Page:Chance, love, and logic - philosophical essays (IA chancelovelogicp00peir 0).pdf/33

 *lutely necessary principles. Also, by the use of popular terms which have a variety of meanings, one easily slides from one meaning to another, so that the most improbable conclusions are thus derived from seeming truisms. By making assumptions and rules explicit, and by using technical terms that do not drag wide penumbras of meaning with them, the method of symbolic logic may cruelly reduce the sweeping pretensions of philosophy. But there is no reason for supposing that pretentiousness rather than humility is the way to philosophic salvation. Man is bound to speculate about the universe beyond the range of his knowledge, but he is not bound to indulge the vanity of setting up such speculations as absolutely certain dogmas.

There is, however, no reason for denying that greater rigor and accuracy of exposition can really help us to discern new truth. Modern mathematics since Gauss and Weierstrass has actually been led to greater fruitfulness by increased rigor which makes such procedure as the old proofs of Taylor's theorem no longer possible. The substitution of rigorous analytic procedures for the old Euclidean proofs based on intuition, has opened up vast fields of geometry. Nor has this been without any effect on philosophy. Where formerly concepts like infinity and continuity were objects of gaping awe or the recurrent occasions for intellectual violence,[18] we are now beginning to use them, thanks to Peirce and Royce, in accurate and definable senses. Consider, for instance, the amount of a priori nonsense which Peirce eliminates by pointing out