LEARNING 70 PHILOSOPHIZE E, R. EMMET PENGUIN BOOKS2 Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Inc. 7110 Ambatsador Road, Butera Penguin ustralia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, eae First published by Longmans, ‘This revised edition published in Pelican Boks Reprinted 1969, 1970 1968 USA, Copyright © E. R. Emmet, 1964, 1968 Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Reading and Fakenham ‘Set in Monotype Plantin This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, OF otherwise circulated publisher’s prior consent in any form of in which it is,INTRODUCTION Most human beings are curious. Not, I mean, in the sense that they are odd, but in the sense that they want to find out about the world around them and about their own part in this world. They therefore ask questions, they wonder, they speculate. What they want to find out may be quite simple things: What lies beyond that range of hills ? How many legs has a fly? Or they may be rather more complicated inquiries. How does grass grow? What is coal made of? Why do some liquids extinguish flames while others stimulate them ? Or they may be more puzzling inquiries still: What is the purpose of life ? What is it to be beautiful ? What is the ultimate nature of truth ? In what sense, if any, are our wills free ? To the first two questions the answers may be obtained by going and seeing, and catching one and counting, respec- tively. The answers to the next set of questions will not be so easy to find, but the method will be essentially the same. It is the method of the scientist, investigating, measuring, experimenting. A method that may reasonably be summed up by the phrase: ‘Going and Seeing’. The last set of questions would normally be thought of as philosophical, and it would not be easy to find answers to them that would command general agreement. Some people would say that they are unanswerable. But those who have tried to answer them in the past have on the whole used the method of speculation rather than of investigation, of ‘sitting and thinking’ rather than of ‘going and seeing’. ‘Leisure’, as