Implication Is Thus The Very Texture Of

Students Of The Heavens Are Separable Into Astronomers And Astrologers As Readily As The Minor Domestic Ruminants Into Sheep And Goats, But The Separation Of Philosophers Into Sages And Cranks Seems To Be More Sensitive To Frames Of Reference.

Physical Objects Are Conceptually Imported Into The Situation As Convenient Intermediaries Not By Definition In Terms Of Experience, But Simply As Irreducible Posits Comparable, Epistemologically, To The Gods Of Homer . . . For My Part I Do, Qua Lay Physicist, Believe In Physical Objects And Not In Homer's Gods; And I Consider It A Scientific Error To Believe Otherwise. But In Point Of Epistemological Footing, The Physical Objects And The Gods Differ Only In Degree And Not In Kind. Both Sorts Of Entities Enter Our Conceptions Only As Cultural Posits.

Just As The Introduction Of The Irrational Numbers ... Is A Convenient Myth [which] Simplifies The Laws Of Arithmetic ... So Physical Objects Are Postulated Entities Which Round Out And Simplify Our Account Of The Flux Of Existence... The Conceptional Scheme Of Physical Objects Is [likewise] A Convenient Myth, Simpler Than The Literal Truth And Yet Containing That Literal Truth As A Scattered Part.

The Scientist Is Indistinguishable From The Common Man In His Sense Of Evidence, Except That The Scientist Is More Careful.

A Curious Thing About The Ontological Problem Is Its Simplicity. It Can Be Put Into Three Anglo-saxon Monosyllables: 'what Is There?' It Can Be Answered, Moreover, In A Word--'everything'--and Everyone Will Accept This Answer As True.