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New concepts, or new and better formulations of old concepts, are essential for scientific progress. This paper is intended to focus attention on two phases of natural processes and human activities which have a variety of names, and by giving them neutral names, to deprive them of their emotional flavour. As a result I hope that two evolutionary principles of some generality will become apparent.
William James in his Problems of Philosophy speaks about the Faith Ladder, enumerating a whole scale of standpoints individuals are likely to take with respect to a particular view of the world from “there is nothing absurd in a certain view of the world being true, nothing contradicting,” up to the remark “It must be true,” or “It shall be true, at any rate true for me.”
C. One is familiar by this time with the distinction drawn by some Platonists between the dialogues written by Plato while he was still under the influence of Socrates, and the later ones alleged to contain the fruits of his own independent thought. Even if, however, we accept this distinction, for me there would still remain a question as to the emancipation of Plato from other thinkers than Socrates.
Descartes's general rule that “whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true” has traditionally been criticized on two closely related grounds. As Leibniz, for example, puts it, clearness and distinctness are of no value as criteria of truth unless we have criteria of clearness and distinctness; but Descartes gives none. And consequently, the standards of judgment which the rule in fact evokes are purely subjective and psychological. There must hence be set up analytic, logical “marks” by means of which it can infallibly and without arbitrariness be recognized whether any ideas or propositions are or are not clear and distinct.
Among all the sorrows and anxieties of the present crisis in human affairs, none has caused so much consternation to thoughtful people as the open and scornful repudiation, by two of the most civilized nations of Europe, of all the moral principles, all the decent conventions, which for two thousand years have enabled human societies to live together in some degree of contentment and security. Almost all things which once seemed sacred and immutable have now become unsettled—truth and humanity, justice and reason. An apprehension of impending doom, of the break up of a great civilization, has become general.
