ABSTRACT
The cognitive processes referred to are those of analysis and synthesis, imagination, supposition and idealization, comparison and the perception of analogies. Intimately connected with the processes of imagination and supposition is the process of idealization, whose function in science has not hitherto met with due recognition. All the methods of science may be said to depend on fruitful hypotheses. Hypotheses or suppositions are, of course, used in everyday life, and in philosophy and in theology, as well as in science. The conception of ceaseless movement, implied in the first law of motion, is a case in point. The numerous uses of limiting cases in mathematics, and the conception of a purely “economic man” in economics, are other instances. Where possible life actually creates order of some degree, as may be seen in the habits of animals, in the customs, laws, and conventions of human society.
