The Initial Stage, The Act Of Conceiving

The Initial Stage, The Act Of Conceiving Or Inventing A Theory, Seems To Me Neither To Call For Logical Analysis Nor To Be Susceptible Of It.

Science Must Begin With Myths, And With The Criticism Of Myths.

Is The World Ruled By Strict Laws Or Not? This Question I Regard As Metaphysical. The Laws We Find Are Always Hypotheses; Which Means That They May Always Be Superseded, And That They May Possibly Be Deduced From Probability Estimates. Yet Denying Causality Would Be The Same As Attempting To Persuade The Theorist To Give Up His Search; And That Such An Attempt Cannot Be Backed By Anything Like A Proof.

But Some Of These Theories Are So Bold That They Can Clash With Reality: They Are The Testable Theories Of Science. And When They Clash, Then We Know That There Is A Reality; Something That Can Inform Us That Our Ideas Are Mistaken.

To Give A Causal Explanation Of An Event Means To Deduce A Statement Which Describes It, Using As Premises Of The Deduction One Or More Universal Laws, Together With Certain Singular Statements, The Initial Conditions ... We Have Thus Two Different Kinds Of Statement, Both Of Which Are Necessary Ingredients Of A Complete Causal Explanation.