Essays in Experimental Logic · John Dewey
SCIENCE AS A PRACTICAL ART
That is to say, it designates an object which is _not yet_ to be reacted to as one reacts to the given stimulus, but which is an object of further examination and inquiry, a medium of a postponed conclusion and of investigation continued till better grounds for affirming an object (making a definite, unified response) are given. _A term is an object so far as that object is undergoing shaping in a directed act of inquiry._ It may be called a possible object or a hypothetical object. Such objects do not walk or bite or scratch, but they are nevertheless actually present as the vital agencies of reflection. If we but forget where they live and operate--within the event of controlled inference--we have on our hands all the mysteries of the double world of existence and essence, particular and universal, thing and idea, ordinary life and science. For the world of science, especially of mathematical science, is the world of considerations which have approved themselves to be effectively regulative of the operations of inference. It is easier to wash with ordinary water than with H{2}O, and there is a marked difference between falling off a building and 1/2_gt_^{2}. But H{2}O and 1/2_gt_^{2} are as potent for the distinctive act of inference--as genuine and distinctive an act as washing the hands or rolling down hill--as ordinary water and falling are impotent.
Scientific men can handle these things-of-inference precisely as the blacksmith handles his tools. They are not thoughts as they are ordinarily used, not even in the logical sense of thought. They are rather things whose manipulation (as the blacksmith manipulates his tools) yield knowledge--or methods of knowledge--with a minimum of recourse to thinking and a maximum of efficiency. When one considers the importance of the enterprise of knowledge, it is not surprising that appropriate tools have been devised for carrying it on, and that these tools have no prototypes in pre-existent materials. They are real objects, but they are just the real objects which they are and not some other objects.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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