Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/128

112 the abstract character of this disjointed result when he says that all universal statements are hypothetical: announcing that when or if certain conditions are given, then certain consequences result, but not categorically asserting the actual existence of the fact as to either antecedent or consequent. When the logician recognizes the full significance of this statement, and of its counterpart that every categorical proposition is enunciated of an individual, he will be ready to admit that statements arrived at by experimental science are of an historical order. They take their rise in, and they find their application to, a world of unique and changing things: an evolutionary universe.

This abstract or hypothetical character should not disguise from us, however, the supreme value of the genetic statement arrived at by experimental science. It reveals to us a process which is operating continuously. Through knowledge of this process, we are enabled to get both intellectual and practical control of great bodies of fact which otherwise would be opaque and recalcitrant. Knowing the process, we can analyze, we can understand, the phenomena of water whenever and however they present themselves. The control, moreover, extends beyond just the water itself. Knowledge of process of genesis becomes an instrument of investigation into, and control over, impure waters; so that we can measure the amount and nature of deviation from the standard. It becomes an active factor, a useful tool in investigating fluids which are not water, and chemical compounds which are not even fluid. There is no putting a limit to the ramifications and applications of the theoretical and technological control afforded us by laying hold of an operative process. It applies not only to what the empirical logician is fond of calling 'common' elements and 'resembling' cases; but aids us equally in dealing with apparent divergences and discrepancies. Holding the process in its more generic features, we can follow it 'into its refinements and modifications. By the cumulative method, by bringing together our knowledge of varying processes and of the particular sequence or course of events in each, entire regions otherwise utterly unexplorable are interpreted, and made amenable.