Page:Reichenbach - Experience and Prediction.djvu/24

10 MEANING good example of such an equivalence; they illustrate the fact that the decision in favor of a certain convention does not influence the content of knowledge. The examples chosen from the theory of space and time previously mentioned are likewise to be ranked among conventions. There are decisions of another character which do not lead to equivalent conceptions but to divergent systems; they may be called volitional bifurcations. Whereas a convention may be compared to a choice between different ways leading to the same place, the volitional bifurcation resembles a bifurcation of ways which will never meet again. There are some volitional bifurcations of an important character which stand at the very entrance of science: these are decisions concerning the aim of science. What is the purpose of scientific inquiry? This is, logically speaking, a question not of truth-character but of volitional decision, and the decision determined by the answer to this question belongs to the bifurcation type. If anyone tells us that he studies science for his pleasure and to fill his hours of leisure, we cannot raise the objection that this reasoning is “a false statement”—it is no statement at all but a decision, and everybody has the right to do what he wants. We may object that such a determination is opposed to the normal use of words and that what he calls the aim of science is generally called the aim of play—this would be a true statement. This statement belongs to the descriptive part of epistemology; we can show that in books and discourses the word “science” is always connected with “discovering truth,” sometimes also with “foreseeing the future.” But, logically speaking, this is a matter of volitional decision. It is obvious that this decision is not a convention because the two conceptions obtained by different postulates concerning the aims of science are not equivalent; it is a bifurcation. Or take a question as to the meaning of a certain