Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No derivatives 4.0 International License

Originally published as Johns Hopkins Press in 1986

Includes bibliographical references (pages 101-105) and index.

Methods of Thought -- Experience and Understanding -- Observations and Hypotheses -- The Particular and the General -- Possibility and Certainty -- Imagination and Credibility -- Inference, Induction, and Intuition -- Properties and Values -- Science and Philosophy

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Are there two kinds of problems - the scientific and the philosophic - each requiring different methods for solution? Or are there, rather, two different ways of approaching a problem, each yielding a different answer according to the method used? Biomedical researcher Sir Harold Himsworth urges scientists not to shy away from using scientific methods to grapple with problems traditionally accepted as belonging to the province of philosophy. The difference between science and philosophy lies not in the problems to which they are directed, Himsworth argues, but rather in the methods they use for solving them. To the scientist, a proposition is something to be investigated; to the philosopher, something to be accepted as a basis for thought. Since the development of the scientific method, substantial progress has been made toward mastering problems in the natural environment. If we are ever to attain a degree of control over problems that derive from human activities, Himsworth claims that we only succeed by approaching them in a comparably objective way.

Description based on print version record.