Foreword to "science teaching and the humanities" by Philipp Frank.

THE CLOSENESS of Dr. Frank's position, as it appears in the present article, to the point of view of general semantics is too evident to require elaborate comment. Stated in general semantics terminology, Dr. Frank's critique of our education and learning centers on its elementalistic character reflected in the rigid divisions between the 'special fields' of science and in the even more unfortunate chasm between the sciences and the humanities. A forest of ivory towers has arisen, and philosophy, shirking its modern social duty of providing means of communication between the towers of the 'special fields' and a bridge with the humanities, has instead gone into business for itself--that is, set up another tower.

Dr. Frank realizes the need for a new orientation. This orientation is to come through a close and critical scrutiny of the history of thought and of the methods of science. It is to come through considering science itself as a peculiar type of orientation, namely, one which enables us to predict and control some phenomena of nature. It is through this approach to his special science as a chapter in the book of Man that the science student can become 'humanized.' Philosophy really need not build the bridge between the sciences and the humanities. This bridge already exists in the view of man as a time-binder. Philosophy need only point to it.

In showing how a philosophy of science may summarize scientific method, Dr. Frank describes among other things 'operational definitions.' Operational definitions are, of course, intimately connected with the 'extensionalization' and the 'criterion of predictability' of general semantics terminology. He introduces the connection between the symbolic postulation of Ohm's Law and reality by describing the relationship between the abstract terms of the physicist such as 'current,' 'resistance,' 'electromotive force,' and the 'everyday English' terms such as 'wire,' 'position of the needle,' etc. In general semantics terminology this translation is described as a descending order of abstraction, hence as extensionalization. The criterion of predictability likewise plays an important part in these operational definitions. "When the poles are connected, the needle will deflect so much. Then we say that an ampere of current is passing." Or, "when heat is applied, the gas will expand so much. Then we say that the temperature has been raised one degree." It is this constant reduction of scientific language to "if thus, then so" propositions that makes science a unifying factor in human affairs, where metaphysics has so long been a dividing factor.

Perhaps the most important of Dr. Frank's emphases is on the fact that there is no such thing as 'not having a philosophy.' The hard-boiled writers of 'practical' textbooks who maintain that they stick strictly to the facts, often exhibit a surprisingly soft-boiled, not to say addled, 'philosophy,' a metaphysics of tacit assumptions which they somehow somewhere have picked up. This is another way of recognizing that no matter what we say or how we say it, we do not speak 'facts' but rather describe our evaluations of facts, which are necessarily refracted in any metaphysics which happens to be lying around.

In the words of Poincare, "It is often said that experiments must be made without a preconceived idea. That is impossible. Not only would it make all experiment barren, but that would be attempted which could not be done. Every one carries in his mind his own conception of the world, of which he can not so easily rid himself. We must, for instance use language; and our language is made up only of preconceived ideas and cannot be otherwise. Only these are unconscious preconceived ideas, a thousand times more dangerous than the others."

Finally, Dr. Frank shows how the symbolism of the various 'integrative systems' are exploited by social, religious, and political groups to induce orientations in people which make them receptive to various patterns of propaganda. These observations are in our opinion of far-reaching significance. Their importance has not been generally recognized (probably because of insufficient interest in politics among philosophers) and certainly not sufficiently stressed. Just as Hitler exploited the frustrations under capitalist democracy in his bid for return to authoritative feudalism, so the reactionary religious and political groups are trying to exploit the dramatic failure of the mechanist-materialist world view (Newtonian) in a bid for return to aristotelian orientation. Dr. Frank pointedly connects the high incidence of conversions to fascism among engineers with their very poor contact with the humanistic aspects of science.

It is indeed difficult to find a more brilliant illustration of the contrast between the static and the dynamic orientation, between the reactionary and the forward-looking, the aristotelian and the non-aristotelian point of view than in the respective attitudes toward an exploding 'system.' The reactionary says, "What did I tell you? It was wrong all the time. Now we can go back to good old -ism." The progressive or the general semanticist, having carefully dated his 'truths,' says of the dying system, "Requiescat in pace. It has served as it could. May the next one be short-lived."

Dr. Frank, lecturer on physics and mathematics at Harvard University, is author of Das Kausalgesetz and seine Grenzen (1932), La Fin de la Physique Mecaniste (1936), Rozvrat Mechanisticke Fysiky (1938), Interpretations and Misinterpretations of Modern Physics (1938), Between Physics and Philosophy (1941), Foundations of Physics (1946), and associate editor of Philosophy of Science. His book, Einstein, His Life and Times, is scheduled for 1947. The present paper was given at the Seventh Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, University of Chicago, September 9-11, 1946.

From ETC 4-1, Autumn 1946. Dr. Rapoport was Assistant Editor of ETC from the Department of Mathematics at Illinois Institute of Technology.