ABSTRACT
THE previous chapter was a digression. Having acknowledged in Part One the ubiquitous participation of the scientist in upholding the affirmations of science, I wanted to investigate the origins of this personal coefficient by tracing it back to the very act of uttering speech. In order to find this juncture the enquiry had to penetrate beyond it, to the inarticulate levels of intelligence of the animal and the infant, in which the personal coefficient of spoken knowledge is primordially preformed. Pursuing the roots of this tacit intelligence even further, we recognized an active principle which controls and sustains it. As far down the scale of life as the worms and even perhaps the amoeba, we meet a general alertness of animals, not directed towards any specific satisfaction, but merely exploring what is there; an urge to achieve intellectual control over the situations confronting it. Here at last, in the logical structure of such exploring-and of visual perception-we found prefigured that combination of the active shaping of knowledge with its acceptance as a token of reality, which we recognize as a distinctive feature of all personal knowing. This is the principle which guides all skills and connoisseurship, and informs all articulate knowing by way of the ubiquitous tacit coefficient on which spoken utterances must rely for their guidance and confirmation.
