Note 46 — Chapter II · PRAGMATISM AND THE PRAGMATIST MOVEMENT

H. Poincaré (talked of in recent scientific circles as one of the greatest mathematicians of history) is (he died about a year ago), so far as our present purpose is concerned, one of the important scientific writers of the day upon the subject of the “logic of hypotheses,” and of the “hypothetical method” in science—the method which the pragmatists are so anxious to apply to philosophy. He seems (see his La Science et l’Hypothèse, as well as the later book, La Valeur de la Science, referred to by Lalande in his professional reports to the Philosophical Review) to accept to some extent the idea of the “hypothetical” character of the constructions of both the mathematical and the physical sciences, believing, however, at the same time that we must not be “unduly sceptical” about their conclusions, revealing as they do something of the “nature of reality.” He discusses among other topics the theory of “energetics” of which we speak below in the case of Ostwald. He insists, too, upon the idea that the real is known only by “experience,” and that this “experience” includes the comparison of the thoughts of many minds. And yet he believes to some extent in the Kantian theory of the a priori element in knowledge (see La Science, etc., p. 64). It is, however, quite unnecessary for me to presume to enter into the large subject of the precise nature of “hypotheses” in the mathematical and the physical sciences.