A Socrates is
thus led to declare that consciousness of ignorance is the
beginning of effective love of wisdom, and a Descartes to say
that science is born of doubting.
We have already dwelt upon the fact that subject matter, or data,
and ideas have to have their worth tested experimentally: that in
themselves they are tentative and provisional. Our predilection
for premature acceptance and assertion, our aversion to suspended
judgment, are signs that we tend naturally to cut short the
process of testing. We are satisfied with superficial and
immediate short-visioned applications. If these work out with
moderate satisfactoriness, we are content to suppose that our
assumptions have been confirmed. Even in the case of failure, we
are inclined to put the blame not on the inadequacy and
incorrectness of our data and thoughts, but upon our hard luck
and the hostility of circumstance. We charge the evil
consequence not to the error of our schemes and our incomplete
inquiry into conditions (thereby getting material for revising
the former and stimulus for extending the latter) but to untoward
fate. We even plume ourselves upon our firmness in clinging to
our conceptions in spite of the way in which they work out.
Science represents the safeguard of the race against these
natural propensities and the evils which flow from them. It
consists of the special appliances and methods which the race has
slowly worked out in order to conduct reflection under conditions
whereby its procedures and results are tested.
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