ABSTRACT
Human knowledge is not stable; it is a matter of phases and stages in an ever-changing state of the art, seeing that ongoing inquiry leads to new and often dissonant findings and discoveries. And the coordi nation between questions and bodies of knowledge means that in the course of cognitive progress the state of questioning changes no less drastically than does the state of knowledge. Alterations in the mem bership of our body of knowledge will afford new presuppositions for further questions that were not available before. Cognitive change inevitably carries erotetic change in its wake. The question solved in one era could well not even have been posed in another. As W. Stanley Jevons put it well over a century ago:
Questions cluster together in groupings that constitute a line of inquiry. They stand arranged in duly organized and sequential fami lies; the answering of a given question yielding the presuppositions for yet further questions which would not have arisen had the former questions not been answered. R. G. Collingwood offered the following example:2 To investigate profitably the question “Has Smith left off beating his wife yet?” we must disentangle it into subsidiary issues:
• Has Smith a wife? • If so, was he ever given to beating her? • If so, has he discontinued this practice?
