Abstract
IN his retiring presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science delivered at St. Louis on December 30, Prof. E. L. Thorndike, under the title “Science and Values”, discussed the psychology of values in its relation to the competence of science to improve the judgments of value and esteem which rule men, and the possible contribution of scientific methods in the treatment of moral questions. Pointing out that the discussion of questions of value by philosophic thinkers has made little advance since the time of Aristotle in spite of the general advance of knowledge, Prof. Thorndike asserted that judgments of value or worth are simply a special sort of judgments of fact or existence, distinguished by being concerned with consequences, and with consequences to the wants of sentient beings. Values, positive or negative, reside in the satisfaction or annoyance felt by animals, persons or deities, and while competent students judge the existence of things by observations, they judge the values of things by observations of their consequences. Creating and enjoying truth or beauty are examples of the class of satisfiers which involve positive satisfaction for some without subtraction from, and often with addition to, those of others. Where satisfactions and annoyances lie within the natural world of men or animals, they are amenable to scientific study. Sometimes indeed it is necessary to judge the value of things, events and relations indirectly by their affiliations, for which a special technique is required.
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Science and Values. Nature 137, 144 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137144a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137144a0