ABSTRACT

Conventional philosophy of science, in a more cautious variant, said that scientific conclusions are never actually certain, but have a vast preponderance of probability in their favor. So Karl Popper said that no scientific conclusion can ever be probable. Popper is often mentioned, but he figures chiefly as a worthy if insufferable forerunner to these three, worth perhaps six out of ten for trying. Cole Porter's words "Anything goes" are not quite right for this situation, though; for they suggest random change, or anarchy. Few philosophers would now dispute this: the nihilist or ir-rationalist nature of Popperite philosophy of science is by now pretty much an open secret. The best scientific theory is that one which enables to avoid most easily the burden of belief which it threatens to impose on us: so says our Jazz Age philosopher. But literature itself is only one expression of the enormous revolution in feeling which divides the Jazz Age from the prewar world.