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ferential behavior of the actors in the concrete situations in which
they face problems and the concepts by which they are presumably
guided. There must be reasoned grounds for making one prediction
about the future rather than another and confirmations greater than
what one would expect on the basis of chance.
Fourth, we may answer the indictment by saying that if scien–
tific knowledge is the paradigm of all genuine knowledge, then
wherever any body of knowledge exists it should
be
possible by
further inquiry to win
new
knowledge of fact as distinct from what
can be learned merely by logical transformation.
(3) Even if the foregoing is granted is it not true that common
sense knowledge presupposes a knowledge different from scientific
knowledge? Whether this knowledge is called metaphysical or on–
tological, the claim sometimes made for it is that it grasps the nature
of things directly, makes distinctions between kinds and classes of
existence, and provides the matrix out of which questions concerning
what, where, how, why and when arise and are answered. Now in
one sense it is perfectly true to say that common sense knowledge
recognizes distinctions and truths that are not part of any particular
science. A color is different from a sound,
all
physical things are
more than two-dimensional, full-grown human adults are larger and
wiser than infants, water quenches thirst, no one remembers his own
birth, dogs are more attached to their masters than cats-all these
are instances of knowledge and yet not integrated into a formal
science. They may be called pre-scientific: they are not incorrigible,
and scientific knowledge may lead to their revision but at any definite
time there will be an indeterminate number of items of knowledge
of this character accepted as true by all practicing scientists. They
are not less certain than scientific knowledge, only less detailed and
precise.
Whatever the status of common sense knowledge, we must now
come to grips with the claim that scientific knowledge is itself of
only dubious validity as compared with two other types of knowl–
edge, philosophy of nature and metaphysics. What we have regarded
as scientific knowledge is called by Maritain "empirico-Iogical" or
"perinoetic" knowledge, inferior in certainty, intelligibility and truth
to philosophy of nature and metaphysics. Thinkers of this school
are not altogether in agreement among themselves concerning the
