ARNOLD BRECHT'S POLITICAL THEORY REVISITED Political ...

174 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
to explore "the divine alternative" as he does in the final chapter of
the book. But they do not sufficiently explain his failure to take the
teleological alternative seriously when considering the relation between
"science" and "values" or when dealing with others' efforts to
delineate a natural order of "values." He thus chooses to dwell upon
the ultimate metaphysical implication of such a purposive order of
nature and to ignore its more specific "value" content or human
significance-i.e., those dimensions of that order which we are
capable of experiencing more directly and which we may therefore
come to know more certainly.
Brecht's discussion of the seventh "scientific step," deduction, is
divided into two parts, the first presented with his discussion of induction,
explaining its capacity to provide absolute (analytical)
truth. The second part, offered in its proper " step " sequence, explains
the importance of deduction as "a tool of control." After factual
or explanatory generalizations have been formulated it is then
necessary to deduce their further logical implications for the purpose
of testing their validity by testing the correspondence of those logical
implications with further "facts." "If logically correct inferences are
invalidated by tests, then the general statement of causal relationship
is wrong, or is at least in need of modification" (92). He stresses
that it is therefore an error to say "what is so often heard," that
Scientific Method has simply abandoned deduction in favor of induction.
The truth is, that what has been appropriately discarded is
"the acceptance in scientific procedure of major premises (generalizing
statements) as true or valid on ultimate grounds other than inductive
reasoning carefully checked." That is to say that "Scientific
Method objects to the acceptance of `a-priori' propositions"-i. e.,
other than what he will later term " immanent methodological
a-prioris," some glimpses of which we have already had. Deduction,
he informs us, is thus "one of the methods used scientifically to
refute false propositions, a-priori or other." He employs this method
frequently in dealing (in other sections of the book) with other
thinkers' efforts to articulate a natural order of "values" or human
ends and excellences. And at least some of those exercises indicate
how easily the method may be abused when its user does not sufficiently
grasp the intended meanings of the propositions he is
testing."
33. See, for example, Chapter VIII, in which h'c briefly examines more than a
dozen different ultimate standards of value proposed variously by more than three