Essentially we have to train our minds to think anew, if we are to think
beyond the purposes for which the mind seems to have been evolved. We
have to disabuse ourselves from the superstition of the binding nature
of definitions and the exactness of logic. We have to cure ourselves of
the natural tricks of common thought and argument. You know the way of
it, how effective and foolish it is; the quotation of the exact
statement of which every jot and tittle must be maintained, the
challenge to be consistent, the deadlock between your terms and mine.
More and more as I grow older and more settled in my views am I bored by
common argument, bored not because I am ceasing to be interested in the
things argued about, but because I see more and more clearly the
futility of the methods pursued.
How then are we to think and argue and what truth may we attain? Is not
the method of the scientific investigator a valid one, and is there not
truth to the world of fact in scientific laws? Decidedly there is. And
the continual revision and testing against fact that these laws get is
constantly approximating them more and more nearly to a trustworthy
statement of fact.
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