2015考研英语阅读理解精读P9—哲学.docVIP

2015考研英语阅读理解精读P9—哲学 　Passage 9 　　Part of the scientific faith of the late nineteenth century was the view that there was one and only one scientific method.This method，argued writers like Karl Pearson in his Grammar of Science，was the only sure method for arriving at knowledge in any sphere.The method was easily described: collect the facts in the area under study;order them into sequences，such that law like occurrences could be seen;then，write down the laws so identified.According to this view，disciplines differed only as to subject matter，since the unity of science consisted of its method alone.Also，according to this view，the results of scientific investigation that is，new knowledge will always be embodied in the form of a law connecting the facts in the area under study. 　　Explanation，according to this view，is simply accounting for facts on the basis of a deduction from a known law or laws，or accounting for some subordinate law on the basis of a deduction from some more general law or laws.The most influential formulation of this explanation is Carl G Hempel’s, perhaps most accessibly articulated in his article“Explanation in Science and History”.Sometimes，according to Hempel，such laws are of a strictly universal form and other times they are of a probabilistic or statistical form.They are assertions，in this latter case，of the kind that if certain specified conditions are realized then an occurrence of such and such a kind will come about with such a probability. 　　I think that it would be true to say that in the late nineteenth century it was felt that one feature distinguishing physics from history as a discipline was that，even if they shared exactly the same method，physics had no need for the latter kind of probabilistic explanation--at least in principle--while in history it was unavoidable. 　　However，in the twentieth century，whatever else may distinguish physics and history as disciplines it is not that physics uses only strictly universal laws and deductiv