MR. WHEELWRIGHT'S WISDOM
39
techniques," and his connected claim that "there are valid kinds of
evidence other than the publicly experimental." Now expressions such
as "tonal beauty," "nobility," and "holiness" are notoriously vague
if
not thoroughly ambiguous, and there is room for doubt whether two
people ever use them in exactly the same sense. I make the point only
to suggest that it may be difficult to know what one is talking about
when such terms are talcen without some further analysis. It simply
will not do to say that since those expressions are frequently used,
there must be a common core of
~eaning
associated with each of
them. For terms like "democracy," "fascism," or "race," are also
frequently used, and there is good evidence that not all who use them
are making any objective attributions whatsoever.
For the sake of the argument, however, I shall assume that Mr.
Wheelwright's terms do possess sufficiently clear meanings. The ques–
tion then is how we can decide that a given indi;idual does possess
the attribute, say, of nobility. Thus, suppose we wish to determine
whether Mr. Wheelwright has a noble character. Can we do so in any
other way except on evidence that is publicly experimental-noting
well that a public experiment is not necessarily one that is carried
out with the techniques of the physical laboratory? Do we not have
to note his actions, and come to some sort of decision on the basis of
what is publicly observed or observable?
It
may happen, of course,
that Mr. Wheelwright does not appear in public very often, or that
even if he does so appear he does not becorn;e involved in actions of
the sort deemed appropriate for judging nobility of character; the
available evidence will then be quite undecisive. Or he may publish
something, and his readers are led to conjecture that he is one sort
of person rather than another; but unless his readers are overrash, they
will treat their conjecture as a hypothesis, draw whatever conclusion
they can which are entailed by it, wait for further observational data •
which will test them, and perhaps finally form a competent judgment
on his spiritual qualities. But how does ascertaining whether Mr.
Wheelwright is in fact noble differ in principle from ascertaining
whether, for example, an electric current is flowing through a wire?
My argument does
not
depend, it should be noted, on the assumption
that the meaning of "being noble" can be specified
simply
in terms
'of overt behavior, though this possibility cannot be automatically
ruled out. I recognize that many terms, for example "electric current,"
derive their meaning from a complicated theoretical framework, and
