Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/243

No. 3.] and of effecting the solution. They regard it as giving the method of research in philosophy just as mathematics gives the method of research in physics. It alone is capable of yielding whatever objective scientific knowledge it is possible to attain. This is certainly true enough so long as we regard merely the objective side of experience as such. For the task of science is twofold. It has first to record and correlate the particular concrete facts of experience. This is the function of the specialized sciences. But the forms of the particular facts and the general aspects of experience have also to be investigated. This investigation falls to the lot of the philosopher. The things he deals with in performing it are therefore essentially abstract.

The function of the scientific method, then, though in part constructive, is mainly critical. Its field is the objective side of experience, and its scope is comprised in the determination of the validity of the concepts we apply to this objectivity, and in the solution of certain problems by the construction of other valid concepts and hypotheses. This construction it performs by analyzing the general forms of experience. All questions such as, for example, ethical problems, are therefore regarded as outside the scope of philosophy, for they are considered to deal with the particular characteristics of the particular things composing the world.

Although the results obtained by the scientific method may be mathematically accurate, and therefore a complete solution of the type of problem with which it deals, it will be seen later that the data from which it starts introduce an element of inadequacy. Moreover, the question arises as to whether the problems considered are the only ones with which philosophy may legitimately deal. It has commonly been considered that one of the supreme tasks of philosophy is to provide an explanation of the facts of experience. The hypotheses yielded by the scientific method are evidently purely descriptive in type. Can any hypothesis, however, be considered explanatory, or are all hypotheses descriptive, differing merely in the entities in terms