with this sameness, these constancies and stabilities—these invariances. As the invariances that we discover are more general, the more we succeed in satisfying our pursuit of knowledge.

This conception of human knowledge may seem strange, perhaps even one-sided. Yet as we pursue the matter further, this impression will soon change. For we will see that not only science but also prescientific thought, including the kind of immediate understanding that is present in sense perception itself, is fundamentally concerned with invariances. Perception is constantly on the lookout for these invariances; one could almost say that this is all it ever does.¹ We shall now consider a few examples.

Most of the time, we are interested in perceptual phenomena only insofar as they are signs or signals of some other phenomena that we expect to occur under certain conditions. A given appearance of white signals chalk; it is a sign of something that under certain conditions yields, for example, a white streak on a blackboard. We say that we see objects like pieces of chalk. In fact, however, we must learn to ‘see’ in exactly the same way that we learn to read, that is, to comprehend certain groups of letters as expressions of thoughts. In reading we grasp the meanings of what we read and take notice of the expressive signs themselves only to the extent that is necessary for us to comprehend the meanings. Similarly, in perception we become aware of physical objects and events and do not usually attend to the underlying perceptual phenomena. What interests us in our perceptions, in other words, are the regularities that govern the course of phenomena and, in the simplest cases, are comprehended without any conscious effort.

Consider another kind of example. Even in cases where we do not comprehend perceptual phenomena primarily as signals of something physical, their comprehension still leads to the establishment of invariances. Consider figure 1. It is a so-called ambiguous figure. It can be understood in several different ways, for example, as a whole that is made up of two equilateral triangles, placed on one another. Or it can be understood as a ring consisting of six small, congruent triangles, or still other ways. Yet no matter how we see the figure, each of those articulations that can really be seen is to a great extent invariant, simple, regular, and symmetric. In each case, we see the upper part of the figure constructed in the same manner as its lower part, and so on. Geometrically, there are countless other articulations that are equally possible and, so to speak, equally justified, but which are highly nonsymmetric. Articulations that fail to satisfy the invariance requirement in these ways cannot be seen; they cannot be brought about visually. They can be produced only conceptually, such as the articulation one part of which consists in the figure cfhl, the other in aefghi. It is easy to show by means of such examples—and these can be found in almost every instance of visual perception—that the immediate, unconscious, and unintentional articulations that perception searches for and finds are invariances.

Figure 1

Let us next consider Meumann’s figure. Of course, we immediately see it as articulated or organized. However, if, after looking at the figure for a while, we try to reproduce it from memory, it may well happen that our attempt fails completely. We then take a fresh look at the figure, this time not resting content with nonconscious articulation that is independent of our will, but trying to grasp the figure consciously and deliberately. In this case we analyze the figure and if possible try to identify elements that repeat themselves according to some rule. When we grasp something in this way, through a conscious effort and analysis, we are searching for invariances. Soon we realize that in the figure in question a curve of the following kind repeats itself according to a law that is easily recognized. Once we have identified the law, we can retain the figure in our memory; we come to possess knowledge of it as soon as we have found the invariance contained in the figure, and our knowledge is no more than knowledge of its underlying law. Suppose the figure is a map of a peculiar network of roads. Once we have grasped it in this way, we can keep the network in our thoughts; it has become clear to us.

Figure 2

If we continue to study such figures, it will soon become clear that this search for invariances lies very deep in our nature. Our biological need to find means for survival forces it upon us. At the same time, however, it is an innate law of our nature, as it were; it manifests itself wherever the human spirit is active. It would be of interest to consider how invariances are searched for and implemented in the different walks of aesthetic life. What, for instance, is artistic style? It is a uniform pattern that repeats itself in a multiplicity. What is appropriate in style in the artistic sense is that which consistently follows some invariance. Clarity, unity in multiplicity, balance, harmony, and beauty; in all of these there is some invariance that manifests itself in a concrete form.

Finally, a few examples help to show that these considerations apply even to advanced scientific research which can itself be seen as a search for invariances.

Experience presents itself to us as a boundless field, a colorful multiplicity of phenomena. In our search for knowledge, we try to comprehend this multiplicity in a way that is as simple and unified as possible, that is to say, invariant.

Aristotle presents a comprehensive theory of motion. He classifies all forms of motion into definite kinds: straight and circular motions, natural and forced motions. The motion of a simple body is simple, that of a composite body is compound. These different forms of motion are not comparable, says he; they do not constitute any uniform field. Sublunary motions, or motions taking place on the Earth, are completely different in nature from the superlunary motions of the celestial bodies. According to Aristotle, there are no general laws of motion, laws that would hold of any motion, whatsoever.

Next consider Galileo, the founder of the modern theory of motion. How does he proceed? How does he think? Let us consider again Meumann’s figure. Trying to grasp it, we looked for some element, as simple as possible and repeating itself according to some law. Galileo, a man of genius, moves at an immeasurably higher intellectual level, but does exactly the same as we do when we try to grasp the content of the figure. He asks himself: What are those recurring conceptual elements that can be combined in accordance with some simple law so as to yield the actual phenomena pertaining to motion? This is his famous analytic method, or as he himself calls it, the method of resolution.

Eventually, Galileo determines that three facts constitute the conceptual basis for all motion: continuity, the parallelogram of forces, and uniform acceleration. (It was not, however, until Newton that these concepts were made absolutely clear.) As regards acceleration in particular, Galileo assumes that the increase in velocity that we observe in free fall takes place in the simplest imaginable way, to wit, in such a way that speed increases by a constant amount per unit of time. Then he ‘sees’ in his thought, for example, the fall of a stone thrown in the air as dividing into a certain uniform, rectilinear motion and a certain uniformly accelerating motion which unite, but do not disturb one another, and then it is easy to ascertain that the trajectory is parabolic. Inspired by considerations like these, Galileo himself says: Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.²

There is thus a continuous striving towards more and more general laws; for the more general a law is, the greater the invariance of the field to which the law applies, and the more we perceive the multiplicity contained the field to be of the same kind.

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Newton built his celestial mechanics on the foundation laid by Galileo. What is added, in fact, is just one new conceptual element—the supposition that bodies give acceleration to one another in accordance with the well-known inverse square law. This law is assumed to be valid for celestial bodies, or superlunary motions, as well as for those taking place on the earth. (Acceleration is thus no longer a constant, as it was for Galileo.) Thus, again, Newton ‘sees’ in his thought, for example, the orbital motion of the moon as its fall towards the earth, and he calculates that if the distance which the moon descends from the tangent of its orbit towards the center of the earth is multiplied according to the inverse square law, the moon, falling on the earth, ought in the space of one second describe 15 Paris feet, 1 inch, and 1 4/9 lines. In fact, a body falling on earth describes in the first second 15 Paris feet, 1 inch, and 1 7/9 lines.³ Since these values are almost exactly the same, there is no doubt in Newton’s mind that these are both cases of gravity; that is, that what takes place in the heavens when the celestial bodies revolve around one another is the same as what happens on our earth when an apple falls from a tree. Newton’s contemporaries, staggered by the result, came to believe that they witnessed the discovery of a law governing the entire universe.

‘Economy of Thought’

The fact that our search for knowledge can be understood as an attempt to ascertain invariances was not discovered yesterday. People grasped it clearly as soon as they began to apply the biological standpoint to the human search for knowledge. Of those thinkers who have expressed opinions of this kind, first and foremost was Ernst Mach (d. 1916), the Austrian historian of physics and philosopher. At every turn in his works there are references to the economy of thought (‘Ökonomie des Denkens’) that he considers to be the core of all scientific understanding and theory formation.⁴ Thus he is fond of emphasizing the parsimonious character of thought; every law of nature attempts to give an economical, condensed description of how things are—and nothing else. Here one might point out that Mach perhaps puts a little too much emphasis on the purely biological, life-supporting function of the search for invariances and the economy that is involved in it. As we have mentioned, the search for invariances lies so deep in our nature that it is present wherever the human spirit is active, for example in artistic creation which does not serve any purely biological needs. What we have here is something more than just a tool in the struggle for survival; we have something of intrinsic value, even if it was originally no more than just a means serving some end. This is a fundamental feature of the life of the human spirit, which even in its highest spheres has a biological foundation and can be understood on the basis of the laws of biology.

Even if these remarks are to some extent critical of Mach, the point is merely to emphasize that what he means by talk of economy of thought is in fact something even deeper than what he has in mind. Mach’s own considerations suffice to make this clear. One of Mach’s favorite examples was Ptolemy, the ancient astronomer.⁵ Even in the second century a.d., Ptolemy knew that a light ray on entering a denser medium from a less dense one approaches the normal and recedes from it when the direction is the opposite, from the denser to the less dense medium. He made experimental observations and drew up refraction tables from 10 to 80 degrees. He was already searching for the law of refraction and assumed the ratio α : β to be constant for each pair of media, an assumption contradicted by his own observations. Later, at last, Snellius, a contemporary of Galileo, discovers the law sin α : sin β = k for each pair of media. What a splendid gain in economy! Refraction tables become quite superfluous! After the discovery, it suffices to know the constants k; these are all that one has to keep in mind. Each angle of refraction can be computed, once the incidence angle and the relevant constant are known; that is to say, the angle can be inferred. If the law possesses general validity, our knowledge, which Ptolemy and his many refraction tables represented as an indefinite multiplicity, has been transformed from a compilation of distinct facts into a deductive unity. From the law we infer particular instances. Thus we see that the discovery of general invariances transforms knowledge into something deductive. A law of this kind, Mach remarks, is no more than an economic, parsimonious description of how things are in a certain respect; actually, what it describes is never more than a particular aspect of the relevant phenomenon, an aspect which happens to interest us in the context of our study; Snell’s law is just a description of a geometrical aspect of the behavior of