CONTENTS

PART 1 INTRODUCTION: THE MATRIX OF INQUIRY
I THE PROBLEM OF LOGICAL SUBJECT-MATTER … 1
II THE EXISTENTIAL MATRIX OF INQUIRY: BIOLOGICAL … 23
III THE EXISTENTIAL MATRIX OF INQUIRY: CULTURAL … 42
IV COMMON SENSE AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY … 60
V THE NEEDED REFORM OF LOGIC ... 81

PART II THE STRUCTURE OF INQUIRY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF JUDGMENTS
VI THE PATTERN OF INQUIRY . . . . 101
VII THE CONSTRUCTION OF JUDGMENT ... 120
VIII IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE: UNDERSTANDING AND INFERENCE … 139
IX JUDGMENTS OF PRACTICE: EVALUATION … 159
X AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION: JUDGMENT AS REQUALIFICATION . . . 181
XI THE FUNCTION OF PROPOSITIONS OF QUANTITY IN JUDGMENT . . . . 199
XII JUDGMENT AS SPATIAL-TEMPORAL DETERMINATION: NARRATION-DESCRIPTION … 220
XIII THE CONTINUUM OF JUDGMENT: GENERAL PROPOSITIONS ....245
XIV GENERIC AND UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS … 264

PART III PROPOSITIONS AND TERMS

XV GENERAL THEORY OF PROPOSITIONS ... 283
XVI PROPOSITIONS ORDERED IN SETS AND SERIES … 311
XVII FORMAL FUNCTIONS AND CANONS ... 328
XVIII TERMS OR MEANINGS … 349

PART IV THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD
XIX LOGIC AND NATURAL SCIENCE: FORM AND MATTER … 371
XX MATHEMATICAL DISCOURSE ....394
XXI SCIENTIFIC METHOD: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION … 419
XXII SCIENTIFIC LAWS— CAUSATION AND SEQUENCES … 442
XXIII SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND SCIENTIFIC SUBJECT-MATTER … 463
XXIV SOCIAL INQUIRY … 487
XXV THE LOGIC OF INQUIRY AND PHILOSOPHIES OF KNOWLEDGE … 513

PREFACE
The word "Pragmatism" does not, I think, occur in the text. Perhaps the word lends itself to misconception. At all events, so much misunderstanding and relatively futile controversy have gathered about the word that it seemed advisable to avoid its use. But in the proper interpretation of "pragmatic," namely the function of consequences as necessary tests of the validity of propositions, provided these consequences are operationally instituted and are such as to resolve the specific problem evoking the operations, the text that follows is thoroughly pragmatic.

PART I
The first chapter set forth the fundamental thesis: Logical forms accrue to subject-matter when the latter is subjected to controlled inquiry. It also set forth some of the implications of this thesis for the nature of logical theory.
The second chapter and third chapters stated the independent grounds, biological and cultural, for holding that logic is a theory of experiential naturalistic subject-matter.
The fourth chapter developed the theme with reference to the relations of the logic of common sense and science.
The fifth chapter discussed Aristotelian logic as the organized formulation of the language of Greek life, when that language is regarded as the expression of the meanings of Greek culture and of the significance attributed to various forms of natural existence.
It was held throughout these chapters that inquiry, in spite of the diverse subjects to which it applies, and the consequent diversity of its special techniques has a common structure or pattern: that this common structure is applied both in common sense and science, although because of the nature of the problems with which they are concerned, the emphasis upon the factors involved varies widely in the two modes.
The fifth chapter concluded that the demand for reform of logic is the demand for a unified theory of inquiry through which the authentic pattern of experimental and operational inquiry of science shall become available for regulation of the habitual methods by which inquiries in the field of common sense are carried on; by which conclusions are reached and beliefs are formed and tested.

THE PROBLEM OF LOGICAL SUBJECT-MATTER

It is said that logic is the science of necessary laws of thought, and that it is the theory of ordered relations— relations which are wholly independent of thought. There are at least three views held as to the nature of these latter relations: They are held (1) to constitute a realm of pure possibilities as such, where pure means independent of actuality; (2) to be ultimate invariant relations forming the order of nature; and (3) to constitute the rational structure of the universe. In the latter status, while independent of human thought, they are said to embody the rational structure of the universe which is re- produced in part by human reason. There is also the view that logic is concerned with processes of inference by which knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, is attained.
Of late, ... Logic is said to be concerned with the formal structure of language as a system of symbols. (p2)

From these preliminary remarks I turn to statement of the position regarding logical subject-matter that is developed in this work. The theory, in summary form, is that all logical forms (with their characteristic properties) arise within the operation of inquiry and are concerned with control of inquiry so that it may yield warranted assertions. This conception implies much more than that logical forms are disclosed or come to light when we reflect upon processes of inquiry that are in use. Of course it means that; but it also means that the forms originate in operations of inquiry. To employ a convenient expression, it means that while inquiry into inquiry is the causa cognoscendi of logical forms, primary inquiry is itself causa essendi of the forms which inquiry into inquiry discloses. (pp3-4)

The plausibility of the view that sets up a dualism between logic and the methodology of inquiry, between logic and scientific method, is due to a fact that is not denied.
Inquiry in order to reach valid conclusions must itself satisfy logical requirements. It is an easy inference from this fact to the idea that the logical requirements are imposed upon methods of inquiry from without.
Since inquiries and methods are better and worse, logic involves a standard for criticizing and evaluating them. How, it will be asked, can inquiry which has to be evaluated by reference to a standard be itself the source of the standard? How can inquiry originate logical forms (as it has been stated that it does) and yet be subject to the requirements of these forms? The question is one that must be met. It can be adequately answered only in the course of the entire discussion that follows. But the meaning of the position taken may be clarified by indicating the direction in which the answer will be sought.
The problem reduced to its lowest terms is whether inquiry can develop in its own ongoing course the logical standards and forms to which further inquiry shall submit. One might reply by saying that it can because it has. One might even challenge the objector to produce a single instance of improvement in scientific methods not produced in and by the self-corrective process of inquiry; a single instance that is due to application of standards ab extra.
But such a retort needs to be justified. Some kind of inquiry began presumably as soon as man appeared on earth. Of prehistoric methods of inquiry our knowledge is vague and speculative. But we know a good deal about different methods that have been used in historic times. We know that the methods which now control science are of comparatively recent origin in both physical and mathematical science.
Moreover, different methods have been not only tried, but they have been tried out; that is, tested. The developing course of science thus presents us with an immanent criticism of methods previously tried. Earlier methods failed in some important respect. In consequence of this failure, they were modified so that more dependable results were secured. Earlier methods yielded conclusions that could not stand the strain put upon them by further investigation. It is not merely that conclusions were found to be inadequate or false but that they were found to be so because of methods employed. Other methods of inquiry were found to be such that persistence in them not only produced conclusions that stood the strain of further inquiry but that tended to be self-rectifying. They were methods that improved with and by use. (pp5-6)

It may be instructive to compare the improvement of scientific methods within inquiry with the improvement that has taken place in the progress of the arts. Is there any reason to suppose that advance in the art of metallurgy has been due to application of an external standard? The "norms" used at present have developed out of the processes by which metallic ores were formerly treated. There were needs to be satisfied; consequences to be reached. As they were reached, new needs and new possibilities opened to view and old processes were re-made to satisfy them. In short, some procedures worked; some succeeded in reaching the end intended; others failed. The latter were dropped; the former were retained and extended. It is quite true that modern improvements in technologies have been determined by advance in mathematics and physical science. But these advances in scientific knowledge are not external canons to which the arts have had automatically to submit themselves. They provided new instrumentalities, but the instrumentalities were nor self-applying. They were used; and it was the result of their use, their failure and success in accomplishing ends and effecting consequences, that provided the final criterion of the value of scientific principles for carrying on determinate technological operations. What is said is not intended as proof that the logical principles involved in scientific method have themselves arisen in the progressive course of inquiry. But it is meant to show that the hypothesis that they have so arisen has a prima facie claim to be entertained, final decision being reserved. (pp6-7)

Belief may be so understood as to be a fitting designation for the outcome of inquiry. Doubt is uneasy; it is tension that finds expression and outlet in the processes of inquiry. Inquiry terminates in reaching that which is settled. This settled condition is a demarcating characteristic of genuine belief. In so far, belief is an appropriate name for the end of inquiry. But belief is a "double-barreled" word. It is used objectively to name what is believed. In this sense, the outcome of inquiry is a settled objective state of affairs, so settled that we are ready to act upon it, overtly or in imagination. Belief here names the settled condition of objective subject-matter, together with readiness to act in a given way when, if, and as, that subject-matter is present in existence. But in popular usage, belief also means a personal matter; something that some human being entertains or holds; a position, which under the influence of psychology, is converted into the notion that belief is merely a mental or psychical state. Associations from this signification of the word belief are likely to creep in when it is said that the end of inquiry is settled belief. The objective meaning of subject-matter as that is settled through inquiry is then dimmed or even shut out. The ambiguity of the word thus renders its use inadvisable for the purpose in hand. (p7)

The word knowledge is also a suitable term to designate the objective and close of inquiry. But it, too, suffers from ambiguity. When it is said that attainment of knowledge, or truth, is the end of inquiry the statement, according to the position here taken, is a truism. That which satisfactorily terminates inquiry is, by definition, knowledge; it is knowledge because it is the appropriate close of inquiry. But the statement may be supposed, and has been supposed, to enunciate something significant instead of a tautology. As a truism, it defines knowledge as the outcome of competent and controlled inquiry. When, however, the statement is thought to enunciate something significant, the case is reversed. Knowledge is then supposed to have a meaning of its own apart from connection with and reference to inquiry. The theory of inquiry is then necessarily subordinated to this meaning as a fixed external end. The opposition between the two views is basic. The idea that any knowledge in particular can be instituted apart from its being the consummation of inquiry, and that knowledge in general can be defined apart from this connection is, moreover, one of the sources of confusion in logical theory. For the different varieties of realism, idealism and dualism have their diverse conceptions of what "knowledge" really is. In consequence, logical theory is rendered subservient to metaphysical and epistemological preconceptions, so that interpretation of logical forms varies with underlying metaphysical assumptions. (pp7-8)

The position here taken holds that since every special case of knowledge is constituted as the outcome of some special inquiry, the conception of knowledge as such can only be a generalization of the properties discovered to belong to conclusions which are outcomes of inquiry. Knowledge, as an abstract term, is a name for the product of competent inquiries. Apart from this relation, its meaning is so empty that any content or filling may be arbitrarily poured in. The general conception of knowledge, when formulated in terms of the outcome of inquiry, has something important to say regarding the meaning of inquiry itself. For it indicates that inquiry is a continuing process in every field with which it is engaged. The "settlement" of a particular situation by a particular inquiry is no guarantee that that settled conclusion will always remain settled. The attainment of settled beliefs is a progressive matter; there is no belief so settled as not to be exposed to further inquiry. It is the convergent and cumulative effect of continued inquiry that defines knowledge in its general meaning. In scientific inquiry, the criterion of what is taken to be settled, or to be knowledge, is being so settled that it is available as a resource in further inquiry; not being settled in such a way as not to be subject to revision in further inquiry. (pp8-9)

What has been said helps to explain why the term "warranted assertion" is preferred to the terms belief and knowledge. It is free from the ambiguity of these latter terms, and it involves reference to inquiry as that which warrants assertion. When knowledge is taken as a general abstract term related to inquiry in the abstract, it means "warranted assertibility." The use of a term that designates a potentiality rather than an actuality involves recognition that all special conclusions of special inquiries are parts of an enterprise that is continually renewed, or is a going concern. (p9)

      (Note: C. S. Peirce, after noting that our scientific propositions are subject to being brought in doubt by the results of further inquiries, adds, "We ought to construct our theories so as to provide for such [later] discoveries ... by leaving room for the modifications that cannot be foreseen but which are pretty sure to prove needful." (Collected Papers, Vol. V., p. 376 n.) The readers who are acquainted with the logical writings of Peirce will note my great indebtedness to him in the general position taken. As far as I am aware, he was the first writer on logic to make inquiry and its methods the primary and ultimate source of logical subject- matter.) (p9)

Up to this point, it may seem as if the criteria that emerge from the processes of continuous inquiry were only descriptive, and in that sense empirical. That they are empirical in one sense of that ambiguous word is undeniable. They have grown out of the experiences of actual inquiry. But they are not empirical in the sense in which "empirical" means devoid of rational standing. Through examination of the relations which exist between means (methods) employed and conclusions attained as their consequence, reasons are discovered why some methods succeed and other methods fail. It is implied in what has been said (as a corollary of the general hypothesis) that rationality is an affair of the relation of means and consequences, not of fixed first principles as ultimate premises or as contents of what the Neo-scholastics call criteriology. (p9)

Reasonableness or rationality is, according to the position here taken, as well as in its ordinary usage, an affair of the relation of means and consequences. In framing ends-in-view, it is unreasonable to set up those which have no connection with available means and without reference to the obstacles standing in the way of attaining the end. It is reasonable to search for and select the means that will, with the maximum probability, yield the con- sequences which are intended. It is highly unreasonable to cm- ploy as means, materials and processes which would be found, if they were examined, to be such that they produce consequences which are different from the intended end; so different that they preclude its attainment. Rationality as an abstract conception is precisely the generalized idea of the means-consequence relation as such. Hence, from this point of view, the descriptive statement of methods that achieve progressively stable beliefs, or warranted assertibility, is also a rational statement in case the relation between them as means and assertibility as consequence is ascertained. (pp9-10)

Reasonableness or rationality has, however, been hypostatized. One of the oldest and most enduring traditions in logical theory has converted rationality into a faculty which, when it is actualized in perception of first truths, was called reason and later, Intellectus Purus. The idea of reason as the power which intuitively apprehends a priori ultimate first principles persists in logical philosophy. Whether explicitly affirmed or not, it is the ground of even' view which holds that scientific method is dependent upon logical forms that are logically prior and external to inquiry. The original ground for this conception of reason has now been destroyed. This ground was the necessity for postulating a faculty that had the power of direct apprehension of "truths" that were axiomatic in the sense of being self-evident, or self-verifying, and self- contained, as the necessary grounds of all demonstrative reasoning. The notion was derived from the subject-matter that had attained the highest scientific formulation at the time the classic logic was formulated; namely, Euclidean geometry. (p10)

This conception of the nature of axioms is no longer held in mathematics nor in the logic of mathematics. Axioms are now held to be postulates, neither true nor false in themselves, and to have their meaning determined by the consequences that follow because of their implicatory relations to one another. The greatest freedom is permitted, or rather encouraged, in laying" down postulates— a freedom subject only to the condition that\hey be rigorously fruitful of implied consequences. (p10)

The same principle holds in physics. Mathematical formulae have now taken the place in physics once occupied by propositions about eternal essences and the fixed species defined by these essences. The formulae are deductively developed by means of rules of implication. But the value of the deduced result for physical science is not determined by the correctness of the deduction. (p11)

The deductive conclusion is used to instigate and direct operations of experimental observation. The observable consequences of these operations in their systematic correlation with one an- other finally determine the scientific worth of the deduced principle. The latter takes its place as a means necessary to obtain the consequence of warranted assertibility. The position here taken, the general hypothesis advanced, is a generalization of the means-consequence relation characteristic of mathematical and physical inquiry. According to it, all logical forms, such as are represented by what has been called proximate logical subject-matter, are instances of a relation between means and consequences in properly controlled inquiry, the word "controlled" in this statement standing for the methods of inquiry that are developed and perfected in the processes of continuous inquiry. In this continuity, the conclusions of any special inquiry are subordinate to use in substantiation and maturation of methods of further inquiry. The general character of knowledge as an abstract term is determined by the nature of the methods used, not vice-versa. (p11)

THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LOGIC
Neither the existence nor the indispensability of primary logical principles is, then, denied. The question concerns their origin and use. In what is said upon this matter I follow in the main the account given by Peirce of "guiding" or "leading ' principles. According to this view, every inferential conclusion that is drawn involves a habit (either by way of expressing it or initiating it) in the organic sense of habit, since life is impossible without ways of action sufficiently general to be properly named habits. At the outset, the habit that operates in an inference is purely biological. It operates without our being aware of it. We are aware at most of particular acts and particular consequences. Later, we are aware not only of what is done from time to time but of how it is done. Attention to the way of doing is, moreover, indispensable to control of what is done. The craftsman, for example, learns that if he operates in a certain waythe result will take care of itself, certain materials being given. In like fashion, we discover that if we draw our inferences in a certain way, we shall, other things being equal, get dependable conclusions. The idea of a method of inquiry arises as an articulate expression of the habit that is involved in a class of inferences.

Since, moreover, the habits that operate are narrower and wider in scope, the formulations of methods that result from observing them have either restricted or extensive breadth. Peirce illustrates the narrower type of habit by the following case: A person has seen a rotating disk of copper come to rest when it is placed be- tween magnets. He infers that another piece of copper will be- have similarly under like conditions. At first such inferences are made without formulation of a principle. (Note: Peirce does not recall that Peirce alludes to Hume's doctrine of habit, or to Mill's "propensity" to generalize. The fact involved seems to be the same. Bur Peirce connects the fact, as Hume and Mill did not, with basic organic or biological functions instead of leaving habit as an ultimate "mysterious" tie. ) The disposition that operates is limited in scope. It does not extend beyond pieces of copper. But when it is found that there are habits involved in every inference, in spite of differences of subject-matter, and when these habits are noted and formulated, then the formulations are guiding or leading principles. The principles state habits operative in every inference that tend to yield conclusions that are stable and productive in further inquiries. Being free from connection with any particular subject-matter, they are formal, not material, though they are forms of material that is subjected to authentic inquiry.

Validity of the principles is determined by the coherency of the consequences produced by the habits they articulate. If the habit in question is such as generally produces conclusions that are sustained and developed in further inquiry, then it is valid even if in an occasional case it yields a conclusion that turns out invalid. In such cases, the trouble lies in the material dealt with rather than with the habit and general principle. This distinction obviously corresponds to the ordinary distinction between form and matter. But it does not involve the complete separation between them that is often set up in logical theories.

Any habit is a way or manner of action, not a particular act or deed. When it is formulated it becomes, as far as it is accepted, a rule, or more generally, a principle or "law" of action. It can hardly be denied that there are habits of inference and that they may be formulated as rules or principles. If there are such habits as are necessary to conduct every successful inferential inquiry, then the formulations that express them will be logical principles of all inquiries. In this statement "successful" means operative in a manner that tends in the long run, or in continuity of inquiry, to yield results that are either confirmed in further inquiry or that are corrected by use of the same procedures. These guiding logical principles are not premises of inference or argument. They are conditions to be satisfied such that knowledge of them provides a principle of direction and of testing. They are formulations of ways of treating subject-matter that have been found to be so determinative of sound conclusions in the past that they are taken to regulate further inquiry until definite grounds are found for questioning them. While they are derived from examination of methods previously used in their connection with the kind of conclusion they have produced, they are operationally a priori with respect to further inquiry. (Note: As has been indicated, the above account is a free rendering of Peirce. See particularly his Collected Papers, Vol. Ill, pp. 154-68, and Vol. V. pp. 36% 370.)

THE NATURE OF LOGIC
1. Logic is a progressive discipline. The reason for this is that logic rests upon analysis of the best methods of inquiry (being judged "best" by their results with respect to continued inquiry) that exist at a given time. As the methods of the sciences improve, corresponding changes take place in logic. An enormous change has taken place in logical theory since the classic logic formulated the methods of the science that existed in its period. It has occurred in consequence of the development of mathematical and physical science. If, however, present theory provided a coherent formulation of existing scientific methods, freed from a doctrine of logical forms inherited from a science that is no longer held, this treatise would have no reason for existence. When in the future methods of inquiry are further changed, logical theory will also change. There is no ground for supposing that logic has been or ever will be so perfected that, save, perhaps, for minor details, it will require no further modification. The idea that logic is capable of final formulation is an eidolon of the theater.

2. The subject-matter of logic is determined operationally.
      (Note: The word "operational" is not a substitute for what is designated by the word "instrumental." It expresses the way in and by which the subject-matter of inquiry is rendered the means to the end of inquiry, the institution of determinate existential situations. As a general term, "instrumental" stands for the relation of means-consequence, as the basic category for interpretation of logical forms, while "operational" stands for the conditions by which subject-matter is (1) rendered fit to serve as means and (2) actually functions as such means in effecting the objective transformation which is the end of inquiry.)
This thesis is a verbal restatement of what was earlier said. The methods of inquiry are operations performed or to be performed. Logical forms are the conditions that inquiry, qua inquiry, has to meet. Operations, to anticipate, fall into two general types. There are operations that are performed upon and with existential material — as in experimental observation. There are operations performed with and upon symbols. But even in the latter case, "operation" is to be taken in as literal a sense as possible. There are operations like hunting for a lost coin or measuring land, and there are operations like drawing up a balance-sheet. The former is performed upon existential conditions; the latter upon symbols. But the symbols in the latter case stand for possible final existential conditions while the conclusion, when it is stated in symbols, is a pre-condition of further operations that deal with existences. Moreover, the operations involved in making a balance-sheet for a bank or any other business involve physical activities. The so-called "mental" element in operations of both these kinds has to be defined in terms of existential conditions and consequences, not vice-versa.

Operations involve both material and instrumentalities, including in the latter tools and techniques. The more material and instrumentalities are shaped in advance with a view to their operating in conjunction with each other as means to consequences, the better the operations performed are controlled. Refined steel, which is the matter of the operations by which a watch-spring is formed, is itself the product of a number of preparatory operations executed with reference to getting the material into the state that fits it to be the material of the final operation. The material is thus as instrumental, from an operational point of view, as are the tools and techniques by which it is brought into a required condition. On the other hand, old tools and techniques are modified in order that they may apply more effectively to new materials. The introduction, for example, of the lighter metals demanded different methods of treatment from those to which the heavier metals previously used were subjected. Or, stated from the other side, the development of electrolytic operations made possible the use of new materials as means to new consequences.

The illustration is drawn from the operations of industrial arts. But the principle holds of operations of inquiry. The latter also proceed by shaping on one hand subject-matter so that it lends itself to the application of conceptions as modes of operation; and, on the other hand, by development of such conceptual structures as are applicable to existential conditions. Since, as in the arts, both movements take place in strict correspondence with each other, the conceptions employed are to be understood as directly operational, while the existential material, in the degree in which the conditions of inquiry are satisfied, is determined both by operations and with an eye to operations still to be executed.

3. Logical forms are postulational. Inquiry in order to be inquiry in the complete sense has to satisfy certain demands that are capable of formal statement. According to the view that makes a basic difference between logic and methodology, the requirements in question subsist prior to and independent (if inquiry. Upon that view, they are final in themselves, not intrinsically postulational. This conception of them is the ultimate ground of the idea that they are completely and inherently a priori and are disclosed to a faculty called pure reason. The position here taken holds that they are intrinsically postulates of and for inquiry, being formulations of conditions, discovered in the course of inquiry itself, which further inquiries must satisfy if the}' are to yield warranted assertibility as a consequence.

Stated in terms of the means-consequence relation, they are a generalization of the nature of the means that must be employed if assertibility is to be attained as an end. Certain demands have to be met by the operations that occur in the arts. A bridge is to be built to span a river under given conditions, so that thebridge, as the consequence of the operations, will sustain certain loads. There are local conditions set by the state of the banks, etc. But there are general conditions of distance, weights, stresses and strains, changes of temperature, etc. These are formal conditions. As such they are demands, requirements, postulates, to be fulfilled.

A postulate is also a stipulation. To engage in an inquiry is like entering into a contract. It commits the inquirer to observance of certain conditions. A stipulation is a statement of conditions that are agreed to in the conduct of some affair. The stipulations involved are at first implicit in the undertaking of inquiry. As they are formally acknowledged (formulated), they become logical forms of various degrees of generality. They make definite what is involved in a demand. Every demand is a request, but not every request is a postulate. For a postulate involves the assumption of responsibilities. The responsibilities that are assumed are stated in stipulations. They involve readiness to act in certain specified ways. On this account, postulates are not arbitrarily chosen. They present claims to be met in the sense in which a claim presents a title or has authority to receive due consideration.

In engaging in transactions, human beings are not at first aware of the responsibilities that are implicit; for laws, in the legal sense, are explicit statements of what was previously only implicit in customs: namely, formal recognition of duties and rights that were practically involved in acceptance of the customs. One of the highly generalized demands to be met in inquiry is the following: "If anything has a certain property, and whatever has this property has a certain other property, then the thing in question has this certain other property/' This logical "law" is a stipulation. If you are going to inquire in a way which meets the requirements of inquiry, you must proceed in a way which observes this rule, just as when you make a business contract there are certain conditions to be fulfilled.

A postulate is thus neither arbitrary nor externally a priori. It is not the former because it issues from the relation of means to the end to be reached. It is not the latter, because it is not imposed upon inquiry from without, but is an acknowledgement of that to which the undertaking of inquiry commits us. It is empirically and temporally a priori in the same sense in which the law of contracts is a rule regulating in advance the making of certain kinds of business engagements. While it is derived from what is involved in inquiries that have been successful in the past, it imposes a condition to be satisfied in future inquiries, until the results of such inquiries show reason for modifying it.

Terming logical forms postulates is, thus, on the negative side, a way of calling attention to the fact that they are not given and imposed from without. Just as the postulates of, say, geometry are not self-evident first truths that are externally imposed premises but are formulations of the conditions that have to be satisfied in procedures that deal with a certain subject-matter, so with logical forms which hold for every inquiry. In a contract, the agreement involved is that between the consequences of the activities of two or more parties with respect to some specified affair. In inquiry, the agreement is between the consequences of a series of inquiries. But inquiry as such is not carried on by one person rather than another. When any one person engages in it, he is committed, in as far as his inquiry is genuinely such and not an insincere bluff, to stand by the results of similar inquiries by whomever conducted. "Similar" in this phrase means inquiries that submit to the same conditions or postulates.

The postulational character of logical theory requires, accordingly, the most complete and explicit formulation that is attainable of not only the subject-matter that is taken as evidential in a given inference, but also of general conditions, stated in the rules and principles of inference and discourse. A distinction of matter and form is thus instituted. But it is one in which subject-matter and form correspond strictly to each other. Hence, once more, postulates are not arbitrary or mere linguistic conventions. They must be such as control the determination and arrangement of subject- matter with respect to achieving cnduringly stable beliefs. Only after inquiry has proceeded for a considerable time and has hit upon methods that work successfully, is it possible to extract the postulates that are involved. They are not presuppositions at large. They are abstract in the sense that the}' are derived from analytic survey of the relations between methods as means and conclusions as consequences — a principle that exemplifies the meaning of rationality.

The postulational nature of logical theory thus agrees with what has been said about logic as progressive and operational Postulates alter as methods of inquiry are perfected; the logical forms that express modern scientific inquiry are in many respects quite unlike those that formulated the procedures of C J reek science. An experimenter in the laboratory who publishes his results states the materials used, the setup of apparatus and the procedures employed. These specifications are limited postulates, demands and stipulations, for any inquirer who wishes to test the conclusion reached. Generalize this performance for procedures of inquiry as such, that is, with respect to the form of every inquiry, and logical forms as postulates are the outcome.

4. Logic is a naturalistic theory. The term "naturalistic" has many meanings. As it is here employed it means, on one side, that there is no breach of continuity between operations of inquiry and biological operations and physical operations. "Continuity," on the other side, means that rational operations grow out of organic activities, without being identical with that from which they emerge. There is an adjustment of means to consequences in the activities of living creatures, even though not directed by deliberate purpose. Human beings in the ordinary or "natural" processes of living come to make these adjustments purposely, the purpose being limited at first to local situations as they arise. In the course of time (to repeat a principle already set forth) the intent is so generalized that inquiry is freed from limitation to special circumstances. The logic in question is also naturalistic in the sense of the observability, in the ordinary sense of the word, of activities of inquiry. Conceptions derived from a mystical faculty of intuition or anything that is so occult as not to be open to public inspection and verification (such as the purely psychical for example) are excluded.

5. Logic is a social discipline. One ambiguity attending the word "naturalistic" is that it may be understood to involve reduction of human behavior to the behavior of apes, amebae, or electrons and protons. But man is naturally a being that lives in association with others in communities possessing language, and therefore enjoying a transmitted culture. Inquiry is a mode of activity that is socially conditioned and that has cultural con- sequences. This fact has a narrower and a wider import. Its more limited import is expressed in the connection of logic with symbols. Those who are concerned with "symbolic logic" do not always recognize the need for giving an account of the reference and function of symbols. While the relations of symbols to one another is important, symbols as such must be finally understood in terms of the function which symbolization serves. The fact that all languages (which include much more than speech) consist of symbols, does not of itself settle the nature of symbolism as that is used in inquiry. But, upon any naturalistic basis, it assuredly forms the point of departure for the logical theory of symbols. Any theory of logic has to take some stand on the question whether symbols are ready-made clothing for meanings that subsist independently, or whether the}- are necessary conditions for the existence of meanings— in terms often used, whether language is the dress of "thought" or is something without which "thought" cannot be.

The wider import is found in the fact that every inquiry grows out of a background of culture and takes effect in greater or less modification of the conditions out of which it arises. Merely physical contacts with physical surroundings occur. But in every interaction that involves intelligent direction, the physical environment is part of a more inclusive social or cultural environment. Just as logical texts usually remark incidentally that reflection grows out of the presence of a problem and then proceed as if this fact had no further interest for the theory of reflection, so they observe that science itself is culturally conditioned and then dismiss the fact from further consideration. (Note: "Not even the physicist is wholly independent of die context of experience provided for him by the society within which he works." Stebbing, A Modem Introduction to Logic, p. 16. If one includes in "society" the community of scientific workers, it would seem as if "even" should be changed to read, "the physicist almost more than anyone else." ) This wider aspect of the matter is connected with what was termed the narrower. Language in its widest sense — that is, including all means of communication such as, for example, monuments, rituals, and formalized arts — is the medium in which culture exists and through which it is transmitted. Phenomena that are not recorded cannot be even discussed. Language is the record that perpetuates occurrences and renders them amenable to public consideration. On the other hand, ideas or meanings that exist only in symbols that are not communicable are fantastic beyond imagination. The naturalistic conception of logic, which underlies the position here taken, is thus cultural naturalism. Neither inquiry nor the most abstractly formal set of symbols can escape from the cultural matrix in which they live, move and have their being.

6. Logic is autonomous. The position taken implies the ultimacy of inquiry in determination of the formal conditions of inquiry. Logic as inquiry into inquiry is, if you please, a circular process; it does not depend upon anything extraneous to inquiry. The force of this proposition may perhaps be most readily under- stood by noting what it precludes. It precludes the determination and selection of logical first principles by an a priori intuitional act, even when the intuition in question is said to be that of Intellects Purus. It precludes resting logic upon metaphysical and epistemological assumptions and presuppositions. The latter are to be determined, if at all, by means of what is disclosed as the outcome of inquiry; they are not to be shoved under inquiry as its "foundation." On the epistemological side, it precludes, as was noted earlier in another connection, the assumption of a prior ready-made definition of knowledge which determines the character of inquiry. Knowledge is to be defined in terms of inquiry, not vice-versa, both in particular and universally.

The autonomy of logic also precludes the idea that its "foundations" are psychological. It is not necessary to reach conclusions about sensations, sense-data, ideas and thought, or mental faculties generally, as material that preconditions logic. On the contrary, just as the specific meaning of these matters is determined in specific inquiries, so generally their relation to the logic of inquiry is determined by discovering the relation that the subject-matters to which these names are given bear to the effective conduct of inquiry as such. The point may be illustrated by reference to "thought." It would have been possible in the preceding pages to use the term "reflective thought" where the word "inquiry" has been used. But if that word had been used, it is certain that some readers would have supposed that "reflective thought" designated something already sufficiently known so that "inquiry" was equated to a preexisting definition of thought. The opposite view is implied in the position taken. We do not know what meaning is to be assigned to "reflective thought" except in terms of what is discovered by inquiry into inquiry; at least we do not know what it means for the purposes of logic. Personally, I doubt whether there exists anything that may be called thought as a strictly psychical existence. But it is not necessary to go into that question here. For even if there be such a thing, it does not determine the meaning of "thought" for logic.

Either the word "thought" has no business at all in logic or else it is a synonym of "inquiry" and its meaning is determined by what we find out about inquiry. The latter would seem to be the reasonable alternative. These statements do not mean that a sound psychology may not be of decided advantage to logical theory. For history demonstrates that unsound psychology has done great damage. But its general relation to logic is found in the light that it, as a branch of inquiry, may throw upon what is involved in inquiry. Its generic relation to logic is similar to that of physics or biology. Specifically, for reasons that will appear in subsequent chapters, its findings stand closer to logical theory than do those of the other sciences. Occasional reference to psychological subject-matter is inevitable in any case; for, as will be shown later, some logical positions that pride themselves upon their complete indifference to psychological considerations in fact rest upon psychological notions that have become so current, so embedded in intellectual tradition, that they are accepted uncritically as if they were self-evident.

The remaining chapters of Part One are preparatory to the later and more detailed outline of what is implied in the propositions (1) that logical theory is the systematic formulation of eon- trolled inquiry, and (2) that logical forms accrue in and because of control that yields conclusions which are warrantably assemble. Were the general point of view even moderately represented in current theory these chapters would not be needed. In the present state of logical discussion they seem to me to be necessary. Chapters II and III consider the naturalistic background of the theory, one upon its biological side, the other upon the cultural. Chapters IV and V endeavor to state the need and importance of a revision of logical theory in the direction that has been set forth.

COMMON SENSE AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

It is not intimated that the incorporation of scientific conclusions and operations into the common sense attitudes, beliefs and intellectual methods of what is now taken for granted as matters of common sense is as yet complete or coherent. The opposite is the case. In the most important matters the effect of science upon the content and procedures of common sense has been disintegrative. This disintegrative influence is a social, not a logical, fact. But it is the chief reason why it seems so easy, so "natural/' to make a sharp division between common sense inquiry and its logic and scientific inquiry and its logic.

Two aspects of the disintegration which creates the semblance of complete opposition and conflict will be noted. One of them is the fact, already noted, that common sense is concerned with a field that is dominantly qualitative, while science is compelled by its own problems and goals to state its subject-matter in terms of magnitude and other mathematical relations which are non- qualitative. The other fact is that since common sense is concerned, directly and indirectly, with problems of use and enjoyment, it is inherently teleological. Science, on the other hand, has progressed by elimination of "final causes" from every domain with which it is concerned, substituting measured correspondences of change. It operates, to use the old terminology, in terms of "efficient causation," irrespective of ends and values. Upon the basis of the position here taken, these differences are due to the fact that different types of problems demand different modes of inquiry for their solution, not to any ultimate division in existential subject-matter.

The subject-matter of science is stated in symbol-constellations that are radically unlike those familiar to common sense; in what, in effect, is a different language. Moreover, there is much highly technical material that has not been incorporated into common sense even by way of technological application in "material" affairs. In the region of highest importance to common sense, namely, that of moral, political, economic ideas and beliefs, and the methods of forming and confirming them, science has had even less effect. Conceptions and methods in the field of human relationships are in much the same state as were the beliefs and methods of common sense in relation to physical nature before the rise of experimental science. These considerations fix the meaning of the statement that the difference that now exists between common sense and science is a social, rather than a logical, matter. If the word "language" is used not just formally, but to include its content of substantial meanings, the difference is a difference of languages.

The problems of science demand a set of data and a system of meanings and symbols so differentiated that science cannot rightly be called "organized common sense." But it is a potential organ for organizing common sense in its dealing with its own subject- matter and problems and this potentiality is far from actualization. In the techniques which affect human use of the materials of physical nature in production, science has become a powerful agency of organization. As far as issues of enjoyment, of consumption, are concerned, it has taken little effect. Morals and the problems of social control are hardly touched. Beliefs, conceptions, customs and institutions, whose rise antedated the modern period, still have possession of the field. The union of this fact with the highly technical and remote language of science creates and maintains the feeling and idea of a complete gap. The paths of communication between common sense and science are as yet largely one-way lanes. Science takes its departure from common sense, but the return road into common sense is devious and blocked by existing social conditions.

In the things of greatest import there is little intercommunication. Pre-scientific ideas and beliefs in morals and politics are, moreover, so deeply ingrained in tradition and habit and institutions, that the impact of scientific method is feared as something profoundly hostile to mankind's dearest and deepest interests and values. On the side of philosophical formulation, highly influential schools of thought are devoted to maintaining the domain of values, ideas and ideals as something wholly apart from any possibility of application of scientific methods. Earlier philosophic conceptions of the necessary separation between reason and experience, theory and practice, higher and lower activities, are used to justify the necessity of the division.

With respect to the second point, that of a seeming fundamental difference due to the fact that common sense is profoundly teleological in its controlling ideas and methods while science is deliberately indifferent to teleology, it must be noted that in spite of the theoretical difference, physical science has, in practical fact, liberated and vastly extended the range of ends open to common sense and has enormously increased the range and power of the means available for attaining them. In ancient thought, ends were fixed by nature; departure from those ends that were antecedently set and fixed by the very nature of things, was impossible; the attempt to institute ends of human devising was taken to be the sure road to confusion and chaos. In the moral field, this conception still exists and is even probably dominant. But in respect to "material" affairs, it has been completely abandoned. Invention of new agencies and instruments create new ends; they create new consequences which stir men to form new purposes.

The original philosophical meaning of "ends" as fixed completions is almost forgotten. Instead of science eliminating ends and inquiries controlled by teleological considerations, it has, on the contrary, enormously freed and expanded activity and thought in telic matters. This effect is not a matter of opinion but of facts too obvious to be denied. The same sort of thing holds of the qualities with which common sense is inextricably concerned. Multitudes of new qualities have been brought into existence by the applications of physical science, and, what is even more important, our power to bring qualities within actual experience when we so desire, has been intensified almost beyond the possibility of estimate. Consider, as one instance alone, our powers with respect to qualities generated by light and electricity.

The foregoing survey is made for a double purpose. On the one hand the outstanding problem of our civilization is set by the fact that common sense in its content, its "world" and methods, is a house divided against itself. It consists in part, and that part the most vital, of regulative meanings and procedures that antedate the rise of experimental science in its conclusions and methods. In another part, it is what it is because of application of science. This cleavage marks every phase and aspect of modern life: religious, economic, political, legal, and even artistic.

The existence of this split is put in evidence by those who condemn the "modern" and who hold that the only solution of the chaos in civilization is to revert to the intellectual beliefs and methods that were authoritative in past ages, as well as by radicals and "revolutionaries." Between the two stand the multitude that is confused and insecure. It is for this reason that it is here affirmed that the basic problem of present culture and associated living is that of effecting integration where division now exists. The problem cannot be solved apart from a unified logical method of attack and procedure. The attainment of unified method means that the fundamental unity of the structure of inquiry in common sense and science be recognized, their difference being one in the problems with which they are directly concerned, not to their respective logics. It is not urged that attainment of a unified logic, a theory of inquiry, will resolve the split in our beliefs and procedures. But it is affirmed that it will not be resolved without it.

On the other hand, the problem of unification is one in and for logical theory itself. At the present time logics in vogue do not claim for the most part to be logics of inquiry. In the main, we are asked to take our choice between the traditional logic, which was formulated not only long before the rise of science but when also the content and methods of science were in radical opposition to those of present science, and the new purely "symbolistic logic" that recognizes only mathematics, and even at that is not so much concerned with methods of mathematics as with linguistic formulation of its results. The logic of science is not only separated from common sense, but the best that can be done is to speak of logic and scientific method as two different and independent matters. Logic in being "purified" from all experiential taint has become so formalistic that it applies only to itself.

The next chapter deals explicitly with the traditional logic as derived from Aristotle, with a view to showing (1) that of necessity the scientific conditions under which it was formulated are so different from those of existing knowledge that it has been transformed from what it originally was, a logic of knowledge, into a purely formal affair, and (2) that there is a necessity for a logical theory based upon scientific conclusions and methods. These are so unlike those of classic science that the need is not revision and extension of the old logic here and there, but a radically different standpoint and a different treatment to be carried through all logical subject matter.

THE NEEDED REFORM OF LOGIC

Difference in conception of Nature and Logic between the Greek and modern science.
I come now to the fundamental difference between the Greek conception of Nature as it is expressed in Aristotelian cosmology, ontology and logic, and the modern conception as that has been determined in the scientific revolution. The most evident point of difference concerns the entirely different position given to the qualitative and the quantitative in their relations to one another. It is not merely that classic cosmology and science were constituted in terms of qualities, beginning with the four qualitative elements, earth, air, fire and water (themselves constituted by combinations of the contraries wet-dry, cold-hot, heavy-light) , but that all quantitative determinations were relegated to the state of accidents, so that apprehension of them had no scientific standing. "Accident" is, of course, here a technical term. It does not imply that there is no cause for things existing in one amount rather than another, but that the cause is so external to the thing in question as not to be a ground or reason in knowledge.

The meaning of "accident" is determined by contrast with essence. That which is accidental is no part of essence and does not follow in any way from essence. Since the latter is the proper subject of knowledge, and since quantity (magnitude, amount) is wholly irrelevant to essence, consideration of it is outside the scope of knowledge in any grade except that of sense. As matter of sense it tends, moreover, to prevent ascent above sense to understanding. There was, therefore, on the basis of the Aristotelian theory of Nature and knowledge no point or purpose in making measurements except for lower "practical" ends. Quantity, the thing to be measured, fell wholly within the scope of more and less, fewer and greater, larger and smaller, or the changing. Measuring was useful to the artisan in dealing with physical things, but that very fact indicated the gulf which separated quantity and measuring from science and rationality. Observe by contrast the place occupied by measuring in modern knowledge. Is it then credible that the logic of Greek knowledge has relevance to the logic of modern knowledge?

Another closely connected difference is found in the fact that because of the qualitative nature of the subject-matter of knowledge in the Greek conception of Nature, heterogeneity was postulated, as a matter of course, where modern science postulates homogeneity, endeavoring to substitute homogeneity for qualitative diversity. The difference is illustrated in the contrast between the present theory of "chemical" elements and the four qualitative elements (five, including the etherial substance of the fixed stars). The most striking instance, however, is found in the conception of qualitatively different kinds of movement that controlled science until, say, the sixteenth century. Instead of motion as measured change of position in space occupying a measured amount of time, circular movement, to and fro, and up and down, movements were conceived to be qualitatively exclusive of one another. They marked substances of different natures occupying places of different values in the hierarchy of species; different ends or completions respectively controlled them. Earth comes down or falls by its nature and by the nature of its proper place; fire and light move up for a similar reason. Levity is as much an inherent quality as is gravity, and so with the "essences" of other modes of movement.

Because of the teleological principle that knowable change tends toward a limiting fixed end, all motion was thought to tend naturally to come to a state of rest. This notion controlled science till, say, the time of Galileo. Note in contrast the place of homogeneous motion in modern science, a homogeneity differentiated by angular direction, momentum and velocity, which are all capable of measurement. The difference cannot be dismissed as simply a difference in the details of subject-matter and without relevance for logic. Self-returning qualitative movement is at the heart of the classic conception of reason and rational subjects. Its qualitative difference from other kinds of movement is the criterion by which forms of knowledge are graded. In addition, the difference of scientific concern with measurement and magnitude is involved.

A third closely connected difference is found in the fact that modern science is concerned with institution of relations, while classic logic is based on a theory of nature which treated all relations — save that of inclusion and exclusion of species (which was not conceived to be a relation) as accidental, in the same sense in which quantity is accidental. To be related meant in the Aristotelian scheme to be dependent upon something outside itself. But this dependence was not generalized and regarded as forming the very structure of a scientific object. On the contrary, it was put in sharp opposition to the independence, self-sufficiency and self-activity of "subjects" (substances) that are the only objects of scientific and demonstrative knowledge. Now to be here and then to be somewhere else was dismissed once for all as the sign of inferior matter, while in modern science such a change sets the problems of scientific inquiry.

Taking both measurement and relations into account, it is not too much to say that what Greek science and logic rejected are now the head corner-stone of science — although not yet of the theory of logical forms. Contemporary logic has moved far enough to criticize the old logic form. To recognition, for example, of propositions of the subject (substance) -predicate form it has added relational propositions. This is a marked advance. But up to a certain point the addition has increased confusion in logical theory as a whole, since no consistency of theory can be attained as long as the theory of antecedent subjects given ready-made to predication is retained.
      (Note: Some specific instances of this confusion will be pointed out later. The underlying logical point at issue is not the special Aristotelian conception of substance, but the idea that any kind of subject, such as "this" or a sense datum, can be given ready-made to predication. )

The next difference to be mentioned is found in the central place occupied by ends and teleology in Aristotelian logic. In converting that logic into a merely formal logic the teleological factor has disappeared. But teleology was so central in classic logic that it may be affirmed that with its disappearance, the reason for the Aristotelian logic has also vanished. Nothing is left but an empty shell; forms without subject-matter. In concluding this phase of the discussion I shall refer to the foundation of all the differences that have been mentioned — the reversed attitude of science toward change. Completion of the cycle of scientific reversal may be conveniently dated from the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species. The very title of the book expresses a revolution in science, for the conception of biological species had been a conspicuous manifestation of the assumption of complete immutability. This conception had been banished before Darwin from every scientific subject save botany and zoology. But the latter had remained the bulwark of the old logic in scientific subject-matter.

When eternal essences and species are banished from scientific subject-matter, the forms that are appropriate to them have nothing left to which they apply; of necessity they are merely formal. They remain in historic fact as monuments of a culture and science that have disappeared, while in logic they remain as barren formalities to be formally manipulated. A striking illustration is afforded in the change that has taken place in the status of mathematics. In Greek logical theory, mathematics was an existential science. The discovery that the relation of the hypothenusc of a right-angled triangle whose other sides have the value of one is not numerically expressible, showed that magnitude and number as such are completely "irrational" or illogical. The fact that a ratio remained constant, no matter what the magnitude of the size and area of the triangle, together with the paradoxes of Zeno, helped to produce the doctrine of the "accidental" nature of quantity. It led to the notion that true number, as distinct from quantity, is geometrical in essence. For geometry was based on the conception of limiting measures, which determined the forms of objects in the sense of their configurations. The movement, represented at first in Cartesian algebraic geometry, that effected determination of all figures by formulae of generalized numerical coordinates was more than a new instrument of scientific analysis and record. It marked the beginning of the logical movement by which all mathematical propositions became formulae for dealing with possible objects, not descriptions of their existing properties — so that they are logically non-existential in their content, save when taken to prescribe operations of experimental observation.

The entire matter may be summed up by reference to the different conceptions of Nature that are involved respectively in ancient and modern science. In Greek science, Nature was a qualitative, a bounded and closed, whole. To know any special subject was to know it as a whole in its proper place in the comprehensively inclusive whole, Nature. It is not true that ancient science attempted to deduce knowledge of the included wholes from the conception of the final and complete whole. The notion that Greek science was deductive in this sense is a profound misapprehension. In the Greek scheme, knowledge consisted in placing each relative species, or whole, defined and identified by its own essence, in relation to other species within Nature as the final whole. The necessity of referring all special kinds and modes of knowledge to Nature as a closed whole explains why, in the classic conception, there could be no sharp distinction between science and philosophy. The subject-matter of modern natural science consists of changes formulated in correspondence with one another. This fact not only gives a radically different status to change but it radically affects the conception of Nature.

The formulation of correlated correspondences becomes more and more comprehensive in scope. But no scientist today would dream of setting up an all-inclusive formula for the universe as a whole. That job has been taken over by certain philosophic schools. The change in the conception of Nature is expressed in summary form in the idea that the universe is now conceived as open and in process while classical Greece thought of it as finite in the sense in which finite means finished, complete and perfect. The infinite was the indefinite in Greek science, and the indefinite, as such, could not be known. It would be completely erroneous to regard the foregoing as a criticism of the Aristotelian logic in its original formulation in the common sense and the science of his day. The unification was effected in a way which is no longer possible. We can no longer take the contents and procedures of both common sense and science as inherently fixed, differing only in qualitative grade and rank in a qualitatively fixed hierarchy. The fixity of the contents and logical forms of both common sense and science in the Aristotelian scheme precluded the possibility of the reaction of science back into common sense and the possibility of the ever-continuing rise of new scientific problems and conceptions out of the material of common sense activities and materials. All that science could do was to accept what was given and established in common sense and formulate it in its relation to the fixed subjects of higher rational knowledge. The present need is for a unified logic that takes account of a two-way movement between common sense and science.

The common sense culture which was formulated was of a high order. As far as free citizens — those who freely shared in the culture — were concerned, it was dominated by esthetic and artistic categories of harmony, measure, proportion, objective design and wholeness. In addition, the leading conceptions of philosophic science were but translations into philosophic vocabulary of conceptions that dominate common sense in every period. ( 1 ) The category of substance is the reflection of the conception that things exist in stable form in the world — an idea not only familiar to, but basic in, all those common sense beliefs that have not been modified by the impact of modern science. These things are designated by the common nouns in general use. (2) The category of fixed species corresponds to common sense belief in natural kinds, some of which are inclusive of others, while some are exclusive. For common sense these natural kinds do not permit of transition from one to another nor of any overlapping. The evidence for the existence of fixed natural kinds and of substantial objects is over- whelming from the standpoint of ordinary common sense. (3) Common sense ideas, beliefs and judgments in every culture are controlled by teleological conceptions, by ends; in modern language, by considerations of value. (4) Common sense thinks of the world of things and social relations in terms which, when they are reflectively organized, become the doctrine of graded ranks or hierarchies. Distinctions of low and high, inferior and superior, base and noble, and all manner of similar qualitative opposites of value, are almost the stuff of common sense beliefs which have not been transformed by the impact of science. They seem to be guaranteed by the obviously perceived structures of both nature and human society.

When I say that the philosophic science, of which logical theory was an integral member, organized these and like beliefs and ideas of common sense, it is not meant that the former merely mirrored the latter. The very idea of reflective organization negates such a notion. Not only were implications of which common sense was unaware made explicit, but the framework of conceptions was vastly extended by investigations of subjects with which common sense held no commerce. Above all, the very fact of organization involved an ordered arrangement foreign to common sense. Common sense, for example, would hardly have entertained the idea that the philosopher-scientist was higher in rank as to his objects and activities than the general and the statesman; or that the happiness of the former was> of a godlike character in comparison with the happiness open to others. But none the less there were things involved in Athenian culture which, when they were put in ordered arrangement with one another, took the form of this conclusion.

We are brought back to the conclusions of the last chapter. The subject-matter and methods of modern science have no such direct affinity with those of common sense as existed when classic science and logic were formulated. Science is no longer an organization of meanings and modes of action that have their presence in the meanings and syntactical structures of ordinary language. Yet scientific conclusions and techniques have enormously altered the common sense relation of man to nature and to fellow-man. It can no longer be believed that they do not profoundly react to modify common sense, any more than it can now be supposed that they are but an intellectual organization of the latter.

Science has, however, affected the actual conditions under which men live, use, enjoy and suffer much more than (aside from material technologies) it has affected their habits of belief and inquiry. Especially is this true about the uses and enjoyments of final concern: religious, moral, legal, economic, political. The demand for reform of logic is the demand for a unified theory of inquiry through which the authentic pattern of experimental and operational inquiry of science shall become available for regulation of the habitual methods by which inquiries in the field of common sense are carried on; by which conclusions are reached and beliefs are formed and tested. In the next chapter the nature of this common pattern forms the theme of discussion.

THE PATTERN OF INQUIRY

The fact that new formal properties accrue to subject-matter in virtue of its subjection to certain types of operation is familiar to us in certain fields, even though the idea corresponding to this fact is unfamiliar in logic. Two outstanding instances are provided by art and law. In music, the dance, painting, sculpture, literature and the other fine arts, subject-matters of everyday experience are transformed by the development of forms which render certain products of doing and making objects of fine art. The materials of legal regulations are transactions occurring in the ordinary activities of human beings and groups of human beings; transactions of a sort that are engaged in apart from law. As certain aspects and phases of these transactions are legally formalized, conceptions such as misdemeanor, crime, torts, contracts and so on arise. These formal conceptions arise out of the ordinary trans- actions; they are not imposed upon them from on high or from any external and a priori source. But when they are formed they are also formative; they regulate the proper conduct of the activities out of which they develop.

All of these formal legal conceptions are operational in nature. They formulate and define ways of operation on the part of those engaged in the transactions into which a number of persons or groups enter as "parties," and the ways of operation followed by those who have jurisdiction in deciding whether established forms have been complied with, together with the existential consequences of failure of observation. The forms in question are not fixed and eternal. They change, though as a rule too slowly, with changes in the habitual transactions in which individuals and groups engage and the changes that occur in the consequences of these transactions. However hypothetical may be the conception that logical forms accrue to existential materials in virtue of the control exercised over inquiries in order that they may fulfil their end, the conception is descriptive of something that verifiably exists. The development of forms in consequence of operations is an established fact in some fields; it is not invented ad hoc in relation to logical forms.

The existence of inquiries is not a matter of doubt. They enter into every area of life and into every aspect of every area. In everyday living, men examine; they turn things over intellectually; they infer and judge as "naturally" as they reap and sow, produce and exchange commodities. As a mode of conduct, inquiry is as accessible to objective study as are these other modes of behavior.

Because of the intimate and decisive way in which inquiry and its conclusions enter into the management of all affairs of life, no study of the latter is adequate save as it is noted how they are affected by the methods and instruments of inquiry that currently obtain. Quite apart, then, from the particular hypothesis about logical forms that is put forth, study of the objective facts of inquiry is a matter of tremendous import, practically and intellectually. These materials provide the theory of logical forms with a subject-matter that is not only objective but is objective in a fashion that enables logic to avoid the three mistakes most characteristic of its history.

1. In virtue of its concern with objectively observable subject-matter by reference to which reflective conclusions can be tried and tested, dependence upon subjective and "mentalistic" states and processes is eliminated.

2. The distinctive existence and nature of forms is acknowledged. Logic is not compelled, as historic "empirical" logic felt compelled to do, to reduce logical forms to mere transcripts of the empirical materials that antecede the existence of the former. Just as art-forms and legal forms are capable of independent discussion and development, so are logical forms, even though the "in- dependence" in question is intermediate, not final and complete. As in the case of these other forms, they originate out of experiential material, and when constituted introduce new ways of operating with prior materials, which ways modify the material out of which they develop.

3. Logical theory is liberated from the unobservable, transcendental and "intuitional."

When methods and results of inquiry are studied as objective data, the distinction that has often been drawn between noting and reporting the ways in which men do think, and prescribing the ways in which they ought to think, takes on a very different interpretation from that usually given. The usual interpretation is in terms of the difference between the psychological and the logical, the latter consisting of "norms" provided from some source wholly outside of and independent of "experience."

The way in which men do "think" denotes, as it is here interpreted, simply the ways in which men at a given time carry on their inquiries. So far as it is used to register a difference from the ways in which they ought to think, it denotes a difference like that between good and bad farming or good and bad medical practice. Men think in ways they should not when they follow methods of inquiry that experience of past inquiries shows are not competent to reach the intended end of the inquiries in question.

Everybody knows that today there are in vogue methods of farming generally followed in the past which compare very un- favorably in their results with those obtained by practices that have already been introduced and tested. When an expert tells a farmer he should do thus and so, he is not setting up for a bad farmer an ideal drawn from the blue. He is instructing him in methods that have been tried and that have proved successful in procuring results. In a similar way we are able to contrast various kinds of inquiry that are in use or that have been used in respect to their economy and efficiency in reaching warranted conclusions. We know that some methods of inquiry are better than others in just the same way in which we know that some methods of surgery, farming, road-making, navigating or what-not are better than others. It does not follow in any of these cases that the "better" methods are ideally perfect, or that they are regulative or "normative" because of conformity to some absolute form. They are the methods which experience up to the present time shows to be the best methods available for achieving certain results, while abstraction of these methods does supply a (relative) norm or standard for further undertakings.

The search for the pattern of inquiry is, accordingly, not one instituted in the dark or at large. It is checked and controlled by knowledge of the kinds of inquiry that have and that have not worked; methods which, as was pointed out earlier, can be so compared as to yield reasoned or rational conclusions. For, through comparison-contrast, we ascertain how and why certain means and agencies have provided warrantably assertible conclusions, while others have not and cannot do so in the sense in which "cannot" expresses an intrinsic incompatibility between means used and consequences attained.

We may now ask: What is the definition of Inquiry? That is, what is the most highly generalized conception of inquiry which can be justifiably formulated? The definition that will be expanded, directly in the present chapter and indirectly in the following chapters, is as follows: Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so de- terminate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole.

The original indeterminate situation is not only "open" to inquiry, but it is open in the sense that its constituents do not hang together. The determinate situation on the other hand, qua outcome of inquiry, is a closed and, as it were, finished situation or "universe of experience." "Controlled or directed" in the above formula refers to the fact that inquiry is competent in any given case in the degree in which the operations involved in it actually do terminate in the establishment of an objectively unified existential situation. In the intermediate course of transition and trans- formation of the indeterminate situation, discourse through use of symbols is employed as means. In received logical terminology, propositions, or terms and the relations between them, are intrinsically involved.

I. The Antecedent Conditions of Inquiry: The Indeterminate Situation.
Inquiry and questioning, up to a certain point, are synonymous terms. We inquire when we question; and we inquire when we seek for whatever will provide an answer to a question asked. Thus it is of the very nature of the indeterminate situation which evokes inquiry to be questionable; or, in terms of actuality instead of potentiality, to be uncertain, unsettled, disturbed.
The peculiar quality of what pervades the given materials, constituting them a situation, is not just uncertainty at large; it is a unique doubtfulness which makes that situation to be just and only the situation it is. It is this unique quality that not only evokes the particular inquiry engaged in but that exercises control over its special procedures. Otherwise, one procedure in inquiry would be as likely to occur and to be effective as any other.
Unless a situation is uniquely qualified in its very indeterminateness, there is a condition of complete panic; response to it takes the form of blind and wild overt activities. Stating the matter from the personal side, we have "lost our heads."
A variety of names serves to characterize indeterminate situations. They are disturbed, troubled, ambiguous, confused, full of conflicting tendencies, obscure, etc.

It is the situation that has these traits. We are doubtful because the situation is inherently doubtful. Personal states of doubt that are not evoked by and are not relative to some existential situation are pathological; when they are extreme they constitute the mania of doubting.
Consequently, situations that are disturbed and troubled, confused or obscure, cannot be straightened out, cleared up and put in order, by manipulation of our personal states of mind. The attempt to settle them by such manipulations involves what psychiatrists call "withdrawal from reality." Such an attempt is pathological as far as it goes, and when it goes far it is the source of some form of actual insanity.
The habit of disposing of the doubtful as if it belonged only to us rather than to the existential situation in which we are caught and implicated is an inheritance from subjectivistic psychology.
The biological antecedent conditions of an unsettled situation are involved in that state of imbalance in organic-environmental interactions which has already been described. Restoration of integration can be effected, in one case as in the other, only by operations which actually modify existing conditions, not by merely "mental" processes.

It is, accordingly, a mistake to suppose that a situation is doubtful only in a "subjective" sense. The notion that in actual existence everything is completely determinate has been rendered questionable by the progress of physical science itself. Even if it had not been, complete determination would not hold of existences as an environment. For Nature is an environment only as it is involved in interaction with an organism, or self, or whatever name be used.

Every such interaction is a temporal process, not a momentary cross-sectional occurrence. The situation in which it occurs is in- determinate, therefore, with respect to its issue.
If we call it confused, then it is meant that its outcome cannot be anticipated. It is called obscure when its course of movement permits of final consequences that cannot be clearly made out. It is called conflicting when it tends to evoke discordant responses.
Even were existential conditions unqualifiedly determinate in and of themselves, they are indeterminate in significance: that is, in what they import and portend in their interaction with the organism. The organic responses that enter into the production of the state of affairs that is temporally later and sequential are just as existential as are environing conditions.

The immediate locus of the problem concerns, then, what kind of responses the organism shall make. It concerns the interaction of organic responses and environing conditions in their movement toward an existential issue. It is a commonplace that in any troubled state of affairs things will come out differently according to what is done.
The farmer won't get grain unless he plants and tills; the general will win or lose the battle according to the way he conducts it, and so on. Neither the grain nor the tilling, neither the outcome of the battle nor the conduct of it, are "mental" events.
Organic interaction becomes inquiry when existential consequences are anticipated; when environing conditions are examined with reference to their potentialities; and when responsive activities are selected and ordered with reference to actualization of some of the potentialities, rather than others, in a final existential situation. Resolution of the indeterminate situation is active and operational. If the inquiry is adequately directed, the final issue is the unified situation that has been mentioned.

II. Institution of a Problem.
The unsettled or indeterminate situation might have been called a problematic situation. This name would have been, however, proleptic and anticipatory. The indeterminate situation becomes problematic in the very process of being subjected to inquiry. The indeterminate situation comes into existence from existential causes, just as does, say, the organic imbalance of hunger. There is nothing intellectual or cognitive in the existence of such situations, although they are the necessary condition of cognitive operations or inquiry. In themselves they are precognitive. The first result of evocation of inquiry is that the situation is taken, adjudged, to be problematic. To see that a situation requires inquiry is the initial step in inquiry.
      (Note: If by "two- valued logic" is meant a logic that regards "true and false" as the sole logical values, then such a logic is necessarily so truncated that clearness and consistency in logical doctrine are impossible. Being the matter of a problem is a primary logical property.

Qualification of a situation as problematic does not, however, carry inquiry far. It is but an initial step in institution of a problem. A problem is not a task to be performed which a person puts upon himself or that is placed upon him by others — like a so-called arithmetical "problem" in school work.
A problem represents the partial transformation by inquiry of a problematic situation into a determinate situation. It is a familiar and significant saying that a problem well put is half-solved.
To find out what the problem and problems are which a problematic situation presents to be inquired into, is to be well along in inquiry. To mistake the problem involved is to cause subsequent inquiry to be irrelevant or to go astray. Without a problem, there is blind groping in the dark. The way in which the problem is conceived decides what specific suggestions are entertained and which are dismissed; what data are selected and which rejected; it is the criterion for relevancy and irrelevancy of hypotheses and conceptual structures.
On the other hand, to set up a problem that does not grow out of an actual situation is to start on a course of dead work, nonetheless dead because the work is "busy work." Problems that are self -set are mere excuses for seeming to do something intellectual, something that has the semblance but not the substance of scientific activity.

III. The Determination of a Problem-Solution.
Statement of a problematic situation in terms of a problem has no meaning save as the problem instituted has, in the very terms of its statement, reference to a possible solution. Just because a problem well stated is on its way to solution, the determining of a genuine problem is a progressive inquiry; the cases in which a problem and its probable solution flash upon an inquirer are cases where much prior ingestion and digestion have occurred. If we assume, prematurely, that the problem involved is definite and clear, subsequent inquiry proceeds on the wrong track. Hence the question arises: How is the formation of a genuine problem so controlled that further inquiries will move toward a solution?

The first step in answering this question is to recognize that no situation which is completely indeterminate can possibly be converted into a problem having definite constituents. The first step then is to search out the constituents of a given situation which, as constituents, are settled.
When an alarm of fire is sounded in a crowded assembly hall, there is much that is indeterminate as regards the activities that may produce a favorable issue. One may get out safely or one may be trampled and burned. The fire is characterized, however, by some settled traits. It is, for example, located somewhere. Then the aisles and exits are at fixed places. Since they are settled or determinate in existence, the first step in institution of a problem is to settle them in observation. There are other factors which, while they are not as temporally and spatially fixed, are yet observable constituents; for example, the behavior and movements of other members of the audience. All of these observed conditions taken together constitute "the facts of the case." They constitute the terms of the problem, because they are conditions that must be reckoned with or taken account of in any relevant solution that is proposed.

A possible relevant solution is then suggested by the determination of factual conditions which are secured by observation. The possible solution presents itself, therefore, as an idea, just as the terms of the problem (which are facts) are instituted by observation.
Ideas are anticipated consequences (forecasts) of what will happen when certain operations are executed under and with respect to observed conditions. Observation of facts and suggested meanings or ideas arise and develop in correspondence with each other. The more the facts of the case come to light in consequence of being subjected to observation, the clearer and more pertinent become the conceptions of the way the problem constituted by these facts is to be dealt with. On the other side, the clearer the idea, the more definite, as a truism, become the operations of observation and of execution that must be performed in order to resolve the situation.

      (Note: The theory of ideas that has been held in psychology and epistemology since the time of Locke's successors is completely irrelevant and obstructive in logical theory. For in treating them as copies of perceptions or "impressions," it ignores the prospective and anticipatory character that defines being an idea. Failure to define ideas functionally, in the reference they have to a solution of a problem, is one reason they have been treated as merely "mental." The notion, on the other hand, that ideas are fantasies is a derivative. Fantasies arise when the function an idea performs is ruled out when it is entertained and developed.)

An idea is first of all an anticipation of something that may happen; it marks a possibility. When it is said, as it sometimes is, that science is prediction, the anticipation that constitutes every idea an idea is grounded in a set of controlled observations and of regulated conceptual ways of interpreting them.
Because inquiry is a progressive determination of a problem and its possible solution, ideas differ in grade according to the stage of inquiry reached. At first, save in highly familiar matters, they are vague. They occur at first simply as suggestions; suggestions just spring up, flash upon us, occur to us. They may then become stimuli to direct an overt activity but they have as yet no logical status.
Every idea originates as a suggestion, but not every suggestion is an idea. The suggestion becomes an idea when it is examined with reference to its functional fitness; its capacity as a means of resolving the given situation.

This examination takes the form of reasoning, as a result of which we are able to appraise better than we were at the outset, the pertinency and weight of the meaning now entertained with respect to its functional capacity. But the final test of its possession of these properties is determined when it actually functions — that is, when it is put into operation so as to institute by means of observations facts not previously observed, and is then used to organize them with other facts into a coherent whole.

Because suggestions and ideas are of that which is not present in given existence, the meanings which they involve must be embodied in some symbol. Without some kind of symbol no idea; a meaning that is completely disembodied can not be entertained or used.
Since an existence (which is an existence) is the support and vehicle of a meaning and is a symbol instead of a merely physical existence only in this respect, embodied meanings or ideas are capable of objective survey and development. To "look at an idea" is not a mere literary figure of speech.

"Suggestions" have received scant courtesy in logical theory. It is true that when they just "pop into our heads," because of the workings of the psycho-physical organism, they are not logical. But they are both the conditions and the primary stuff of logical ideas.
The traditional empiristic theory reduced them, as has already been pointed out, to mental copies of physical things and assumed that they were per se identical with ideas. Consequently it ignored the function of ideas in directing observation and in ascertaining relevant facts.
The rationalistic school, on the other hand, saw clearly that "facts'' apart from ideas are trivial, that they acquire import and significance only in relation to ideas. But at the same time it failed to attend to the operative and functional nature of the latter. Hence, it treated ideas as equivalent to the ultimate structure of "Reality."
The Kantian formula that apart from each other "perceptions are blind and conceptions empty" marks a profound logical insight. The insight, however, was radically distorted because perceptual and conceptual contents were supposed to originate from different sources and thus required a third activity, that of synthetic understanding, to bring them together.
In logical fact, perceptual and conceptual materials are instituted in functional correlativity with each other, in such a manner that the former locates and describes the problem while the latter represents a possible method of solution. Both are determinations in and by inquiry of the original problematic situation whose pervasive quality controls their institution and their contents. Both are finally checked by their capacity to work together to introduce a resolved unified situation. As distinctions they represent logical divisions of labor.

IV. Reasoning.
The necessity of developing the meaning- contents of ideas in their relations to one another has been incidentally noted. This process, operating with symbols (constituting propositions) is reasoning in the sense of ratiocination or rational discourse. (Note: "Reasoning" is sometimes used to designate inference as well as ratiocination. When so used in logic the tendency is to identify inference and implication and thereby seriously to confuse logical theory.)
When a suggested meaning is immediately accepted, inquiry is cut short. Hence the conclusion reached is not grounded, even if it happens to be correct.
The check upon immediate acceptance is the examination of the meaning as a meaning. This examination consists in noting what the meaning in question implies in relation to other meanings in the system of which it is a member, the formulated relation constituting a proposition. If such and such a relation of meanings is accepted, then we are committed to such and such other relations of meanings because of their membership in the same system. Through a series of intermediate meanings, a meaning is finally reached which is more clearly relevant to the problem in hand than the originally suggested idea.
It indicates operations which can be performed to test its applicability, whereas the original idea is usually too vague to determine crucial operations. In other words, the idea or meaning when developed in discourse directs the activities which, when executed, provide needed evidential material.

The point made can be most readily appreciated in connection with scientific reasoning.
An hypothesis, once suggested and entertained, is developed in relation to other conceptual structures until it receives a form in which it can instigate and direct an experiment that will disclose precisely those conditions which have the maximum possible force in determining whether the hypothesis should be accepted or rejected.
Or it may be that the experiment will indicate what modifications are required in the hypothesis so that it may be applicable, i.e., suited to interpret and organize the facts of the case.
In many familiar situations, the meaning that is most relevant has been settled because of the eventuations of experiments in prior cases so that it is applicable almost immediately upon its occurrence.
But, indirectly, if not directly, an idea or suggestion that is not developed in terms of the constellation of meanings to which it belongs can lead only to overt response. Since the latter terminates inquiry, there is then no adequate inquiry into the meaning that is used to settle the given situation, and the conclusion is in so far logically ungrounded.

V. The Operational Character of Facts-Meanings.
It was stated that the observed facts of the case and the ideational contents expressed in ideas are related to each other, as, respectively, a clarification of the problem involved and the proposal of some possible solution; that they are, accordingly, functional divisions in the work of inquiry. Observed facts in their office of locating and describing the problem are existential; ideational subject- matter is non-existential. How, then, do they cooperate with each other in the resolution of an existential situation?
The problem is insoluble save as it is recognized that both observed facts and entertained ideas are operational. Ideas are operational in that they instigate and direct further operations of observation; they are proposals and plans for acting upon existing conditions to bring new facts to light and to organize all the selected facts into a coherent whole.

What is meant by calling facts operational?
Upon the negative side what is meant is that they are not self-sufficient and complete in themselves.
They are selected and described, as we have seen, for a purpose, namely statement of the problem involved in such a way that its material both indicates a meaning relevant to resolution of the difficulty and serves to test its worth and validity.
In regulated inquiry facts are selected and arranged with the express intent of fulfilling this office. They are not merely results of operations of observation which are executed with the aid of bodily organs and auxiliary instruments of art, but they are the particular facts and kinds of facts that will link up with one another in the definite ways that are required to produce a definite end. Those not found to connect with others in furtherance of this end are dropped and others are sought for. ,br> Being functional, they are necessarily operational. Their function is to serve as evidence and their evidential quality is judged on the basis of their capacity to form an ordered whole in response to operations prescribed by the ideas they occasion and support. If "the facts of the case" were final and complete in themselves, if they did not have a special operative force in resolution of the problematic situation, they could not serve as evidence.

The operative force of facts is apparent when we consider that no fact in isolation has evidential potency.
Facts are evidential and are tests of an idea in so far as they are capable of being organized with one another. The organization can be achieved only as they interact with one another.
When the problematic situation is such as to require extensive inquiries to effect its resolution, a series of interactions intervenes. Some observed facts point to an idea that stands for a possible solution. This idea evokes more observations.
Some of the newly observed facts link up with those previously observed and are such as to rule out other observed things with respect to their evidential function. The new order of facts suggests a modified idea (or hypothesis) which occasions new observations whose result again determines a new order of facts, and so on until the existing order is both unified and complete.
In the course of this serial process, the ideas that represent possible solutions are tested or "proved."

Meantime, the orders of fact, which present themselves in consequence of the experimental observations the ideas call out and direct, are trial facts. They are provisional. They are "facts" if they are observed by sound organs and techniques. But they are not on that account the facts of the case.
They are tested or "proved" with respect to their evidential function just as much as ideas (hypotheses) are tested with reference to their power to exercise the function of resolution. The operative force of both ideas and facts is thus practically recognized in the degree in which they are connected with experiment. Naming them "operational" is but a theoretical recognition of what is involved when inquiry satisfies the conditions imposed by the necessity for experiment.

I recur, in this connection, to what has been said about the necessity for symbols in inquiry.
It is obvious, on the face of matters, that a possible mode of solution must be earned in symbolic form since it is a possibility, not an assured present existence.
Observed facts, on the other hand, are existentially present. It might seem therefore, that symbols are not required for referring to them.
But if they are not carried and treated by means of symbols, they lose their provisional character, and in losing this character they are categorically asserted and inquiry comes to an end.
The carrying on of inquiry requires that the facts be taken as representative and not just as pre-sented. This demand is met by formulating them in propositions — that is, by means of symbols. Unless they are so represented they relapse into the total qualitative situation.