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Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931

"English Prose A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice"

In doing this he employs his memory, and so conceives his
own personal life as an unity. But equally he aims--and herein consists
his scientific loyalty--to bring his personal experience into unity with
the whole course of human experience in so far as it bears upon his own
science. The collection of mere data is never enough. It is in the unity
of their interpretation that the achievements of science lie. This unity
is conceived in the form of scientific theories; is verified by the
comparative and critical conduct of experiments. But in all such work
how manifold are the presuppositions which we make when we attempt such
unification! Here is no place to enumerate these presuppositions. Some
of them you find discussed in the textbooks of the logic of science.
Some of them are instinctive, and almost never get discussed at all. But
it is here enough to say that we all presuppose _that human experience
has, or can by the loyal efforts of truth seekers be made to possess, a
real unity, superior in its nature and significance to any detached
observer's experience, more genuinely real than is the mere collection
of the experiences of any set of detached observers, however large_.


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