THE various methods of inquiry that men have used include
magic, revelation, common-sense observation and accumula-
tion of the results as folk lore or proverbs, Platonic idealism
or the dialectical quest for certainty (which is in some respects a
sophisticated form of word magic), classification and the syllogistic
quest for certainty a la Aristotle, and finally study of the relations
among changes as initiated by the Galilean revolution in method.
Of course, we do not imply that each of these methods has always
been clearly separated from the others, nor do we imply that at any
time and place any one of these methods has been applied in a pure
form without vestigial carryovers from one or more of the other
methods. Moreover, one cannot place these methods in a neat chrono-
logical series, one can only assert that at various times one or another
of these methods, judging by the historical record, seems to have
been more widely accepted than others and thus to have dominated
the prevailing intellectual climate.

For example, a few thousand years ago various magical proce-
dures were widely used as means of facilitating prediction and
control. But at the same time research was in progress that involved
study of the relations among changes. How else can one explain
some of the artifacts of the ancient world such, for example, as the
copper plumbing in Roman baths? Someone must have experimented
with copper ore, heat, etc. However crudely, he or they must have
measured changes and studied the relations among those changes.

And today one can find even in the scientific journals avowals
of faith in one revelation or another. One has only to look around to
see that the Galilean revolution in method has been accepted as the
best method of inquiry by only a small fraction of the world's popu-
lation and that many, perhaps most, of even that small fraction lean
heavily on other methods of inquiry whenever they seek to know
about matters other than their own fields of specialization.

Thus we are faced today with the fact that no clearly defined
method of inquiry is universally accepted as the best in all fields.
Even the striking success of the Galilean revolution in greatly aug-
menting the ability of men to predict and control events in the field
of the natural sciences has not greatly altered most men's views
on method in spite of the great alteration in the environment that

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