Quote of the Day

I'd like to borrow an honorable tradition from my friend over at Agent Intellect: the tradition of posting interesting quotes.

Today's quote has to do with the economy of research. Sounds dry, but is actually fascinating:

"A leading principle of inference which can lead from a true premiss to a false conclusion is insofar bad; but insofar as it can only lead either from a false premiss or to a true conclusion, it is satisfactory; and whether it leads from false to false, from true to true, or from false to true, it is equally satisfactory. The first part of this theorem, that an inference from true to false is bad, [follows] from the essential characteristic of truth, which is its finality. For truth being our end and being able to endure, it can only be a false maxim which represents it as destroying itself. Indeed, I do not see how anybody can fail to admit that (other things being equal) it is a fault in a mode of inference that it can lead from truth to falsity. But it is by no means as evident that an inference from false to false is as satisfactory as an inference from true to true; still less, that such a one is as satisfactory as an inference from false to true. The Hegelian logicians seem to rate only that reasoning A1 which setting out from falsity leads to truth. But men of laboratories consider those truths as small that only an inward necessity compels. It is the great compulsion of the Experience of nature which they worship. On the other hand, the men of seminaries sneer at nature; the great truths for them are the inward ones. Their god is enthroned in the depths of the soul. How shall we decide the question? Let us rationally inquire into it, subordinating personal prepossessions in view of the fact that whichever way these prepossessions incline, we can but admit that wiser men than we, more sober-minded men than we, and humbler searchers after truth, do today embrace the opinion the opposite of our own. How, then, shall we decide the question? Yes, how to decide questions is precisely the question to be decided. One thing the laboratory-philosophers ought to grant: that when a question can be satisfactorily decided in a few moments by calculation, it would be foolish to spend much time in trying to answer it by experiment. Nevertheless, this is just what they are doing every day. The wisest-looking man I ever saw, with a vast domelike cranium and a weightiness of discourse that left Solon in the distance, once spent a month or more in dropping a stick on the floor and seeing how often it would fall on a crack; because that ratio of frequency afforded a means of ascertaining the value of pi, though not near so close as it could be calculated in five minutes; and what he did it for was never made clear. Perhaps it was only for relaxation; though some people might have found reading Goldsmith or Voltaire fully as lively an occupation. If it were not for the example of this distinguished LL.D., I should have ventured to say that nothing is more foolish than carrying a question into a laboratory until reflection has done all that it can do towards clearing it up -- at least, all that it can do for the time being. Of course, for a seminary-philosopher, to send a question to the laboratory is to have done with it, to which he naturally has a reluctance; while the laboratory-philosopher is impatient to get a whack at it." - C.S. Peirce, "The Essence of Reasoning" Collected Papers 4.69

Which tells me that Dr. Thunderdome was no philosopher at all.