cannot
provide the material out of which the structure is built up. This is the
error of both the positivist and of the psychological philosopher, if
scientific procedure gives us in any sense a picture of the situation.

A sharp contrast appears between the accepted hypothesis with its
universal form and the experiences which invalidate the earlier theory.
The reality of these experiences lies in their happening. They were
unpredictable. They are not instances of a law. The later theory, the
one which explains these occurrences, changes their character and
status, making them necessary results of the world as that is conceived
under this new doctrine. This new standpoint carries with it a backward
view, which explains the erroneous doctrine, and accounts for the
observations which invalidated it. Every new theory must take up into
itself earlier doctrines and rationalize the earlier exceptions. A
generalization of this attitude places the scientist in the position of
anticipating later reconstructions. He then must conceive of his world
as subject to continuous reconstructions. A familiar interpretation of
his attitude is that the hypothesis is thus approaching nearer and
nearer toward a reality which would never change if it could be
attained, or, from the standpoint of the Hegelian toward a goal at
infinity. The Hegelian also undertakes to make this continuous process
of reconstruction an organic phase in reality and to identify with
nature the process of finding exceptions and of correcting them. The
fundamental difference between this position and that of the scientist
who looks before and after is that the Hegelian undertakes to make the
exception in its exceptional character a part of the reality which
transcends it, while the scientist usually relegates the exception to
the experience of individuals who were simply caught in an error which
later investigation removes.

The error remains as an historical incident explicable perhaps as a
result of the conditions under which it occurred, but in so far as it
was an error, not a part of reality. It is customary to speak of it as
subjective, though this implies that we are putting the man who was
unwittingly in error into the position of the one who has corrected it.
To entertain that error in the face of its correction would be
subjective. A result of this interpretation is that the theories are
abstracted from the world and regarded as something outside it. It is