On causation : with a chapter on belief / by Charles A. Mercier.

  • Mercier, Charles Arthur, 1852-1919.
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On causation : with a chapter on belief / by Charles A. Mercier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Xll of Control are mostly guesses ; some of them are manifestly not causes at all ; others may or may not be causes but no reason is given why they should be so considered ; and m the absence of any definition of a cause, and of any trustworthy method of assigning causes, no reason could be given. It is always assumed by writers on the subject that the on,y investigations that are worth making into the methods of assigning causes are investigations into the methods pursued by scientific workers, and that result in scientific discoveries. These writers, following Mill, formulate five methods, which as I have said, they count as four, which they say are used by scientific workers. Scientific workers, however, never use these methods, and could not use them, for they are utterly futile, as will hereinafter appear. Moreover, the assumption that the methods employed by scientific workers to discover causes are in any respect different from the methods employed in every¬ day life by the cook, the gardener, the plumber, and the rest o us is quite groundless and mistaken. Men who work at science have no monopoly of methods of discovering causes. Their methods are not novel or peculiar, but are the same as those that we all constantly use in the course of our daily lives. For this reason I have not followed the course usual in books on Causation, of restricting my illustrative instances to examp es of discoveries in science. The chapter on Belief has been added at the request o a friend who, like most of us, has found himself often puzzled what to believe and what to disbelieve. It makes no preten¬ sions to philosophical profundity, and to those who are accustomed to the ponderous tomes that have been written on the foundations of belief, and upon epistemology generally, it will appear, I am afraid, a trifling performance 1 hese books however, are scarcely accessible to the general reader, and if they were, it is doubtful whether he would take advantage of them. Some work accessible to him and intelligible by um is sorely needed. It is curious that in an age that prides itself before all things upon being scientific, there are as many pre¬ valent beliefs that are irrational, baseless, absurd, and self-con¬ tradictory, as at any former time of which we have any record.