James K. Feibleman

The year 1959 has been called The Centennial Year in view of the anniversary of the publication of The Origin of SPecies and the centenary of the births of many who later contributed much to the philosophy of the recent past, such as Samuel Alexander, Henri Bergson, John Dewey and Edmund Husser!' The essays in the present volume which are on subjects germane to any of the anniversaries celebrated this year have been placed first in the present volume. CENTENNIAL YEAR NUMBER DARWIN AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD JAMES K. FEIBLEMAN The knowledge of methodology, which is acquired by means of formal education in the various disciplines, is usually com­ municated in abstract form. Harmony and counterpoint in musical composition, the axiomatic method of mathematics, the established laws in physics or in chemistry, the principles of mathematics - all these are taught abstractly. It is only when we come to the method of discovery in experimental science that we find abstract communication failing. The most recent as well as the greatest successes of the experimental sciences have been those scored in modern times, but we know as yet of no abstract way to teach the scientific method. The astonishing pedagogical fact is that this method has never been abstracted and set forth in a fashion which would permit of its easy acquisition. Here is an astonishing oversight indeed, for which the very difficulty of the topic may itself be responsible.

With this issue we initiate the policy of expanding the scope of Tulane Studies in Philosophy to include, in addition to the work of members of the department, contributions from philosophers who have earned advanced degrees from Tulane and who are now teaching in other colleges and universities. The Editor THE LOGIC OF OUR LANGUAGE ROBERT L. ARRINGTON Wittgenstein wrote in the Tractatus that "logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. " 1 In line with his suggestion that a proposition is a 'picture', Wittgenstein argued that propositions 'show' the logical structure of the real. He was insistent, however, that "the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one. " 2 As a result of this we can misunderstand the structure of fact. Philosophical problems arise just when "the logic of our language is mis­ understood. " 3 It is common knowledge that much of this view of logic was rejected by Wittgenstein himself in the Philosophical Investi­ gations. There we are told that language has no ideal or sublime 4 logic which mirrors the structure of the extra-linguistic world. Consequently, inferences from the structure of language to the structure of that extra-linguistic world are invalid. Reality can be 'cut up' in any of a number of ways by language. Wittgenstein adopted a view of philosophy which would render that discipline a non-explanatory, non-critical study of the multiple ways in which language can be used.

No statement, except one, can be made with which all philosophers would agree. The exception is this statement itself. The disagreement has the advantage that it gets all the proposals out into the open where they can be examined, but it has the dis advantage that the cogency of any one philosophy must rely entirely upon that wide public which is unprepared to deal with it. Fortunately, ethics has a more immediate appeal than some other branches of philosophy; yet the history of the topic gives no indication that this circumstance has had the happy results we might have expected. One peculiarity of ethics is that its problems are rarely settled on its own grounds. Ethical problems are for the most part referred to socially established moralities, and moralities are socially established not on the basis of philosophy but rather by some sponsoring insti­ or politics. Such establishments, however, tution, usually religion depend on the prior preparation of ethical proposals by philosophers. For it stands to reason that an ethics cannot be socially established if there is no ethics to establish. Thus philosophers provide the justifi­ cation for socially-established moralities while seeming not to do so.