The Mind and the Logic of Scientific Discovery

The second article of our epistemology owes its legitimacy in faith both in the power of the author’s mind and the reader’s. We have come from an initial position of doubt almost into conviction before subjecting our embryonic proposition to test. Why this is, we do not know. Even renowned Karl Popper smartly avoided this stalemate by explaining it away in only a quarter of a page of his astonishingly readable book, The Logic of scientific discovery. It could be surprising that Popper would base his entire philosophy of science on this unresolved notion that we may use reductive methods (what may be likened with coming from the answer to the question). On reading, one cannot but pause for a while and wonder if Popper has not conceded too much to the so-called metaphysicians.

?I have been worse than Descartes, doubting even my right to think, but I realized that like every other person, the thoughts of my mind does not really belong to me. My mind is a subset of the world mind as the Stoics rightly said. If that were not the case, then dialectics would be of no value. There would be no need for sermons or expositions, as humans will never connect on the level by which they can possibly reach any agreement.

Linguists, psychologists and hopefully everybody will agree with me when I echo the words of Lucas in The Art of Public speaking, that people essentially think in words when they think. If I could come up with a word for my gymnastics trainer, if I could whisper to fellow trainees that he’s got a funny nose and make them laugh then I have not only thought right but I have also connected with their own minds- their judgments. I must therefore accept that I am not being crazy and that they are not blockheads4.

?Yet another puzzle in our effort at understanding the human mind is the dynamics of linguistics. Our differing language is to the undiscerning person, a reminder of our differences but on a more stringent appraisal of the actual nature of human communication, we fathom that we basically ‘speak the same language’ from culture to culturea. People smile to communicate warmth and friendship. They frown at what displeases them. Considering the frequency of the two mentioned emotion indicators (without being cynical), we find that there are more warm people than hostile people in almost all cultures. We find, even among supposed brutes, a deeply ingrained sense of empathy. This is demonstrable in the verbal and bodily reaction of a native fisherman, for example, living in the remotest part of a solitary island, who witnesses the accidental drowning of a stranger, say a tourist. Such verbal exclamation as “oh” or “ah” is commonplace among several peoples but this is not as important as the feelings of shock that accompanies the outburst even though it is only a stranger who is involved. Irrespective of crime statistics, we cannot deny the capability of humans to empathize, thus we are led into seeing some sense in the optimistic viewpoint which exaggerates the good genes of altruism that is apparently present in different degrees or quantity inside everyone.?It should be expected of most people therefore, a sense of oneness, and if the remote feeling of empathy must be followed by an act of kindness, we shall consider such action as arisen from the modified conscious part of the mind (ego or superego, as it is taught in Freudian psychoanalysis). What we are concerned about in this point of our discussion is the nature of the human mind. Is it in its normal state aware of altruism and selfishness? Why are people always moody about their misgivings? Can it think of what it hasn’t experienced or is it plain, in the absence of experience, as John Locke would want it? Readers should recognize that in these questions lies the answer to whether the human mind is capable of truth without having learnt it from somewhere or being told.

?If there is anything like creativity, if there is any hope that we can make a sense from the movies we watch, the clergyman who looks heavenward during thanksgiving in the church, the motorcyclist who skidded off the road on Monday…we may get rid of irrelevancies and tie relevant information together. With some effort, we can determine what is true or not, among the several ideologies which compete for our attention and that of the society, every time.

a Renowned linguist and educator, Noarm Chomsky affirmed this view in his publications.