The psychology of reasoning / by W.B. Pillsbury.

  • Walter Bowers Pillsbury
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of reasoning / by W.B. Pillsbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    as man has grown in knowledge, and experi- ences have become sufficiently numerous and may be treated with sufficient discrimination to make evident the conflict of the new with the old, that doubt is at all possible. Similarly if we trace the development of accepted theory in any branch of science we find that the theories of any period harmonize with the observation and accumulated knowledge of the period. These theories are changed only as new facts and observations appear. So the explanation of perception and all action at a distance by corpuscular emanations was held to as long as there were no facts in direct opposition. As facts accumulated that would not fit into the theoretical scheme, people began to doubt it. It was abandoned in one field after another as the facts that would not fit became numerous enough to overwhelm it, and a new coordination was hit upon that would be less in conflict with the observations. It is interesting to note that the senses that have been most useful or could be most easily investigated were the first to accept the explanation in terms of wave motion. In the individual, too, we find, as experiences accumulate, the same increase in the severity of the tests that are applied. Children accept
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