Note 399 — SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY AND LOGICAL PROOF
Reading edition
In Republic vi his whole argument for the existence of metaphysical truth, culminating in a supreme ‘Idea of the Good’, depends on the assumption that the ‘hypotheses’ of the sciences, being insecure originally, remain so until they are deduced from a (self-proving) ‘unhypothetical principle’. This assumes, of course, that they cannot be confirmed empirically by the results of their working, and exhibits the lacuna of logic in a typical way.