Scientific abstraction and generalization are equivalent to
taking the point of view of any man, whatever his location in
time and space. While this emancipation from the conditions and
episodes of concrete experiences accounts for the remoteness, the
"abstractness," of science, it also accounts for its wide and
free range of fruitful novel applications in practice. Terms and
propositions record, fix, and convey what is abstracted. A
meaning detached from a given experience cannot remain hanging in
the air. It must acquire a local habitation. Names give
abstract meanings a physical locus and body. Formulation is thus
not an after-thought or by-product; it is essential to the
completion of the work of thought. Persons know many things
which they cannot express, but such knowledge remains practical,
direct, and personal. An individual can use it for himself; he
may be able to act upon it with efficiency. Artists and
executives often have their knowledge in this state. But it is
personal, untransferable, and, as it were, instinctive. To
formulate the significance of an experience a man must take into
conscious account the experiences of others. He must try to find
a standpoint which includes the experience of others as well as
his own. Otherwise his communication cannot be understood. He
talks a language which no one else knows. While literary art
furnishes the supreme successes in stating of experiences so that
they are vitally significant to others, the vocabulary of science
is designed, in another fashion, to express the meaning of
experienced things in symbols which any one will know who studies
the science.
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