ABSTRACT
Originating with C. S. Peirce and William James, pragmatism is a philosophical movement embracing different proposed solutions to problems in the epistemology and logic of natural science. Pragmatists believe that the rational justification of scientific beliefs ultimately depends on whether the method generating the beliefs is the best available for advancing our cognitive goals of explanation and precise prediction. So characterized, scientists can be, and have been, pragmatists simply for believing that the fruits of good scientific method generally produce, better than any other method, explanations and precise predictions, thereby allowing for successful human adaptation relative to various interests. Such success, they say, justifies the method and indicates the basic purpose of science. One way to express more succinctly the pragmatic principle (PP) implied by all this is as follows: Assuming that P is a proposition about the world,
PP. A person is justified in accepting P as true (a) if P is either soundly inferred directly by inductive or deductive inference from
other known or justified beliefs; or (b) if when P is not so soundly inferred, there is some real possibility that accepting
P as true will tend to be more productive of explanations and precise predictions than would be the case if one had accepted instead either the denial of P or nothing at all.
