184

O.69

In the Neglected Argument, I recognize the usual course of Retroduction by which scientific truths are first brought to light. When scientific hypotheses attain the highest degrees of plausibility, one can recognize in the confidence they excite, even in the minds of others than oneself, a peculiar quality; and the quality of the confidence the N.A. excites is indistinguishable from the quality of confidence that for example chemists had in the Daltonian theory fifty years ago, before it had received any inductive support. Undoubtedly it leaves its conclusion no more than

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