The Science of Logic: An Inquiry Into the Principles of Accurate Thought and Scientific Method, Vol. 2 of 2 (Classic Reprint)

We have now completed our examination of the formal aspect of the reasoning process, and of the rules that guarantee its formal correctness or validity (P art III.). But the object of all reasoning, of all science and philosophy in fact, is to arrive at a certain knowledge of truth ;and, to secure this, it is not enough that our reasoning processes be correct or valid formally :the judgments involved in them must, furthermore, be all both true and certain. Truth is, as we saw (9, 79), contained in the mental act of judgment, to which the operations both of inference and of conception are thus subsidiary. An analysis of the material or truth aspect of inference will therefore, of necessity, direct our attention once more to the judgments of which our inferences are composed, and to the concepts or ideas which enter into our judgments (P arts I. and II.). After having separately examined each of the three mental operations, of conception, judgment, and inference, our next concern is to inquire how we reach true judgments, especially those true universal judgments which constitute scientific knowledge :how, in other words, we are to exercise those three mental operations on the data of knowledge to the best advantage for the acquiring of truth :how we are to regulate and co-ordinate those mental acts, conception, judgment, and reasoning, in exploring the various departments of the knowable universe. This portion of logical doctrine is variously described as applied logic, methodology, or the science of logical method. VOL. II.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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