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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
SERIES EDITORS: DAVID F. HARDWICK · LESLIE MARSH

Epistemology of
the Human Sciences
Restoring an Evolutionary
Approach to Biology,
Economics, Psychology
and Philosophy
Walter B. Weimer
 Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism

Series Editors
David F. Hardwick, Department of Pathology and
Laboratory Medicine, The University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Leslie Marsh, Department of Pathology and Laboratory
Medicine, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver,
BC, Canada
This series offers a forum to writers concerned that the central presup-
positions of the liberal tradition have been severely corroded, neglected,
or misappropriated by overly rationalistic and constructivist approaches.
The hardest-won achievement of the liberal tradition has been the
wrestling of epistemic independence from overwhelming concentrations
of power, monopolies and capricious zealotries. The very precondition
of knowledge is the exploitation of the epistemic virtues accorded by
society’s situated and distributed manifold of spontaneous orders, the
DNA of the modern civil condition.
With the confluence of interest in situated and distributed liber-
alism emanating from the Scottish tradition, Austrian and behavioral
economics, non-Cartesian philosophy and moral psychology, the editors
are soliciting proposals that speak to this multidisciplinary constituency.
Sole or joint authorship submissions are welcome as are edited collec-
tions, broadly theoretical or topical in nature.
 Walter B. Weimer

Epistemology
of the Human
Sciences
Restoring an Evolutionary Approach
to Biology, Economics, Psychology
and Philosophy
Walter B. Weimer
Washington, PA, USA

ISSN 2662-6470 ISSN 2662-6489 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism
ISBN 978-3-031-17172-7 ISBN 978-3-031-17173-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17173-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other
physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer
software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in
this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher
nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material
contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains
neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Pattadis Walarput/Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland
AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to all who fight scientism in science and society
 Praise for Epistemology of the Human
Sciences

“Weimer is a polymath. His writings range over disparate domains

including induction, psychology, epistemology, economics, and mensu-
ration theory. His views have proven to be not only trenchant but
prescient. For example, Donald Hoffman’s position regarding “The Case
Against Reality,” and the constructivist nature of perception was presaged
by Weimer over forty-five years ago. Similarly, those confronting the
replication crisis in today’s psychotherapy research, would do well to take
seriously his admonitions regarding measurement theory. This volume
should be essential reading for anyone involved in or concerned about
the nature of the sciences.”
—Neil P. Young, Ph.D. Clinical and experimental psychologist

“Minds/brains are complex systems within complex systems (living

organisms) within complex systems (human societies) within complex
systems (ecosystems). Consequently, knowing the mind is infinitely more
challenging than knowing the objects studied by the physical sciences.
Weimer’s book rises to the challenge, thoroughly reviewing the strengths
and shortcomings of both famous and forgotten thinkers such as Bühler,

vii
viii Praise for Epistemology of the Human Sciences

Hayek, Popper, and von Neumann to identify key issues for an evolu-
tionary epistemology: consciousness, duality, determination, description,
explanation, mensuration, semiotics, and rationality. The result is a
guidebook that points the human sciences in the right direction.”
—John A. Johnson, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Penn State
University

“Having researched and written on the neglected problems surrounding

measurement and experimentation in the social sciences, I am encour-
aged to find those topics highlighted and emphasized as of central
importance in this book on epistemology. Social scientists need to realize
their fields cannot simply borrow the tools and techniques of physical
science without understanding the limitations and differences involved.”
—Günter Trendler, Industrial Services Project Manager,
Ludwigshafen a. R., Germany
 Epigraph Source Acknowledgements

Chapter 3: S. Siegel (1956) Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral

Sciences, Page 22.
Chapter 4: A. Islami and G. Longo (2017) Marriages of Mathematics
and Physics: A Challenge for Biology, Page 13.
Chapter 5:

A: C. D. Broad (1933/1949) The “Nature” of a Continuant, 1949,

Page 476
B: A. Rand (1982/1984) The Stimulus and the Response: A Critique
of B. F. Skinner, Page 186.

Chapter 6: I. Lakatos (1976) Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathe-

matical Discovery. Page 142.
Chapter 7: C. G. Hempel (1952) Fundamentals of Concept Formation
in Empirical Science, Page 74.
Chapter 8: W. Block (2020) Personal Comunication, also Letter to the
Editor, The Wall Street Journal.
Chapter 9: Robin Williams (1979) Vinyl Album (Cover) Title:

ix
x Epigraph Source Acknowledgements

Reality: What a Concept. Casablanca NBLP 7162

© Casablanca Record and Filmworks
© Playboy Publications, Inc.
Published by Little Andrew Publicatios, Inc.

Chapter 10:

A: H. Weyl (1949) Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science,

Page 300.
B: K. R. Popper (1977) Part 1, in The Self and Its Brain, Page 70.
C: V. Vanberg (2004) Austrian Economics, Evolutionary Psychology
and Methodological Dualism: Subjectivism Reconsidered. Page 4.
D: F. A. Hayek (1952) The Sensory Order, Page 121.

Chapter 11: F. A. Hayek (2017) Within Systems and About Systems,

Page 2.
Chapter 12: H. Weyl (1949) Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural
Science, Pages 215–216.
Chapter 13: H. H. Pattee (1981) Symbol-Structure Complimentarity in
Biological Evolution, Page 118.

F. A. Hayek (1978) New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics

and History of Ideas, Page 43.

Chapter 14: J. Bronowski (1978) The Origins of Knowledge and Imagina-

tion, Pages 105–106.

H. H. Pattee (2001) The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic

Cut, Page 13.

Chapter 15: F. A. Hayek (1973/2012) Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol.

1: Rules and Order, Page 33.

Justice L. Brandeis (1927) Dissenting Opinion. Olmstead V. United

States XXX, 277, U. S. 479 of 1927.
 Epigraph Source Acknowledgements xi

Chapter 16: A. McIntyre (1979) Rear Jacket Cover, R. Rorty, Philosophy

and the Mirror of Nature.
Chapter 17: R. B. Gregg (1984) Symbolic Inducement and Knowing: A
Study in the Foundations of Rhetoric, Page 136.

T. S. Kuhn (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Page 200.

Chapter 18: W. W. Bartley III, The Retreat To Commitment. Page XXVI.

 Contents

1 Preface 1
References 10
2 Understanding, Explaining, and Knowing 13
The Nature of Understanding 13
From Axiomatics to Hypothetico-Deductive Method 16
Learning and the Limited Role of Experience 17
Where Does the Illusion of Certainty Come From? 18
Mathematics and Other Notational Forms of Linguistic
Precision 19
How Does Meaning Relate to Understanding? 21
The Use of Mathematics in the Social and Physical
Domains 22
Measurement 23
Understanding and Knowledge Are Functional
Concepts Not Subject to Natural Law Determinism 25
Pitfalls and Promises of Ambiguity and Ignorance 28
A Bucket or a Searchlight? 32
References 34

xiii
xiv Contents

Part I Knowledge as Classification, Judgment, and

Mensuration
3 Problems of Mensuration and Experimentation 39
Physics and the Cat 41
Another Fundamental Problem: Experimental Science
Requires Classical Level Apparatus 42
Historical Excursus: The Nature and Role of Experiment
in Classical Science 45
Change Is Inevitably Scale-Dependent,
and Theoretically Specified 46
References 51
4 Problems of Measurement and Meaning in Biology 53
The State-of-the-Art (Isn’t the Best Science) 54
Probability Absolutes and Absolute Probabilities 57
Replicability Is Scale Dependent 58
What is an Organism? 60
Phenomenalistic Physics is Incompatible with the Facts
of Biology and the Nature of Epistemology 62
References 68
5 Psychology Cannot Quantify Its Research, Do
Experiments, or Be Based on Behaviorism 71
A: Psychology Has Neither Ratio Measurement
Nor Experimentation 72
The Psychology of Robots Has Nothing to Do
with the Psychology of Subjects 73
No One Has Ever Discovered a Natural Law
in Psychology 74
Social Science Is Just Fine with Demonstration Studies 77
B: Epistemic Fads and Fallacies Underlying Behaviorism 79
The Failure of Phenomenalism 80
Excursus: Consciousness Alone Is Not the Issue 81
The Spell of Ernst Mach 81
The Haunted Universe Doctrine of Behaviorism 85
Control at All Costs 87
 Contents xv

References 89
6 Taking the Measure of Functional Things 93
The Role of Statistical Inference in Contemporary
Physics 95
How Shall We Study Co-occurrence Relationships? 98
In Defense of Miss Fisbee 101
References 104
7 Statistics Without Measurement 105
Nonparametric Statistical Procedures Work
with Nominal, Ordinal, and Some Interval Data 107
Generalizability, Robustness, and Similar Issues 110
Back to the Drawing Board, at Least for a While 111
Testing a Theory in Psychology is Paradoxical for Those
Who Do not Understand Problems of Scaling
and Mensuration 111
Back to History for a Moment 113
References 115
8 Economic Calculation of Value Is Not Measurement,
Not Apriori, and Its Study Is Not Experimental 117
Austrian “Subjectivism” Begins with the Impossibility
of “Physical” Mensuration 118
Behavioral Economics Is Just Applied Social Psychology 121
What Has Been Called “Experimental Economics” Is
Actually Constrained Demonstration Studies 121
This Is Your Problem as a Consumer of “Scientific”
Knowledge 123
Scaling Procedures Crucially Influence the Progress
of Science 124
Probability Theories Help Nothing Here 126
Human Action Is Not Given Apriori 127
Productive Novelty Cannot Occur in an Apriori System 129
xvi Contents

Creativity Is Tied to Ambiguity 130

References 132

Part II What can be Known, and What is Real

9 Structural Realism and Theoretical Reference 137
Structural Realism and Our Knowledge
of the Non-mental World 138
Acquaintance and Description 144
From Phenomenalism to Structural Realism 146
Science and Structure 150
From Structure to Intrinsic Properties 152
Science and the Search for Structural Descriptions 152
Acquaintance Is Not Knowledge 154
References 155
10 The Mental and Physical Still Pose Insuperable
Problems 157
A: The Classic Problems 158
Sentience and Qualia 160
The Problem of Functionality Again 162
B: Consciousness, Objectivity, and the Pseudo Problem
of Subjectivity 162
Our Individual Consciousness Can Never Be Causal
Within Our Own Bodies 163
Consciousness Does Not Exist in Time 165
Consequences of the Fact That Acquaintance Is Not
Knowledge 166
The Traditional Problem of Objectivity Is Backwards 167
Excursus: The Chicken and Egg of Subjectivity
and Objectivity 170
C: Clarifications of False Starts and Important Issues 173
Austrian Subjectivism Is a Misnomer and Often
a Red Herring 173
Awareness of Our Own Internal Milieu 173
Is “Silent Consciousness” of Epistemic Importance? 175
 Contents xvii

Excursus: Chance, Constraint, Choice, Control,

Contingency 176
Rate-Independent Formal Concepts Are Not Objects
of the Laws of Nature 177
D: Knowledge Depends Upon the Functional Choices
of Nervous Systems 179
Boundary Conditions Harness the Laws of Nature 179
Initial Conditions and Boundary Conditions 180
Information Structures Are Constraints, but Not Just
Boundary Conditions 182
Physical Information (Differences or Bits) Does Not
Explain Meaning 182
Functionality Is Fundamentally Ambiguous Until Its
Derivational History Is Specified 184
Old Wine in Better Bottles 186
References 190

Part III There are Inescapable Dualisms

11 Complementarity in Science, Life, and Knowledge 195
Observers and the Observed 196
Subjects Make Choices 198
Life Began with Functional Instruction 200
Symbols and Meanings Are Rate-Independent 201
Physicality Can Only Be Disambiguated—And Hence
Understood—By Concomitant Functional Analysis 204
Physics Is Only a Beginning 206
Context Sensitivity and Ambiguity 207
Emergence Beyond Physicality 207
Semiotic Closure as Self-Constraint: Agency as a Matter
of Internal Determination 216
References 222
12 Complimentarities of Physicality and Functionality
Yield Unavoidable Dualisms 225
Downward Causation 227
If Laws Do Not Cause Emergence, What Enables It? 230
xviii Contents

Evolution and the Competitive Basis of Cooperation 231

Epistemology Originated In and Is Shaped by Selection
Pressure in Open Systems 232
Adaptive Systems in Learning and Cognition 233
Economic Orders Are Not Agents and Do Not Have
Expectations 238
Recapitulation: Adaptive Behavior Shows Apparent
Teleology Does Not Violate Causality 240
The Laws of Nature Are Not the Same as the Rules
of Behavior 242
Another Recapitulation: The Physical Sciences Also
Require a Duality of Descriptions 244
References 245

Part IV Complexity and Ambiguity

13 Understanding Complex Phenomena 249
Explanation of the Principle 250
A Precise But Unspecifiable Definition of High
Complexity 251
Limits of Explanation: Complexity and Explanation
of the Principle 252
The Superior Power of Negative Rules of Order 254
Negative Rules of Order Constrain the Social Cosmos 256
Science Is Constrained by Negative Rules of Order 258
Negative Rules of Order in Society 259
Excursus: The Context of Scientific Inquiry 261
Excursus: Notes on the Methodology of Scientific
Research 264
References 267
14 The Resolution of Surface and Deep Structure
Ambiguity 269
The Inevitable Ambiguity of Behavior 271
Deep Structure Ambiguity Is Fundamentally Different
from Surface Structure Ambiguity 273
Why Is Behavior in Linear Strings? 276
 Contents xix

Excursus: Ambiguity and Dimensionality 280

Dimensionality of the Mind 285
Surface Structures, Deep Structures, and the Ambiguity
of Dimensionality 287
References 291

Part V The Corruption of Knowledge: Politics and the

Deflection of Science
15 Political Prescription of Behavior Ignores Epistemic
Constraints 295
Progressivism and the Philosophy of Rationalist
Constructivism 297
Liberalism and the Division of Labor and Knowledge 298
The Data Relevant to PoliticalTheory Is Economic,
Psychological and Sociological 301
Science Is No Longer a Spontaneously Organized
Endeavor 306
The Moral: The Constructivist Desire to Make
Everything Subject to Explicit or “Rational” Control
Cannot Work 308
Evolved Social Institutions Are Indispensable Knowledge
Structures 308
Sociology Has Lost Sight of Earlier Insights 313
References 316

Part VI Appendix: The Abject Failure of Traditional

Philosophy to Understand Epistemology
16 Induction Is an Insuperable Problem for Traditional
Philosophy 321
Is There a Foundation to Knowledge? 323
From Certainty to Near Certainty or Probability 325
The Retreat to Conventionalism in Sophisticated
Neo-Justificationism 327
Hermeneutics and the New Pragmatism 330
Realism Is Explanatory, Instrumentalism Is Exculpatory 333
xx Contents

References 335
17 Rhetoric and Logic in Inference and Expectation 337
The Functions of Language 339
Criticism Is Argument, Not Deduction 339
Theories Are Arguments, and Have Modal Force 340
Adjunctive Reasoning in Inference 341
Science Is a Rhetorical Transaction 343
References 347
18 Rationality in an Evolutionary Epistemology 349
Comprehensive Views of Rationality 350
Critical Rationalism Starts with the Failure
of Comprehensive 352
Comprehensively Critical Rationalism 354
Rationality Is Action in Accordance with Reason 355
Rationality Does not Directly Relate to Truth or Falsity 356
Action in Accordance with Reason Is a Matter
of Evolution within the Spontaneous Social Order 358
Rationality and Its Relativity 361
Rationality Is Neither Instantly Determined Nor Explicit 362
Like the Market Order, Rationality Is a Means,
not an End 364
Comprehensively Critical Rationality is Rhetorical
(and so Is All Knowledge Claiming) 365
Rationality in the Complex Social Cosmos 366
The Ecology of Rationality 367
Science and Our Knowledge Must be Both Personal
and Autonomous 369
Rationality and The “New” Confusion About Planning
in Society 370
References 376

References 379
Name Index 395
Subject Index 401
 List of Tables

Table 4.1 Commonly discussed measurement scales in social

domains, with brief defining relations, appropriate
statistics, and type of test (Siegel, 1956) 56
Table 7.1 Common scale types, permissible transformations,
domains, arbitrary parameters, and meaningful
comparisons (after Houle et al., 2011) 108
Table 11.1 Differences between physicality (inexorable laws
or physical boundary conditions) and, on the other
side of an epistemic/cybernetic cut, the functional
realm of choice control 203
Table 13.1 Minimum complexity for the understanding
of science: two types of activity and three levels
of analysis After Weimer (1979) 262
Table 17.1 Truth tables for common propositional forms
compared to the adjunctive conditional form 342

xxi
 1
Preface

A truism of the biological and social studies is that topics such as “the
methodology of scientific research” or “epistemology” or “philosophy
of science” are to be met with a groan. Students avoid such courses
until forced to take them at the last minute, and most professors and
researchers don’t want to “waste their time” either teaching them or
studying the issues they present. The faculty assume they are wasting
their time because the students won’t learn or remember anything,
and the students hate mathematics and don’t want to memorize more
formulas (which, unfortunately, is almost all such courses involve) just
to pass another course. Such “high falutin’” issues are regarded either as
detached entirely from day-to-day research, or as involving mere rituals
one must go through to look “scientific,” which means they are only
something to pay lip service to in order to publish in prestigious jour-
nals. The usual attitude is that we are doing just fine on our own, happily
adding our well-designed research to a “significant” body of knowledge
that is steadily accumulating, and our students are doing just fine doing
what we tell them to do. So writing a book on methodology and episte-
mology is to be avoided, exceeded in its avoidance only by the onerous
tasks of reading such a book, or teaching its contents. If you must do it,
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2023
W. B. Weimer, Epistemology of the Human Sciences, Palgrave Studies in Classical
Liberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17173-4_1
2 W. B. Weimer

be sure you just tell us we are doing fine, and only update our entrenched
approaches, don’t point out that “musty old literature” has continually
shown that what we are doing is of little empirical or theoretical value,
because we don’t believe that ancient history.
The answer to that line of response is “No, we have not done
well at all.” That “osterich approach” (head buried in the sand at the
mention of something frightening) has an appeal, but also a very high
cost. Nagging issues invariably intrude—how can we be contributing
to scientific knowledge if we don’t even know what knowledge is, or
how it is acquired? How can we follow any scientific “method” if we
have no knowledge of what science is, or no understanding of what
adequate methodology involves? How can we evaluate whether presti-
gious professor X’s work and research program is better than professor
Y’s? How do we know our field is “scientific” (which invariably means
“empirically based”) in any sense? What if the “practical” advice we
provide to everyday citizens in the world is wrong, or more often, just
useless? Not really knowledge at all? What makes you think that what you
are doing evades the well-articulated criticisms of the past and present?
Such issues are present because of one simple fact: epistemology puts
unavoidable constraints upon ontology. The nature of epistemology—
how and what we can know—puts limits, which can never be exceeded,
upon speculation about ontology—our theories of what exists or is
real. It tells us what we can consider as actual knowledge claims, and
what, beyond those claims, remains unknown and in many cases simply
unknowable, and in all honesty must be labeled as just metaphysical
speculation.
And not surprisingly, when epistemological issues are presented
outside the usual boring framework of mathematical and statistical
procedures one is forced to use in order to get published, both students
and faculty are quite willing to learn about them.
Is it possible to present epistemology to both researchers and students
in a fashion that they will both learn from and also find palatable? Hope-
fully yes. I believe it can be done, and this volume is an attempt to
do so. The alternatives to traditional statistical memorization texts or
philosophical discussions of probability, induction and knowledge “jus-
tification,” and so on can be far more interesting, and far more alive, as
 1 Preface 3

are the issues in the sciences themselves. Indeed, they often are issues in
the sciences themselves.
Examined from the standpoint of an evolutionary approach to epis-
temology (and the nature of the empirical differences between what
is involved in scientific knowledge claims in the physical sciences in
comparison to the “soft” social and life sciences), the answers are
devastating to the osterich approach noted above, to traditional and
contemporary philosophy (especially the philosophy of social science)
and the methodology primers based upon them. Knowledge is not what
traditional accounts say it must be, and there is no such thing as “the”
scientific method to acquire it. Commonly used sophisticated research
techniques are often incapable of delivering either real measures (or
real experiments) or meaningful results or actual “knowledge” at all.
The social domains (especially) study entities of essential complexity in
spontaneously arisen orders of functional phenomena in a very different
manner than how we study the “simple” and always identical phenomena
which the physical domains postulate as their objects. These approaches
are complimentary (both are necessary, neither reduces to the other)
rather than either-or.
A final preliminary point. Please note at the outset one thing that
this book is not. Epistemology should not be confused with, nor is it
synonymous with, either the philosophy of science or the philosophy of
the social sciences. Epistemology has to do with the theory of knowledge
and its acquisition. It is concerned with the nature of science only to the
extent that science exemplifies the nature of and acquisition of knowl-
edge. The philosophy of science is broader, dealing with other topics that
are common to scientific endeavors, and discusses the nature of knowl-
edge only to the extent that it is important for topics such as the nature
of explanation, the “logic” of science, the issue of reductionism, recent
hot button issues such as sex and race in science, and other topics. For
that, there are many introductory texts available, such as Godfrey-Smith
(2003), or Risjord (2014). This book does not compete with them, and
it does not care what contemporary philosophers say except with regard
to the nature of knowledge.1 In fact, actual epistemology is more and
more the domain of psychologists and scientists (ranging from physicists
and biologists to psychologists, sociologists, and economists) and less
4 W. B. Weimer

and less the province of traditional justificationist and nonevolutionary

philosophy. Much of the core findings overviewed in subsequent chap-
ters originated in the work of biologists, economists, mathematicians,
and psychologists rather than philosophers of science.

Chapter organization and main themes. After an introductory

chapter, we begin in Part I by looking at human knowledge as the result
of nervous system classification, which is always judgmental (or value-
laden), and focus upon the fundamental activity of measurement. The
chapters 2 through 8 below introduce epistemic problems of mensu-
ration—of correctly (or meaningfully) assigning numbers to data in a
domain—which are far different in the complex subjects than in physics,
where it is easy and “natural” by comparison. The necessity of epis-
temic constraints upon knowledge—such as the necessity of a duality
of descriptions of physical (rate-dependent or dynamical) and functional
(rate-independent, intentional or “teleological” or meaningful) nature in
all sciences—requires fundamental changes in our conception of how
knowledge is acquired. Traditional philosophical accounts of knowledge
and its acquisition are incorrect and outmoded. Knowledge is not “justi-
fied true belief” gained by inductive “logic” from a given factual basis as
its source. As Xenophanes said 2500 years ago, no one has ever known
certain truth, and “even if by chance he or she were to utter the final
truth, they would not know it: For all is but a woven web of guesses.” The
biology and psychology of inference and expectation—which supplies
our cognitive apparatus and thus our knowledge—cannot be modeled
upon the conception of individuals as mindless machines (like robots)
fully and completely described by “social physics” and molecular biology.
Better accounts have long been available, and we need to discard the still
all too prevalent revivications of earlier inadequate views and utilize the
better ones. Measurement and its role provides a case in point.

Mensuration in physical theory is easy because it deals only with

identical and unchanging objects, never always differing living subjects.
Objects such as atoms, alpha particles, quarks, etc., are all identical,
and any one of them can substitute for any other one in our exper-
iments and theory. But those objects could never be known to exist
 1 Preface 5

as such unless there were subjects (of conceptual activity) who, as

agents, study the physical domain and construct theories about it. Those
theories transcend the purely physical domain which they are about—
they are epistemic products of human conceptualization. All knowledge
depends upon the existence of the functional or semiotic (as well as
pragmatic) domain. Conceptualization can transcend and harness the
physical realm: it is not a deterministic byproduct of purely physical
processes (or just another physical process). Our choices harness physi-
cality and produce genuine novelty—new behavior and new knowledge,
even new existent things. Traditional determinism exists only in the rate-
independent realm of human conception—it is a theoretical idea, a way
of conceiving things, not a fact of “external” reality. That novelty (from
our choices) can even reshape the physical universe, since it (our thought)
can guide our actions in doing so—as in our building of extensions of
our senses for knowing our environment, and machines and artifacts that
terraform our planet and change our econiche. We are co-creators of our
econiche.
Part II examines the nature of our knowledge of both ourselves and
the non-mental realm (including our own bodies in the latter cate-
gory) as disclosed by structural realism. Epistemology is the theory of
the nature of knowledge as well as just its acquisition. Here, we must
trace the history of the gradual refinement of realism, the thesis that
there is a real world external to our senses which is causally responsible
for what we can come to know, to indicate why the world of appear-
ance (naive or direct realism and the doctrine of phenomenalism) is
not reality. All we can know is a matter of the relations between our
appearances, never any ultimate or intrinsic properties of that reality.
This separation of the knower from the known is explored throughout
the book in many aspects and ramifications. In traditional philosophy,
these are problems of the relation of mind and body—stemming from
the Cartesian separation of a mental “substance” from the physical
world (originally intended to stand outside reality to judge or assess it).
Descartes created the ontological dualism of the mental and the physical.
Examination of epistemology refutes such a speculation. What we can
know—the nature of epistemology—constrains what ontological theo-
ries are possible. Part II reformulates the distinctions between knower
6 W. B. Weimer

and known as dualisms in epistemology, not ontology. We can reformu-

late the separations of traditional mind–body problems by distinguishing
the physical from the functional domains of existence, and explore how
fundamentally emergent phenomena characterize living systems even
though they are embodied in “physical” forms. In place of the usual
mind–body problems, we find that epistemology requires a context of
constraints consisting of the complimentary employment of dualisms
(opposed or irreducible alternatives). Without specifying accounts from
the viewpoint of these dual perspectives, we are unable to explain life or
the evolution of the knowledge it has produced.
Part III explores inescapable dualisms and complimentarities in
science, life, and the nature of knowledge. Epistemology is one of the
life sciences. That is a striking claim to traditional approaches, used
to regarding it as an ahistorical “rational reconstruction” of codified
propositions. The theory of knowledge can only be understood as an
endeavor carried on by living subjects of conceptual activity. All life
sciences require an evolutionary and historical account, because no two
subjects (and subjects came into existence only with the beginning of
life) are ever identical fundamental objects (as are postulated in physics).
Throughout history, thinkers have argued about whether there is only
one, or are many, theories of knowledge necessary for the different scien-
tific endeavors. Because the physical sciences were traditionally assumed
to be more advanced than others, it was also assumed that they are
paradigm exemplars of both what knowledge is (and should be) and
how it is achieved. Many argued that there is only one ideal type of
knowledge, exemplified by physics and its hard science cognates, and that
nonphysical domains (whether dealing with biology, higher mammals as
individuals [as in psychology], or social phenomena as products of living
groups) have not made as much progress because they failed to adopt the
mathematics and controlled methods of inquiry that have worked so well
for physics (as examined in Part I). Part III explores why physics alone
is only a beginning. Problems of agency, meaning, and evolution, such
as what is an elementary concept (like specifying what is an organism),
transcend the laws of nature disclosed by physics. Agents are functional
phenomena exhibiting self-determination by internal constraint systems,
not physical ones determined by external constraints. There is genuine
 1 Preface 7

emergence in the biological as well as the conceptual realms, involving

such things as the semantic closure of physical and symbolic compo-
nents, the inability of laws of nature to explain speciation, the role
of downward causation in adaptation, the anticipatory structure of all
organismic cognition, the role of ambiguity and ignorance, why rules of
behavior are not laws, and more.
Part IV looks at domains of essential complexity, arguing that there
are fundamental differences in the complexity of the subject matters
involved in the human science domains, which therefore require a
different sort of explanatory framework to understand their subject
matter. The domains of complex phenomena can neither be studied
nor be explained in the same manner as the simple domains. First, the
domains in question cannot be experimental (as discussed in previous
Parts). All human sciences (including the biological, psychological, and
social) are indeed empirical domains subject to “scientific” inquiry that,
because of their inherent complexity, can never have the sorts of control
or measurement theory scaled mathematical underpinnings found in the
“hard” sciences. They are thus empirical but not experimental (in the
sense of physics). We do demonstration studies to show that general
patterns of behavior are found, and cannot expect ratio-scaled point
predictions in essential complexity. It turns out that the rules of behavior
most capable of guiding the indefinitely extended domains of behaviors
are negative in character, since an attempt to specify a potentially infi-
nite list of “positive” actions to be performed cannot be held in any
living memory. Evolution has chosen to guide organisms by negative
prohibitions to general classes of behaviors. Learning is negative in char-
acter in an uncertain and changing world. We learn what mistakes to
avoid instead of what specific behaviors we must produce. Ambiguity and
lack of understanding surround us at all times in the real world. That is
our evolutionary existential predicament. The only resolution to ambi-
guity requires the provision of more context. In the environment, that
resolution is provided by action—by sampling more—walking toward
and around an unfamiliar object to see what it is, listening to more of
a speaker’s words and “going back over” their context to see which of
several alternatives was intended, and so forth. In short, behavior—ours
or others—can only be disambiguated and “understood” by supplying
8 W. B. Weimer

the derivational history behind the surface structure linear strings of

which it is constituted. That approach is the future of psychology and
all the other complex human sciences.
Part V explores a problem for scientific inquiry that has become
cancerous in the era of “big science” and big government. That problem
is not the acquisition of knowledge but rather the suppression of knowl-
edge and its acquisition (and dissenting views) by factors external to the
practice of science itself. When research is commissioned and directed
by other social forces rather than the intellectual curiosity of researchers
themselves—by religion, by political expediency, by momentary “correct-
ness” of opinion—the unwillingness to disagree with powerful funding
agencies and fear of loss of job security and one’s place in the research
community (being canceled) will force results to be determined by those
external demands. The problems posed by free inquiry into a domain
will be supplanted by research tailor made to agree with what politi-
cians, funding administrators, special interest groups, or vocal popular
opinions or “feelings” demand, instead of by facts and theories resulting
from unhampered research. The technology of politics (there is no
“science” thereof independent of social psychology, anthropology, soci-
ology, and economics) provides almost nothing except more and more
egregious examples of this. Progressivist researchers and funding sources
have become cultural Marxist to such an extent that unbiased research
(or research that does not support its momentary correctness) is all but
impossible to find, and harder still to evaluate.
Part VI concludes with a survey of problems in epistemology as it is
found in traditional Western philosophy. These views all define knowl-
edge as justified true belief, while the history of philosophy is that of
the gradual abandonment of this conception, first in a classic sense,
then in the last two centuries as a “neo” version based upon probability,
and finally with the “positive” thinkers (who believe genuine knowledge
is possible) being overcome by the skeptics who, for one or another
reason, give up on the possibility of knowledge and adopt one or another
form of conventionalism or instrumentalism instead. Here, we will find
the majority of references to currently popular positions, primarily in
critical discussion, because they exemplify one or another of these inad-
equate views. When understood from a non-justificational evolutionary
 1 Preface 9

epistemology, they can be put into perspective and in many instances

reinterpreted very differently.
Speaking of understanding, that is the first issue to address in
Chapter 2.

∗ ∗ ∗

This volume stems from over 50 years of study and interest in epis-
temology, philosophy of science, and the methodology of scientific
research. It owes much to discussions with, and the work of, the late
professors Wilfrid Sellars, Paul Meehl, Herbert Feigl, David Bohm,
Grover Maxwell, Thomas S. Kuhn, William Bartley III, Donald T.
Campbell, Sir Karl Popper, Gerard Radnitzky, as well as professors
Robert Shaw, Howard Pattee, John Anthony Johnson, William N. Butos,
James Wible, Doctors Neil P. Young, Gunter Trendler, and Leslie Marsh
(for wanting it in his series on classical liberalism and helping it get
there), and many more, but with special thanks to the late professor
Friedrich A. Hayek, who, as another marginal man on the border of
many disciplines, understood most of the problems addressed in this
volume before the rest of us even knew that there were problems.

Note
1. Rosenberg on the philosophy of social science. A comprehensive intro-
ductory text by Rosenberg (2016) provides a contrast to what is intended
in this book. Like this volume, Rosenberg argues for a historical approach,
describing the persistent issues, but in “the new vocabulary” of the social
fields for each new edition. I certainly agree that we face “old wine in new
bottles, but just as intoxicating as ever” (see p. x) in stating and criticizing
these issues. At that point, however, we diverge. Despite characterizing the
“one central problem” of the social sciences as “what sort of knowledge
they can or should seek,” there is no discussion of the issues this book
addresses. Written from the standpoint of a philosopher, Rosenberg’s
volume regards epistemology from that standpoint alone rather than as
one of the life sciences. As such, it offers no treatment of the evolu-
tionary theory of society stemming from the eighteenth-century Scottish
10 W. B. Weimer

moralist philosophers (historically the first social “scientists,” and also not
noted by Rosenberg) through the nineteenth-century continental liberal
theorists to the twentieth-century Austrian economists, or the theory
of spontaneously organized complexity for the biological and psycho-
logical individual, as well as for the social order as the result of action
but not design stemming from Hayek and the evolutionary epistemolo-
gists discussed in Weimer (2022a, 2022b). Nor is there any discussion
of the conceptual connection between that evolutionary approach to
epistemology and the social philosophy of classical liberalism. Thus one
searches in vain through Rosenberg’s Chapters 7 and 8 (entitled “Social
psychology and the construction of society” and “European philosophy
of social science”) for anything comparable to the discussions in this
book, or the discussions of the fundamental issues of mensuration found
in the first seven chapters. Nor is there any understanding of the fact
that rationality is not exhausted by any explicit or fully conscious theo-
ries thereof. The approach of this volume is that epistemology, as one
of the life sciences, is informed primarily from biology and the social
domains (such as psychology and economics) rather than from traditional
justificationist philosophy of the sort criticized in the appendix chapters.
That is why central positions discussed here stem from the philosophy
of physics, “origin of life” research, individual and social psychology,
economics, and similar areas. In a nutshell, despite large overlap on several
topics, the focus of this volume simply is not upon the traditional or
“received view” philosophical positions on social science epistemology. In
that regard, this volume seeks to replace that traditional viewpoint with
a more adequate one to guide future inquiry. Evolutionary epistemology
is not traditional philosophy—it points toward its replacement by non-
justificational philosophy, and informs it with recent scientific problems
and potential solutions as replacements for traditional ones.

References
Godfrey-Smith, P. (2003). Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy
of Science. University of Chicago Press.
Risjord, M. (2014). Philosophy of Social Science: A Contemporary Introduction.
Routledge.
 1 Preface 11

Rosenberg, A. (2016). Philosophy of Social Science. Westview Press.

Weimer, W. B. (2022a). Retrieving Liberalism from Rationalist Constructivism:
History and its Betrayal (Vol. 1). Palgrave Macmillan.
Weimer, W. B. (2022b). Retrieving Liberalism from Rationalist Constructivism:
Basics of a Liberal Psychological, Social and Moral Order (Vol. II). Palgrave
Macmillan.
 2
Understanding, Explaining, and Knowing

Any fool can know. The point is to understand

Commonly attributed to Albert Einstein

What is knowledge, and how is it used? Knowledge is the result of our

theoretical understanding of our selves and our econiche—our life and
the universe we inhabit. We use our knowledge claims to understand
ourselves and our world. Knowledge is functional rather than physical—
it functions to aid survival. But what is the “understanding” for which
we use knowledge?

The Nature of Understanding

Einstein was claimed to have said that any fool can know—the point is
rather to understand . Regardless of its source, we need to explore this
idea. In both science and ordinary reasoning, as well as logic and math-
ematics, understanding is the same thing: we reason by classification
and analogy to determine identity of apparent disparates through a basic
statement of equivalence, literally an equation of the terms. In all cases,
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13
Switzerland AG 2023
W. B. Weimer, Epistemology of the Human Sciences, Palgrave Studies in Classical
Liberalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17173-4_2
14 W. B. Weimer

this equation is symbolized as an equals sign:

X equals Y(or X = Y).

In ordinary language, this means that something (X) is equal or equiv-

alent to something else (Y). All argumentative claiming, which is what
both commonsense and scientific knowledge claims are, is of this form.
We are fundamentally analog devices, making analogies—arguing this is
like that—in the process of understanding. In all theories, it is a specifi-
cation of how that which we wish to account for (to explain) is identical
to (or equal to, or can be taken to be, represented as, etc.) something
else, which is a description that is on the other side of the “equals” sign.
Symmetry between descriptions based upon identity is what constitutes
human understanding. Explanations in science and ordinary discourse
are rhetorical—they are arguments claiming that equality (which means
identity in some specifiable form) obtains between two disparate terms
or propositional structures: In ordinary language, we are saying “This
is equal to that,” or “this isa that,” to use a common “logical” term.
We are creatures who are in the business of making equations to relate
disparate things, all the way from the most basic judgments of similarity
or disparity in nervous system activity through thing-kind identifications
of classes to scientific theories. All knowledge claims are arguments. They
are arguments in two essential respects. First, they are arguments for the
equivalence of what is on each side of the equals sign. We explain by
saying: “This” means “that.” And this conceptual equivalence structure
entails that knowledge, as part of a subject’s conceptual scheme, can never
be identical to that which is known, and in consequence, entails that the
knower cannot be the same as that which is known.
A second essential sense of argument is that theories and knowledge
claims are themselves arguments. We argue—or affirm and attempt to
persuade others—that “since my theory is true, the world (of the theory’s
data domain) is necessarily the way it is.” Our “logic” is not the tradi-
tional material implication or “if—then” reasoning of classical logic, but
more the adjunctive implication of the old Stoic logicians, who addressed
propositions (not classes), and whose implication statement is “since—
necessarily.” We are in the business of argumentative claiming, and our
 2 Understanding, Explaining, and Knowing 15

theories are always arguments. In the classic distinction of logic, dialectic,

and rhetoric, science is a series of argumentative rhetorical transactions,
not just a matter of “logic.” (Whether it is ever dialectical is an empirical
issue.)
While we are not all mathematicians (or logicians), we all constantly
do what they do for a living—make equations between knowns (or, what
is the same thing, taken-for-granteds) and unknowns. Thus thing-kind
identification, or the problem of stimulus equivalence as it came to be
known in psychology, is the fundamental problem at the heart of all
human activity and inquiry. Everything we do is basically a matter of
judgment —of searching for identities and noting disparities. This leads
immediately and inexorably to problems of functionality, and meaning
and its manifestations, because (physical) stimuli are equivalent (or are
dissimilar) within our conception only because they mean the same (or
mean dissimilar) thing(s) to a living (in the functional-semantic realm)
subject. We judge things to have the same or different meanings. Under-
standing is a basic psychological process. It is our attempt to adapt to an
ever-changing world.
What can we learn in determining identities? If we postulate that, to
use a classic example, F = ma, do we learn anything? No. What we do in
making such an equivalence statement is literally just that—we postulate
something as a starting point. As a knowledge claim, such a postulation
may then be seen to occupy a definite place in our conceptual schemes
and to entail that certain results must obtain in the universe if our postula-
tion is true or near to the truth. The laws of nature (as our best knowledge
claims in physics) have to be tied down to empirical reality to have
any empirical meaning. Are the deductive consequences of such schemes
instances of learning? Not if learning is taken in its usual interpretation
as learning-from-experience. The empirical realm has not yet played any
role in determining the correctness of the conjectured postulate or claim.
We have to look at the world to see if the postulated and deduced results
fit with observed reality. Thus empirical reality enters later, after the fact
from an explanatory theory, in the testing of a knowledge claim.
16 W. B. Weimer

From Axiomatics to Hypothetico-Deductive

Method
With the advent of non-Euclidean geometries in the nineteenth-century
physics dropped the pretense (left over from infatuation with Euclid)
that laws of nature were somehow justified or true because they were
derivations from “true” premises (axioms). Theorists realized that they
had simply been postulating (conjecturing, guessing, whatever) what was
necessary to have the “laws” work. Those postulations were called theo-
ries of the realms involved. Before that era, explicit empirical theories
did not play a central role in explanations. Heinrich Hertz is usually
credited with beginning this new approach. Boltzmann (in a lecture in
1899) summarized Hertz’s change from axiomatics: Hertz noted that
“Especially in the field of physics our conviction of the correctness of
a general theory ultimately does not rest on its derivation by means of
the Euclidean method, but rather on the fact that the theory leads us
to correct inferences about appearances in all the cases then known.…
Experience, after all, remains the sole judge of the usefulness of the
theory…” (1960, p. 248).
Hertz proposed that theories were thought “pictures” of a domain (a
view further fleshed out in the mid-twentieth century by, among others,
Hanson, 1958, 1970, Bohm, 1965; and Kuhn, 1970, 1977). Boltz-
mann noted that our task is only to construct what he called “inner
representation-pictures”:

Proceeding in this way, we do not as yet take possible experiential facts

into consideration, but merely make the effort to develop our thought-
pictures with as much clarity as possible and to draw from them all
possible consequences. Only subsequently, after the entire exposition of
the picture has been completed, do we check its agreement with experi-
ential facts…. We shall call this method deductive representation. (ibid.,
p. 249)

Thus was born the famous hypothetico-deductive “method” of science

that has since dominated positivist and empiricist accounts. From
that time on, so-called hard science abandoned the axiomatic method
 2 Understanding, Explaining, and Knowing 17

(although pockets of social science have attempted to retain it). This

H-D account of explanation provides only “the logic of the finished
science report” and deliberately ignores entirely what became called the
context of discovery (where learning occurs), leaving discovery and thus
the growth of knowledge to “mere” psychology or sociology (which is
where David Hume, in the Treatise in 1739, and Adam Ferguson in his
Essay in 1767, had already left it).

Learning and the Limited Role of Experience

First consider how we learn (not what). What is the role of experi-
ence, or of empirical results, to the practice of science? The answer can
be stated quite succinctly: very crucial and very limited. The evolu-
tionary approach to epistemology (Campbell, 1974b, 1988, Popper,
1963, Weimer, 1979) teaches us that all learning is a matter of trial and
error elimination. Our hypotheses can never be shown to be completely
correct (any more than a species can be perfectly adapted to an econiche),
since any interesting hypothesis has an infinitude of data that is relevant
to its assessment. We can never accumulate, let alone assess, an infi-
nite amount of data. But finding any instances of errors, results that are
incompatible with the hypothesis, always suffices to show that the whole
picture cannot be correct. As thinkers since Duhem (in 1914/1954) have
noted, something must be discarded because of the inconsistency—either
the hypothesis is false, the data incorrectly collected or interpreted, or
some combination thereof.
Advances in understanding consist in clarifying abstract conceptual
frameworks (which are by definition transempirical) and creating and
assimilating new data to emerging conceptual-theoretical structures.
Empirical data are relevant to these processes, but can never totally
resolve issues in them. Conceptual issues can be changed (sometimes
clarified, sometimes confused) by data, and data can be changed by
conceptual frameworks (because facts are always relative to theories), but
no resolution in either direction is ever final. Experience in its role in
the creation of data is relevant but never decisive. We infer to facts (the
18 W. B. Weimer

theoretical entities we call “data”) rather than from them. All factual attri-
bution is relative to a theoretical (conceptual) framework. As Goethe said
so aptly centuries ago, were the eye not already attuned to see it, the sun
could not be seen by it. If our nervous systems did not already operate
with a theory to specify what constituted a fact we could have no facts at
all. Facts are not neutral bits to be mindlessly picked up and thrown into
a bucket. They are as conjectural as our other theories. We are co-creators
of our knowledge of the “external” world.

Where Does the Illusion of Certainty Come

From?
Against the very fallible and uncertain factual “basis” of our knowledge,
there is a sense of certainty in our conceptual structures. We know (or
rather, feel we know) that there are eternal verities (e.g., 2 + 2 = 4)
and theoretical truths (e.g., in the kinetic theory, molecules in a state
of rapid agitation must of necessity be hot—that statement represents
an analytic truth, a definitional fusion of the concepts, a statement of
equivalence between the terms). We feel that things must necessarily
be related, and since that is so, things are necessarily internally related.
Why is this so? Probably the answer is in the over extension of the
theory of human linguistic conceptual structures—which are syntactic
and semantic definitional fusions or statements of equivalency—from epis-
temology into ontology, which is to say, from a theory of the acquisition
of knowledge into a thesis about the nature of reality itself. It is true
that syntactic systems, if internally consistent, yield “deductions” that are
“eternal verities” in the sense that they are valid without time limit within
that system. Such truths are true ex vi terminorum, literally in virtue of the
definition of the terms involved, and not because of any content that we
attach to them via a separate empirical or semantic component or iden-
tification. The doctrine of internal or semantic necessity over extends
definitional fusions from conceptual thought into the “outside realm,”
the nature of the dynamical universe itself. For this overextension, there is
no empirical evidence at all. The necessitarian position, tenable in empty
 2 Understanding, Explaining, and Knowing 19

syntactic systems like logic or mathematics, is untenable when extended

to reality—to empirical domains.

Mathematics and Other Notational Forms

of Linguistic Precision
Mathematical expressions in science are not knowledge or sources of
knowledge—they are just notational shorthand devices to express iden-
tity relationships. Thus mathematics is propaedeutic to science rather
than definitive of its essence. Human understanding is about explicating
conjectured identity relationships, and that may or may not involve
mathematics. A brief excursus with an apocryphal story concerning
a clash between Denis Diderot and Leonhard Euler about a putative
“mathematical proof ” for the existence of God illustrates this, as well
as the perennial clash between the “hard” heads who attempt to math-
ematize everything and the “muddle” heads who do not. The fictional
confrontation several centuries ago at the Russian Imperial Court had
Euler putting on the board the following formula, which was intended to
have the explanatory power of a mathematical proof. This showy proce-
dure mirrors the procedure of mathematical: “proof ” as an explanation
(or explanatory structure). It begins with producing an equation and
then claims to “deduce” certain or true consequences from it:

(a + b)n
=X
n
After writing this, Euler solemnly intoned to Diderot “Donc Dieu existe;
repondez!”.
Let us see what this empty syntactic formula could possibly mean,
to determine whether we need safe conduct tickets back to France (as
Diderot was alleged to demand from the Russian Court) or not. In plain
English what Euler said is:

Some unknown quantity, called X, is equivalent to some other quantity

which is determined by adding the two quantities denoted by a and b,
20 W. B. Weimer

which are then multiplied by their sum for n number of times, and then
the resultant total is divided by the same number n. Thus God exists.
Now reply.

Put in this fashion, no one could possibly construe this pronouncement

as a “proof ” (which has to “deduce” a conclusion) of anything at all.
All this or any other mathematical formula does is provide a shorthand
notation for how we are to manipulate specified quantities in order to
obtain their equivalence to something unknown, usually designated by
“X.” All of mathematics is a matter of putting empty symbols that we
agree to have represent something on one or the other side of an equals
sign. What the symbols stand for is a shorthand notation for quantities
and operations to be performed upon quantities (or on other symbols
standing for quantities). The meaning of those symbols in the real world
is totally outside the symbols themselves. All of mathematics specifies
what is on each side of the undefined primitive symbol =, understood as
what is expressed in natural language English as the word “equals.” When
we “solve” a problem in math, we specify that the unknown (the x) is
equivalent to the symbol manipulation procedure denoted on the other
side of the = sign, and plugging in certain quantities to find a solution
specifies a particular determination as that result. Mathematics is about
performing operations on quantities or variables standing for quanti-
ties to produce equivalences. Nothing more, nothing less. Mathematical
formulae have no meaning whatsoever—math is about the manipula-
tion of contentless symbols. Syntactic structures are totally meaningless
in themselves. We have to add semantic content to the syntax to have
anything meaningful.
So where is the meaning in mathematical concepts and formulae? The
answer is always the same: outside of the symbols themselves, in a theory
of what the symbols stand for. Mathematics is a set of symbol manipu-
lation systems according to syntactic structuring devices, or the rules of
symbol manipulation (this is why a mindless algorithmic machine can
do mathematics). Whether “pure” or applied, mathematics is constituted
of nothing more nor less than syntactic rules of determination of equiv-
alences. The study of pure mathematics uncovers systems of syntactic
structures that specify certain forms of outcome when the rules of symbol
 2 Understanding, Explaining, and Knowing 21

manipulation are applied. Applied mathematics utilizes the empirically

empty systems of pure mathematics after independently having postulated
their relevance in the description of given empirical domains. Within
the realm of the pure or un-interpreted syntactic structures (or calculi),
there is no meaning attached to the merely nominal symbols and all
that is of concern is the consistency of the structures. Once consistency
of symbols is established, results of symbolic manipulation (if correctly
carried out) are certain and thus inviolate. Within all applied mathemat-
ical systems, “applied” by (non-mathematical) theoretical identification
with (idealized) empirical phenomena, there is no certainty whatever
even though the empty symbol system is consistent and thus internally
coherent and “certain.” Mathematics is nothing but symbol manipula-
tion systems defined by their syntactic rules. There is never a semantic
component in pure mathematics—all meaning comes from our inter-
preting in some outside theoretical framework what those empty symbols
represent.

How Does Meaning Relate to Understanding?

Human understanding is inherently a matter of relations. The primitive
form of relation we employ is judgment of equality—the equals sign in
an equation. Equations relate meanings on one side of an equals sign to
meanings on the other side. “Equals” is a relation (a relational structure).
As such, it is a purely structural or syntactic concept, with no intrinsic
meaning beyond the structuring it provides. To say that X equals Y (or
with negation, that X does not equal Y) does not put any particular
meaning in the “equals,” it only relates the meanings found in speci-
fying X and in Y. So understanding is not meaning. Understanding is only
tangentially related to meaning because it states that some given meaning
is equal to another given meaning. This applies in both mathematics
and natural language (or any aspect of semantic cognition). Meaning is
not a relation—in itself it is a predication. All extant “theories of mean-
ing” tend to ignore this (for example, meaning as “use,” or meaning
as neural activity, or meaning as XYZ). They are in fact theories (or
statements) of the relationships in which meanings participate. What
22 W. B. Weimer

meaning is as a predication—which is what an actual theory of meaning

should provide—appears to be beyond our reach except from an evolu-
tionary perspective. Given our present knowledge, meaning appears as a
brute fact; it is something that we take for granted as referring to our
perceived existential predicament, and let it go at that. One should not
confuse “what meaning is” with the issue of how it arose. Here, we have a
more adequate picture: it appears to be a concomitant to classification in
neural activity, as when an organism must make a rapid classification—
a value judgment—as to whether a stimulus pattern is threatening or
harmful or not threatening and not harmful. The rapid reptilian “fight
or flight”—or even earlier faint response (still used to good effect by
the opossum or hognose snake)—appears to be the source of our basic
meanings. Mammalian meaning arose in and is based in the primitive
judgments of what are traditionally called “passions” and emotions, not in
cold, reflective cognition, which is a relational reworking and refining of
that initial broad based snap judgment classification in the CNS. What
we call reason is a refinement of judgmental passion, not a different,
somehow superior, kind of judgment.

The Use of Mathematics in the Social

and Physical Domains
Looking at an article in a physics journal usually reveals a bewildering
welter of equations and little explanatory or theoretical text. Looking
at an article in psychology usually reveals dense text and rarely if ever
any equation. This is indicative of the differing subject matter of the
social and physical domains, and reflects a corresponding difference in
the nature and role of mathematics in such disciplines. In the physical
domain, the “subjects” are all identical objects in a class, having no unique
properties whatever. Electrons and photons, for instance, are all iden-
tical instances of their class and are completely interchangeable. In the
social domain, all subjects are different, having vastly different knowledge
and experience and skill and evolutionary or developmental history. No
two human beings (or any living animals) are the same, no matter how
carefully they are matched on some dimension by the most meticulous
 2 Understanding, Explaining, and Knowing 23

“experimenter.” This fundamental and unavoidable difference between

the “subjects” of the social domains and the objects of the physical
domains forces us to acknowledge equally fundamental and unavoidable
differences in the nature and role of measurement (and thus the use of
mathematics) in these domains.1
Physicists make models describing patterns of interaction among
conceptually (and, what appears to us as empirically) identical objects.
Mathematical formulae (usually algebraic) describe abstract patterns
when we do not assume, or are unable to possess, particular informa-
tion about the specific entities actually involved. A familiar example is
thermodynamics, where we know absolutely nothing about a movement
or a magnitude of any individual molecule in a cloud of gas. Here, the
so-called law of large numbers enables us to make statistical probability
statements that do allow predictions of probabilities with a high degree
of accuracy, but these predictions can never be about or even involve any
single individual entity (e.g., molecule of gas) in any way. Physics makes
predictions of ensembles only, never of a single fundamental “object.”
Physics is a matter of idealizations about identical members of totally
homogenous classes.

Measurement
Measurement is always and indispensably an act of classification (and
thus inherently a judgment, an assignment of meaning to the flux of
non-mental phenomena). Physicists and social scientists assign numbers
as “measurements” of things, and assume that there is no problem in
doing so. However, the fields are fundamentally different here. Physi-
cists classify by measuring definite magnitudes which have been shown
to have powerful generalizability and important mathematical properties
in virtue of having been made according to specified scaling theory prop-
erties. Social scientists cannot blindly follow this approach because their
attachment of “numbers” to living entities does not meet the criteria of
scaling and measurement found in physical domains. Consider this:
24 W. B. Weimer

The true reason why the physical sciences must rely on measurements is
that it has been recognized that things which appear alike to our senses
frequently do not behave in the same manner, and that sometimes things
which appear alike to us behave very differently if examined.
The physicist,... was often compelled to substitute for the classification
of different objects which our senses provide to us a different classification
which was based solely on the relations of objective things toward each
other.
Now this is really what measurement amounts to: a classification of
objects according to the manner in which they act on other objects. But
to explain human action all that is relevant is how the things appear to
human beings, to acting men. This depends on whether men regard two
things as the same or different kinds of things, not what they really are,
unknown to them. (Hayek, 1983, pp. 23–24)

In social domains such as economics or psychology, one cannot expect

to find permanent (or even relatively constant) relations between aggre-
gates or averages. Our populations are never large enough for the law of
large numbers to apply—and thus we can never actually ascertain ratio
scale based probabilities. The social domain does not actually deal with
true mass phenomena, nor with identical objects. It deals with ambi-
guity. Every living individual subject is different in some crucial aspect
that no experimenter can ever hope to “measure” (or often even know
about, let alone “control” for). This ensures that there are inherent and
fundamental limitations to our possible knowledge and hence to our
predictive ability. This cannot be overcome by making finer or more
precise measurements. Perfectly fine measurement would merely confirm
what we already know—that every subject is unique in detail with
respect to every other subject. Hence the differences that cause our lack
of knowledge cannot be “measured” away. All we can hope for is to
find generalized or abstract patterns of regularity, and we will never be
able to predict particulars in any social domain. This is a fundamental
conceptual difference between the complex functional and the relatively
simple physical domains that science studies. This difference in what our
knowledge consists of in these very different domains of physicality and
functionality will ramify throughout the discussion that follows. In all
cases, there will be only a bare minimum amount of symbolic equations.
 2 Understanding, Explaining, and Knowing 25

There is never anything in any of the equations of any science that cannot
be said completely and correctly, with no loss of semantic content, in the
natural language(s) available to our common sense reasoning. Mathe-
matics provides only a shorthand formulation, literally a shortcut, to be
used as an aid in understanding. All of science can in principle be done in
a natural language with adequately determinate semantics and concepts
to substitute for the mathematical functions and variables. We use math
because it is so economical as a shorthand approach to working out
the logical consequences of relationships that would be often impossibly
long and cumbersome to state in natural language. In no case is there
any extra or hidden meaning in the mathematics beyond the syntactic
consequences of the symbol manipulations.

Understanding and Knowledge Are

Functional Concepts Not Subject to Natural
Law Determinism
The domain of our understanding is within the conceptual realm of prag-
matics. Pragmatics deals with functions and meanings in their contexts.
Functional specification is not and cannot ever be physical. The laws of
nature that physics can disclose do not apply to the functional domain.
But while we cannot become Superman (or Woman!) and leap over tall
buildings because we cannot violate those natural laws, our functional
specifications and concepts are not determined by the laws. So long as we
do not violate natural law constraints, we are free to do (and to think
and theorize) whatever and however we want. Thought and theory are
constrained by the laws of nature, but they are not determined by them.
There is genuine freedom, true novelty, and unpredictable creativity
in human conceptualization and behavior. Creativity or productivity
is rule governed, but it is not directly determined by natural laws or
deducible from prior events. Laws are inviolate and unbreakable. Rules
of conduct (which apply to thought and indeed to all behavior) can be
broken and changed, corrected and often improved, even refuted. Under-
standing how this can be so is one of the most important things that
26 W. B. Weimer

an evolutionary approach to epistemology can provide. We must realize

that understanding and explanation in an evolutionary framework is not
every-where every-when deterministic.
Finite organisms in a universe of infinite variety and complexity
face immense problems in surviving. To survive requires adaptation to
the ambiguous flux, the local environment (the econiche) in which an
organism is found. How does this occur? Aside from religion (super-
natural determinism or predestination), only one hypothesis has been
advanced and explored: that evolution through time has enabled adap-
tation to an econiche for those populations who survive. We no longer
debate this (it is taken as a truism) and now debate only what possible
“mechanisms” or factors are involved in the process of evolution. Factors
to consider are the structure of the universe and its necessary (law-like)
characteristics, the enormous welter of “frozen accidents” constituting
the boundary and initial physical conditions, the evolved structures
within the organism and their necessary characteristics, the interactions
of populations of organisms, and the econiche constructed by the species.
Thus theories of evolution must focus on the context of constraints
provided by the natural environment (usually regarded as the domain of
the “physical” sciences), constraints provided by the evolved structures
of the organisms and their capabilities (the biological and psychological
domains), and group structure constraints on populations (for humans,
cultural or sociological factors).
What is human knowledge, and what is an explanation? What is
understanding? We should consider proposed answers for how well they
address issues from a coherent evolutionary point of view, and how
testable the theories they generate can be. Traditional philosophy (as
noted in the Appendix chapters), based on the idea that knowledge is
justified true belief and the justificationist metatheory of inference and
rationality (Weimer, 1979), is simply false and serves no purpose except
to provide a series of puzzles and paradoxes for “academics” to publish
about in their quest for tenure, promotion, and self-aggrandizement. In
terms of explanatory adequacy for basic concepts such as understanding,
explanation, knowledge, learning, inference, and dozens more, justifica-
tionist accounts are bankrupt, as several epistemologists have argued,
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and children, and strangers?” I answer, in this case, a man may
shew his dislike, that others may not be hurt by the bad example. But
he should delay the proper, home reproof, ’till his wife and he be
together alone.

10. Next to wisdom is mildness, a very necessary virtue in this

society. No woman can endure her husband’s government with
comfort, if gentleness do not temper it. The Lord Jesus is the most
gentle and meek governor in the world: and when he requireth us to
take his yoke upon us, he commends himself as meek and lowly, his
yoke as easy and his burden as light. This is the best precedent for
husbands to follow, the most worthy copy for them to write after. The
apostle teaches us to be gentle, not only to the good, but also to
them that are froward. Surely then the husband must be gentle
toward his wife, tho’ she be of a froward disposition. Yea, we are
commanded to shew all meekness to all men: much more should
each man shew it to his wife. And that in both the parts of authority,
in directing and recompensing.

11. As to the former, the husband should beware of extending the

use of his commanding power too far. Let him use it as seldom, and
as little as possible. It may suffice him to know, that God has given
him the right of directing, in every thing which is not sinful. But in the
exercise of it, he must shew himself of a kind and free nature, not
rigorously taking upon him, to command all he may, but willingly
gratifying his wife, in some, in many, in most things, that she may
with the more chearfulness, be subject to him in others. Let him also
shew mildness, in forbearing hard commandments, as much as
possibly he can. Beware of crossing your wife, without cause, and
forcing her to things against her natural disposition. Enjoin nothing of
this kind, unless there be an absolute necessity. And as to the
manner of commanding, let nothing be imperiously prescribed, but
with sweet kindness and familiar requests. Indeed, if the wife will try
for mastery, and strive to cast off the yoke of obedience, then it is
needful for the husband, with good words, to stand for his authority,
even somewhat stifly and peremptorily professing, that he will have
his will in things lawful. But this course should be rarely taken, and
that only in matters of importance. In other cases it is better mildly to
wish this or that, than haughtily to enjoin it.

12. But mildness is never so needful as in reproving, both with

regard to the matter and the manner of it. For the matter; find not
fault with every foible; chide not for every infirmity. What is not of a
gross nature, or done wilfully, may be passed over either with none,
or half a word. The love which passes by weaknesses is necessary
toward strangers; much more with those who are so nearly united.
*Be not therefore extreme or rigorous, but be affected toward thy
wife, as a tender mother toward her child. Pray to God against all her
faults; see and commend all her virtues: but petty wants and little
ordinary weaknesses, seldom take notice of, or reprove. Let her
perceive, that thou dost, but wilt not know them. And thy
unwillingness to see and reprove, will make her, if she has any spark
of generosity, more willing to see and reform. But an ever-lowering
and ever-chiding husband will make his wife worse than she would
otherwise be. For the manner of reproving, even when it is most
needful, it should be very gentle. The words and gestures used to
press the fault, should be mild and amiable, breathing out love and
pity at once. No patient is so desirous of health, that he will drink a
potion scalding hot. So it is with reproof: if it, as it were, scald the ear
with bitter upbraiding, with railing words, and a fiery look, it will never
gain passage to the heart. Compassion, kindness, declaring your
sorrow for her fault, desire of her good, and care for her amendment,
these incline the will to accept of an admonition, and help the effect
of it. I am not against the wholesome earnestness of reproving; but
this may be without bitterness or fierceness. An admonition is then
healthfully sharp and earnest, when a man with much plainness of
speech and strength of reason lays open the greatness and danger
of the sin, and vehemently enforces them on the sinner’s
conscience: but compassionately still, with a declaration of more
sorrow than anger, of more grief for her fault and danger, than
displeasure against her person.
 CHAP. VI.
Of the Wife’s peculiar Duties.

THE
1. special duties of a wife may be reduced to two heads, To
know herself the inferior, and to behave as such. First, She must
know herself the inferior; she must be thoroughly convinced, that she
is not her husband’s equal, without which there can be no content,
either in her heart, or in her house. Where the woman counts herself
equal with her husband, (much more, if she count herself better) the
root of all good carriage is withered, the fountain thereof dried up.
Whoever therefore would be a good wife, let this sink into her inmost
soul, “My husband is my superior, my better: he has the right to rule
over me. God has given it him, and I will not strive against God. He
is my superior, my better.” Unless she has learnt this lesson
perfectly, unless she has it at her fingers ends, if her very heart does
not thoroughly agree thereto, there will be nothing between them but
wrangling, repining, striving: so that their life will be little else than a
continual battle, a trying for masteries. Let us grant, you have more
wit and understanding than him, more readiness of speech, more
skill in business. Yet consider; your servant may exceed you in all
these, as much as you do him. And yet you would be loath that your
servant should claim an equality either with him or you. Know then, a
man may be superior in place to him, who is his superior in gifts: and
know likewise, thou dost abuse the gifts of God, if thence thou
infringest thy husband’s superiority. Wherefore, with all thy
understanding, understand this, that God has made him thy governor
and ruler, and thee his inferior, to be ruled by him, and to submit to
him in all things. Though he be of meaner birth and smaller capacity,
tho’ he had no wealth or name before thou didst marry him, yet from
that hour the case is changed, and he is no longer beneath thee, but
above thee. Set it down therefore as a conclusion never to be called
in question. “My husband is my superior.”

2. The wife knowing herself the inferior, must, secondly, behave

as such, by reverence and subjection to her husband. First, By
reverence. She owes this to her husband, as much as the children or
servants do to her: yea, as they do to him; only hers is sweetened
with more love and familiarity. She is no less bound to reverence her
husband, than are the rest of the family. This alone is the difference;
she may be more familiar, not more rude, as being more dear, not
less subject than they.

3. And this reverence must be both inward and outward. First,

she must have an inward, dutiful respect for her husband. She must
regard him as God’s deputy, not looking to his person but his place,
not thinking so much, what he is, as whose officer. So the apostle,
Let the wife see that she reverence her husband. Of all things, let
her not fail in this. He here prescribes such a loving, not slavish, fear,
as stands with the closest union of heart. And from this fear, she
abhors and shuns, as the greatest evil which can befal her, next to
the breaking the commandments of God, to displease or offend her
husband. We stand in due awe of God, when we loath the breach of
his commandments, as the greatest of all evils. And the wife duly
stands in awe of her husband, when next to that evil, she shuns the
disobeying or grieving him, who is above her, next to God. I know
many ♦women care as little for their husbands, as their husbands do
for them. But if thou wilt ever please God, take much pains with thy
heart, to make it stand in awe of thy husband. As a wife grows in
this, so may she look to get the better of all her other infirmities: as
she is careless herein, so shall she be pestered with various other
evils. “But how shall she bring her heart to this?” By looking thro’ her
husband to God the author of marriage, and putting herself often in
mind, not of his deserts, but of God’s ordinance. The husband is to
the wife the image and glory of God: the power that is given to him is
God’s originally, and his by God’s appointment. Look not therefore
on the qualities of thy husband, but upon his place. If thou despisest
him, the contempt redounds upon God, who hath ordained him to be
thy head. If therefore thy heart be seasoned with the fear of God,
thou wilt fear thy husband also.

♦ ‘woman’ replaced with ‘women’

4. And this inward will produce outward reverence, both in her

words and actions. Her words are either to himself, of him behind his
back, or to others before him. And, 1. Her words to himself should
neither be sharp, sullen, passionate, not rude, careless or
contemptuous: such as shew neither anger, nor neglect, but all
lowliness and quietness of affection. What kind of words would you
dislike from a servant or child? Those must you not give your
husband. For the same duty of fear is in the same words, and with
the same plainness enjoined to thee that is to them. Indeed a wife,
as I observed before, may be more familiar: yet there is an excess of
familiarity which is blame-worthy. Why should a woman be so over-
bold as to call her husband, Tom, Dick, Ned? Could she speak
otherwise to her child or servant? Certainly those speeches of hers
which are most familiar should still have a print of reverence upon
them.

5. Her words also to others in his presence should be such as

witness a due reverence to him: In his company she should be more
cautious of her behaviour to any, than otherwise she need to be. Her
words to children and servants in his sight, ought not to be loud or
snappish. If she perceive a fault in them, she should remember her
better stands by, and therefore not speak, but upon necessity, and
then utter the reproof in a more still and mild manner, than she might
have done in his absence. You allow not your children or servants to
be loud before you. And will you be so before your husband!

6. A wife’s words likewise concerning her husband behind his

back, should be dutiful and respectful. She must not talk of him with
a kind of carelessness, much less with reproachful terms. Hence the
apostle recommends the example of Sarah: who when she but
thought of her husband, in the absence of all company, (Gen. xviii.
12.) reverently intitled him, My Lord. Who would bear a child
speaking against his father behind his back? And shall it be thought
sufferable in a wife? He that allows not an evil thought of the prince,
will not allow evil speeches of the husband.

7. Yea, the very gestures and countenance of a wife, as well as

her words, should be mixt with reverence. Both good and bad
tempers have more ways of uttering themselves than by the tongue.
Solomon speaks of an eye that despiseth his mother: so the eye of a
wife may be a despising eye and her gestures may proclaim
contempt, tho’ her tongue be altogether silent. But rude and
contemptuous behaviour are no less uncomely than disrespectful
words. Wherefore, if you condemn these in your children toward
yourself, allow them not in yourself toward your husband.

8. The second duty, subjection, implies obedience to his

commands, and submission to his reproofs. The former is expresly
enjoined in those words, Let the wife be subject to her husband in all
things. And indeed, if she refuse it to him, how can she require it of
the children and servants? For it is due to her only as his deputy, and
a substitute under him. “But how far must she be subject to him?”
The apostle tells us, In all things, in the Lord. Obedience, you see,
must be universal: only so that it may be in the Lord. In every thing
wherein obedience to him would not prove rebellion against her
Maker, she is bound to obey, without any farther question. An
English subject is not bound to obey the King in any thing but what
some law enjoins. His will is no law, neither does it bind the
conscience of his subject. But the husband’s will is a law to his wife,
and binds her conscience in all things indifferent. Nor does even this
suffice, unless she obey readily, quietly, chearfully, without brawling,
contending, sourness.

9. The latter, submission to his reproofs, is also plainly required in

these words, As the church is subject to Christ, so must the wives to
their own husbands in every thing. Now, bearing his reproofs is
doubtless a necessary part of the church’s subjection to Christ. Of
consequence it is a necessary part of the wife’s subjection to her
husband.

CHAP. VII.
Some Application of the Whole.

AND
1. * first, this yields a good instruction to young, unmarried
people; not to rush unadvisedly into this state. A thing of so
difficult a nature, should not be hastily undertaken. If they get not first
their hearts full of grace, and their heads full of wisdom, they will find
their hands full of work, an house full of trouble, and a life full of woe.
Dost thou desire to be married? Unless thou wouldst meet with gall
instead of honey, see what wisdom, what patience, what grace fit to
govern, or fit to obey, thou findest in thyself. Get these against thou
comest to use them, or marriage will yield thee small contentment.
Vain youths will marry, before they have any power to practise, any
understanding to know their duties. But he that leaps over a broad
ditch with a short staff, will fall into the midst: and he that enters into
marriage without great grace, shall fall into disquietude and vexation.
Let unmarried people think of this, and be wise before pain teaches
them wisdom.

2. Secondly, I advise all married persons to be well acquainted

with these duties, and to mark their own failings therein. Let the wife
know her’s, the husband his, and both, the common duties. I desire
they would each observe their own, and not each the other’s failings.
Indeed it may be feared, many will be the worse for what has been
said, because they heard amiss. The husband may perhaps ring his
wife a peal concerning her duty, and tell her, how her faults were ript
up; and yet never consider his own. The wife may tell him of his
faults, when she has little or nothing to say of herself. Thus both will
be worse, while they seek to upbraid each other, and not each to
amend one. Unwise man! Unwise woman! Why hast thou not the
greatest care, to save thy own soul? Couldst thou mark what was
good for another’s disease, and not what was good for thy own?
Brethren, sisters, let this be altered in us. If thou be an husband,
have more care to know that, for which thy own soul must answer,
than what lies to the account of another. So thou that art a wife; and
woe to that man or woman, who sees not more failings in him or
herself than in the yoke-fellow. If thy heart were right, thy own sins
would be more grievous, and thy yoke-fellows less. Learn, therefore,
to pass by their failings more easily, and be more censorious toward
thy own. Learn to judge thyself. *He never yet learned to work well at
any work, that would cast his eyes more upon his neighbour’s
fingers, than upon his own. But oh! how common is this? Every man
would be a good husband, if his wife, were not so bad! And she
would be a good wife, if her husband were tolerable. All the
accusations, all the judgings are darted at each other: but what folly
is this? Idle man or woman, it is not the requiring duty from another,
but the performing what belongs to thyself, that will make thee a
Christian; that will comfort thee in temptation, rejoice thee in death,
and stand for thee in judgment.

3. In a word. Know thy own duty, mark thy own failings, and thou
wilt not quarrel with thy yoke-fellow. There is no better means of
peace, than for every one to learn his own work, and labour to mend
his own faults. Have you then both been to blame? Repent both, and
strain not courtesy which shall begin. Hast thou been a foolish,
passionate, or an unkind husband? Not regarding thy wife’s good?
Cry not, “She has been thus and thus;” but repent of thy own sin.
Seriously confess it to God. Beseech him to make thee a better
husband, that she may be a better wife. Hast thou been a brawling,
disobedient, or discontented wife? Ask thy heart before God, and
dissemble not. If so, clamour not against thy husband, exclaim not
against his passion or unkindness; but condemn thyself, and call
upon God, to make thee reverence and obey thy husband, as a
commander under him. Intreat him to make thee a better wife, that
he may be a better husband. Let each mend one, I mean himself,
and contention will cease. Pray each for yourself first, then for the
other: labour to see wherein you yourself have offended: and be not
skilful to cast the fault upon another, but to cast it out of yourself. So
shall your loves be sure, your lives comfortable, your deaths happy,
and your memories blessed for ever.

4. Before I conclude, it may not be improper to sum up the duty of

married persons, as parents, and as masters. Their duty as parents
respects either the temporal or the spiritual good of their children.
With regard to the former, you owe them protection and provision of
necessaries, according to that rank and degree, wherein the wisdom
of God has placed you. You are carefully to protect your children,
from all the evils and dangers, to which infancy, childhood and youth
are exposed. You are also to nourish and sustain them; not only to
provide for them for the present, but to take care for their future
subsistence. If you have not a patrimony to leave them, it behoves
you to leave them an art or calling, whereby thro’ diligence, with the
blessing of God, they may procure food convenient for them. *In the
choice of this calling, you should chiefly have an eye to their general
Christian calling, and consider not so much what will conduce most
to their temporal profit or honour, as what will most effectually
advance their spiritual and eternal interest. This is a weighty point: it
were well if all parents would deeply lay it to heart. It should next be
considered, whether the calling proposed be suitable to their genius
and inclination: which are to be consulted on this head, only not as
much as their eternal welfare.

5. With regard to their spiritual good, your first labour of love is, to
present them to God in baptism. You are then to inure them to good,
to instruct and admonish them, to educate them in the knowledge
and fear of God, to season their minds as early as possible with the
fundamental truths of religion, and in such a manner as is best suited
to their capacity, to train them up in all holiness. Every instruction
should be seconded by example. Let them continually see, as well
as hear, how they ought to walk acceptably, and to please God. Be
peculiarly careful to set before your children the copies and patterns
of the virtues which you teach. And let them neither see nor hear any
thing from you, which you would not desire to have copied by them.
Even an Heathen, and none of the most virtuous, could say,

Maxima debetur pueris reverentia.

We ought to reverence and stand in awe of children that nothing may

be spoken or done in their sight, which may taint their tender minds.
They are prone to imitate any; but more especially those who are so
nearly related to them. Which undoubtedly they will be most ready to
do, when example strikes in with their natural propensity to evil.

6. If neither good examples nor instructions will prevail, then

correction becomes a duty. And this should first be given in words,
before you proceed to severer methods: yet not in railing, or foul or
bitter language, but in calm and sober reproof. If that fail too, then
use the rod. But whenever this correction is given, let it be with all
the expressions of love and concern, which the nature of the thing
will admit. Let it be timely, before ill habits are contracted, at least,
before they have time to take root. And let it be moderate, not
exceeding the quality of the fault, or the tenderness of the child.
Immoderate, or ill-natured and passionate correction, is so far from
profiting children, that it very frequently frets and sharpens their
spirits, and makes them more stubborn and untractable. If they are
of a softer temper, it frights and dispirits them. This is also the natural
effect, of a sour, harsh, unkind behaviour. Hence those solemn
cautions of the apostle, Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath,
(Eph. vi. 4.) Avoid whatever tends thereto. Use no demeanor, no
actions or words, or way of speaking, which has such a tendency.
And again, Fathers provoke not your children to anger, lest they be
discouraged, Col. iii. 21. It is a different word from that used in the
former text, Μὴ ἐρεθιζετε Do not purposely fret or teize them: lest
you should dishearten them too much, lest you should destroy their
courage and vigour of mind, and make them of a faint, fearful,
dastardly spirit. The direction doubtless belongs to both the parents,
but is more immediately addrest to fathers, as they are generally of
rougher and harsher spirits than the mothers, and not so much
restrained by natural fondness. Lastly, correction must not be given
in anger: if it be, it will lose its effect on the child, who will think he is
corrected, not because he has done a fault, but because the parent
is angry.

7. These directions chiefly relate to young children. But even after

they are grown up, you are still engaged, to watch over their souls, to
observe how they practise the precepts, which have been inculcated
upon them from time to time, and to exhort, encourage, and reprove
them accordingly. You are also to bless them, first by your prayers.
Parents are under a peculiar obligation, by daily and earnest prayer
to commend their children to God’s protection and blessing. You are,
secondly, to bless them by your piety. See that you be such persons
in all holiness of conversation, that from you the blessing of God may
descend upon your posterity.

8. As masters, you are, 1. To be just to your servants, whether

apprentices, journeymen, or houshold servants, in faithfully and
exactly performing the conditions on which they engaged to serve
you: particularly with regard to food, and the other necessaries or
conveniences of life. You are, 2. To admonish and reprove them for
their faults, more especially faults against God. But let this be done
with all tenderness and mildness; forbearing not only bitter and
opprobious language, but even threatening, knowing that your
master is in heaven, and that there is no respect of persons with him.
You are, 3. To set a good example to your servants; otherwise
reproving will be but lost labour. It is your duty, 4. To provide them
with all means of necessary instruction, and to allow them sufficient
time to worship God, in private as well as in public. You are, 5. To
beware that you give them only reasonable and moderate
commands, that you do not make their service toilsome to them, by
laying on them greater burdens than they can bear, or greater than
you would impose, or they would bear, if they were not of the
houshold of faith. Lastly, You are to encourage them in well-doing, by
using them with that kindness, which their faithfulness, diligence, and
piety deserve: in all your dealings with them remembring, you are to
give an account to your master of the usage of your meanest
servant.
 Directions to Children.

CHILDREN,
1. says the apostle writing to the Ephesians, (chap. vi.
ver. 1.) Obey your parents in the Lord. To which he adds,
Honour thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with
promise, (with a particular promise annexed; for the promise
annexed to the second commandment, does not belong to the
keeping that command in particular, but the whole law:) that it may
be well with thee, and thou mayst live long upon the earth. And this
promise is by no means to be confined to the time of the Jewish
dispensation. On the contrary, there are not wanting many instances,
even in later times, of persons eminently dutiful to their parents, who
have been rewarded with eminent health and prosperity. Tho’ still it
is acknowledged, that this promise, as most others, may be
understood under the Christian dispensation, in a spiritual and more
exalted sense.

2. But how are children to honour their fathers and mothers?

First, by reverencing them. This is an unquestionable duty,
manifestly contained in the very term honour. And this inward
reverence is to appear, in the whole outward behaviour. It is to be
expressed both in their speeches and gestures, in their words and
actions. Their speech should always testify honour, giving them the
most respectful titles which their condition will bear. Likewise (unless
on some peculiar occasions) your words before them should be few.
For talkativeness before any person, has the appearance of
disrespect. You should also carry yourself with all lowliness and
modesty, while in the presence of your parents: so that your whole
carriage may be the natural expression of the respect lodged in your
hearts.

3. This reverence is not to be with-held, on account of either their

supposed or real infirmities. For be the faults of the parents ever so
great, this gives the children no authority to despise them: seeing
whatever their tempers or their behaviour be, they are your parents
still. Neither are you to take any step which might cause others to
despise them. You cannot therefore mention their faults to others,
without bringing guilt upon your own soul. You cannot mention them
behind their back, and be guiltless. It is your part to conceal all their
faults and infirmities, to the uttermost of your power. Be not like Ham,
who bewrayed his father’s nakedness, and was cursed of God to his
latest posterity. Rather imitate the piety of Japhet and Shem: cover
with all care whatever you disapprove of in a parent. Hide it from
every one else, and, if it were possible, even from yourself.

4. A second duty which children owe to their parents is love. We

are to bear them a deep, real kindness, an earnest, tender good-will,
heartily desiring all manner of good to them, and abhorring to speak
or do any thing, which might give them uneasiness. This will appear
no more than common gratitude, if we remember, what our parents
have done for us. That they were the instruments not only of bringing
us into the world, but also of sustaining us after: and certainly they
that weigh the cares and fears which attend the bringing up of a
child, will judge the love of the child to be but a moderate return for
them. This love is to be exprest several ways. First, in all kindness of
behaviour, carrying ourselves, not barely with awe and respect, but
with tenderness and affection. It is to be exprest, secondly, in praying
for them. The debt which a child owes to a parent, is so
inconceivably great, that he can never hope, fully to discharge it
himself. He is therefore to seek the assistance of God, and
continually to beg him that has all power in heaven and earth, to
return whatever good his parents have done him, seven-fold into
their own bosom.

5. A third duty which children owe to their parents is obedience.

As this is plainly implied in the fifth commandment, so it is expresly
enjoined by the apostle: Children, obey your parents in the Lord.
(Eph. vi. 1.) And again, Children, obey your parents in all things; for
this is well-pleasing to the Lord. (Col. iii. 20.) We owe them
obedience in all things, unless where their commands are contrary to
the commands of God. In every thing of an indifferent nature,
whatever they enjoin, we are to do. The case is the same with regard
to the authority of parents over their children, as with regard to that
of husbands over their wives. The will of your parent is a law to you,
as soon as it is signified to you. You are to comply with it
immediately, not for wrath, not only to avoid this, but also for
conscience sake. Such is the will of God concerning you: so high is
the authority which he hath entrusted them with.

6. And yet we are to obey them only in the Lord: only so far as
consists with his authority over us. Therefore, if any of their
commands are contrary to the commands of God, in that case our
duty to God must be preferred. If therefore any parent should be so
wicked as to require his child to steal, to lie, or to do any thing
unlawful, the child offends not against his duty, tho’ he disobey that
command. Nay, he must disobey; otherwise he offends against an
higher duty, even that which every child of man owes to his Father
which is in heaven. Yet when it is necessary to refuse obedience, it
should be done in so modest and respectful a manner, that it may
plainly appear, not stubbornness but conscience is the ground of that
refusal. Let this appear likewise by your ready and chearful
compliance with all their lawful commands: as well knowing, that
wherever the command of a parent is not contrary to any command
of God, there the child is in conscience bound to obey, whether in a
weightier or lighter matter.

7. *Nothing therefore but the unlawfulness of their command, can

excuse the disobeying our parents. If any instance of disobedience is
more inexcusable than others, it is the marrying against, or even
without their consent. Indeed, parents have so peculiar a right to
their children, that to give themselves away without their allowance,
is not only an high act of disobedience, but of flagrant injustice. And
hence we see, that among God’s antient people, if a young woman
had even made a vow, she was not suffered to perform it, without
the consent of the parent, (Numb. xxx. 5.) Indeed children ought to
have a negative voice, and not be compelled to marry without their
own consent. But if they marry without the consent of their parents,
let them expect no blessing from God.
 8. A fourth duty which children owe to their parents, is the
assisting them in their wants, of what kind soever they be, whether
sickness or weakness of body, decay of understanding, or lowness
of estate. In all these the child is bound to assist them, according to
his ability. For the two former, weakness of body and infirmity of
mind, none can doubt of the duty, when they remember how every
child did in his infancy receive the same benefits from his parents.
The child had then no strength to support, no understanding to guide
itself. But the care of the parent supplied both these: and therefore in
common gratitude, when either of these becomes the parent’s case,
the child is to perform the same office again. Likewise, as to the
relieving their poverty, it is but just to sustain thy parents, who
formerly sustained thee. And that this is also implied in honouring
our father and mother, our Lord himself teaches. For when he
accuses the Pharisees of rejecting the commandment of God, that
they might cleave to their own traditions, he instances in this
particular, concerning the relieving of parents. Hence it is manifest,
this is a part of the duty, which is enjoined in the fifth commandment.
And such a duty it is, that no pretence whatever can release us from
the performance of it. This should be carefully observed. No fault of
the parent can acquit a child of this duty. For as St. Peter tells
servants, that they must be subject, out of conscience toward God,
not only to good and gentle masters, but also to the froward: so
certainly it concerns children, to perform every instance of filial duty,
not only to kind and virtuous parents, but to the harshest and
wickedest. For tho’ gratitude to a kind and tender parent, be a
forcible motive to make a child pay his duty, yet that is not the
principal, and much less the only ground for it. This is laid in the
authority of God, who commands us to honour our parents. And
therefore, were we to suppose a parent to have been so unnatural,
as never to have done any thing to oblige a child, yet
notwithstanding this, the commandment of God would remain in its
full force: and what is prescribed therein we are bound to perform,
whether the tie of gratitude be added or no.
 Directions to Servants.

ST.thatPaultheyconfirms
1. his directions to masters by that consideration,
also have a master in heaven, and there is no respect
of persons with him. He regards no man’s outward condition: the
poor and the rich are the same to him, and the servant is as his
master. And the apostle, it seems, had learned of him, to be without
respect of persons. For he has the same care for servants as for
their masters, and is as large in his advices to them: nay, much more
so; probably considering, that they had fewer advantages of
education, and fewer opportunities of instruction. He is therefore
remarkably particular in his directions to these, which are given at
large in the epistle to the Ephesians, and to the Colossians. He gives
them farther directions in the first epistle to Timothy, and again in the
epistle to Titus. If we add hereto the advices given them by St. Peter,
we shall have a full account of the duties of Christian servants.

2. The great duty required of all servants is subjection or

obedience to their masters. So St. Peter (1 Pet. ii. 18.) Servants be
subject to your masters; St. Paul, exhort servants to be subject to
their own masters: and again, both to the Ephesians and Colossians,
(Eph. vi. 5. Col. iii. 22.) Servants, obey your masters after the flesh.
Allowing that these are your masters only in a qualified sense, and
only during this state of flesh and blood; allowing you have but one
proper, absolute master, to whom you owe unlimited subjection: yet
to these also, as being invested with a part of his power, you owe a
limited obedience and subjection.

3. Indeed this obedience varies according to the various kinds of

service wherein servants are connected with their masters. The sorts
of servants most common among us are, 1. Labourers, or workmen,
with whom we agree by the day, to do such work at such a price, and
who accordingly serve us during that time: 2. Journeymen, whom we
agree with for a longer space, to assist us in our calling, on such
conditions: 3. Houshold servants, who usually contract by the year,
to perform, on the considerations specified, either some particular
branch of houshold work, or (if there be only one servant) all manner
of work whatever from time to time is needful to be done in the
family. 4. Apprentices, who are engaged for several years, chiefly to
serve their masters in their particular trade or calling. Now, how far
are all or any of these obliged in conscience, to obey and be subject
to their own masters?

4. The apostle answers. During the time agreed, obey your

masters after the flesh in all things: that is, in all things specified in
that agreement which was made when you entered into service. So
a labourer or workman is, during his short service, to follow the
direction of him that hired him. A journeyman is to do the same, with
regard to that work which he agreed to perform. Domestic servants
(to whom particularly St. Peter speaks; for this is the proper meaning
of οἱ οἰκέται) are obliged to obey their master or mistress, either in
one branch of houshold-business, if they contracted for this, or
otherways with respect to the whole work of the house: doing every
thing at such times and in such a manner, as is appointed by their
superior. And an apprentice is to obey, according to the terms of his
indenture, wherein it is usually agreed, by his parents or friends, in
what kind of service he shall be employed, according to the
discretion of his master.

5. To sum up this. This first ¹ part of a servant’s obedience, is, to

forbear doing things of his own head, without or against the consent
of his master: the reason whereof is plain. During the time of his
service, he is not his own; neither ought the things he does, to be for
himself. Both his person and his actions are all his masters; and the
will of his master is his rule. In particular, servants, 1. may not go
whither they will, but only where they are ordered, or at least,
permitted to go. 2. They ought not to do their own business. When
Jacob was Laban’s servant, tho’ he had flocks of his own, yet he fed
his master’s flocks, and committed his own to his sons, Gen. xxx.
35, 36. 3. They are not to do what business they please themselves,
but what is allotted them by their master. 4. They ought not to marry,
while the time of their service lasts, without the consent of their
master. 5. They may not before their covenanted time expires, go
away from their master.
 ¹ Several of the following paragraphs are partly extracted from
Mr. Gouge on domestic duties.

6. The second part of a servant’s obedience is, to do whatever

his master commands. To look to the hand of his master, (as David
speaks) ready to execute any thing he would have done. He is also
to obey, by hearkening to his instructions, not only in matters of his
secular calling, but likewise in the things of God, in whatever
concerns his Christian calling.

7. The manner wherein this obedience is to be performed, is

largely declared by both the apostles. Obey your masters, saith St.
Paul, with fear and trembling. This indeed is not to be taken literally:
it is a proverbial expression, denoting the utmost care, watchfulness,
and diligence. Do it fearing God; from a principle of loving fear, a fear
of offending your master who is in heaven. Be subject to your
masters with all fear, saith St. Peter, with earnest, tender reverence.
With a constant fear, either of injuring, grieving or displeasing them,
by any part of your behaviour.

8. So proper is this fear of his master in a servant, that the want

of it is a denial of his master’s place and power. This God intimates
in that expostulation (Mal. i. 6.) If I be a master, where is my fear?
That is, you plainly shew, you do not account me your master,
because there is no fear of me in your heart. But wherever it is, it will
draw servants on to perform all duty. And the more it abounds, the
more desire and endeavour there will be to do all things well.

9. An especial means to create and preserve this fear is, a due

consideration of the ground of their master’s place and power: which
is, the appointment of God: God has placed them in his stead, and in
part given them his power. They are the deputies and ministers of
God. And therefore in scripture, the title lord, is after a peculiar
manner, given them. There can therefore be no excuse for despising
them, tho’ they should be poor, mean, weak, or aged. The poorest
and weakest have the same place and authority, which the richest
and strongest have. All bear the image of God: therefore, to despise
them shews, that you regard not God’s image at all.

10. This fear may be shewn either in speech or behaviour: in the

former, 1. By sparing to speak in the presence of their master,
without some necessary cause: 2. By forbearing to reply, when they
observe their masters unwilling they should speak any more: 3. By
attending to what their masters speak: shewing such a respect to
them, as Samuel did to God, when he said, speak; for thy servant
heareth. When they have just occasion to speak, this fear may be
shewn, 1. By giving proper titles to their masters, 2. By not talking
more than the occasion requires, 3. By speaking in a meek and
humble manner, 4. By chusing a fit season, both when he is at
leisure to hear, and when his mind is calm, not troubled with any
passion, and lastly, by giving a present and ready answer, to
whatever their master says to them.

11. Servants should shew a due fear of their masters in their

behaviour, 1. By such dutiful and submissive obeisance, as becomes
their sex and place, according to the custom of the country and place
where they are, when they have occasion to come to them, to go
from them, or to receive any charge of them. 2. By standing in his
master’s presence. 3. By uncovering their heads before him, and
4. Sobriety and modesty both in countenance and in the whole
carriage. And from the same principle you should endeavour to
please them well in all things, (Tit. ii. 9.) Do every thing in the most
obliging manner. If it be possible, please them in every thing: study
to give them satisfaction in whatever you do. Do it in the way which
they like best: labour that your whole service, your whole behaviour
may be acceptable to them. And do all this with good will, (Eph. vi.
7.) with cordial benevolence, with love to them, springing from love
to God: with an earnest desire to make their lives as easy and happy
and comfortable as you can.

12. Yet all this time, beware that you do not act as men-pleasers,
as having no further design than to please men, to gain their
approbation or esteem, to be well-thought of and well-spoken of; or
to acquire any temporal advantage which may result from their
favour or good-will. Serve not with eye-service, (a certain
consequence of serving as men-pleasers) but to do just the same in
the absence of your master, as you do when under his eye. Let his
absence or presence make no difference in your industry and
activity. You may examine yourself by this rule: there is no surer
guard against self-deceit. Do I labour in the very same manner at
other times, as when my master is looking on? If I do not, I am no
better than a man-pleaser, I am a vile eye-servant in the sight of
God.

13. An infallible way of avoiding this, is to obey them with

singleness of heart, that is, without any temporal motive, with a
single eye, with the one view of pleasing God. The apostle insists
upon this over and over, and that in the strongest manner. Obey your
masters in the singleness of your heart as unto Christ, not with eye-
service, but as the servants of Christ, doing service unto the Lord,
not unto men. And again, servants obey your masters in all things,
with singleness of heart; and whatsoever ye do, do it as unto the
Lord, not unto men. For in whatsoever you do with a single eye, ye
serve the Lord, Christ. Whatsoever is thus done to any earthly
master, he accounts done unto himself. And for all this he will say to
you in that day, Well done, good and faithful servants: inasmuch as
ye have done it to one of these, for my sake, ye have done it unto
me.

14. Therefore in all things which ye do for your masters, consider

yourselves as doing the will of God. The will of your master is the will
of God to you. His voice is, as it were, the voice of God. His work is
to you the work of God, whom you obey in obeying him. But in all
this, there is one restriction to be observed: masters, as well as
parents, are to be obeyed only in the Lord: only so far as their
commands are not contrary to the commands of God. If ever this
should be the case, you cannot obey them: you must obey God
rather than man. You must humbly and respectfully declare, that in
all things else you are ready to obey: but that this you apprehend to
be contrary to the plain word of God, and therefore you dare not do