HERE is a collection of essays coming from a specialty that may
be called the science of science. Such a title seems overly am-
bitious but conveniently designates a vital field of endeavor, which Boring
has tilled and in which many more should labor. It is a field often left to
philosophers, but one in which they disclaim unique or special competence.
In the analytic, empiricistic, and positivistic traditions, philosophers assign to
science the determination of synthetic or empirical truth, and reserve for
themselves questions of analytic truth. Typically, they regard a philosophical
question as one which no possible scientific data would help solve. If em-
pirical evidence could decide an issue, then it is a matter for science, not
philosophy. Since the time of Hume, it has been recognized that the induc-
tive achievements of science cannot be proven in any logical, deductive fash-
ion. Not as well recognized is the fact that this limitation holds not only for
specific inductions but also for any general principles of efficacious inductive
procedure. While not all philosophers hold to this view, it would probably
be accepted by a great majority of philosophers of science, epistemologists,
and linguistic analysts.

Thus science of science--propositions as to how science develops, proposi-
tions as to effective strategies, criteria of proof, doctrine as to necessary con-
trols in experiments--will involve assumptions as to the nature of the world
and of man as a knower which are not deductively provable and will involve
questions upon which empirical evidence is relevant. Philosophers of science
are, and probably will continue to be, the major practitioners in this area.
But they are such not as analysts but rather as generalists and students of
man-the-knower. Their analytic tools are usefully applied in explicating the
synthetic laws presumed in the inductive procedures of science, but the evalu-
ation of the truth of these laws is a matter of science, albeit a metascience.
There is a great need to augment the efforts of the philosophers with the
efforts of other relevant specialties.

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