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ONT Re: Exsertion


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| Where number is irrelevant, regimented mathematical technique
| has hitherto tended to be lacking.  Thus it is that the progress
| of natural science has depended so largely upon the discernment of
| measurable quantity of one sort or another.  Measurement consists
| in correlating our subject matter with the series of real numbers;
| and such correlations are desirable because, once they are set up,
| all the well-worked theory of numerical mathematics lies ready at
| hand as a tool for our further reasoning.  But no science can rest
| entirely on measurement, and many scientific investigations are
| quite out of reach of that device.  To the scientist longing for
| non-quantitative techniques, then, mathematical logic brings hope.
| It provides explicit techniques for manipulating the most basic
| ingredients of discourse.  Its yield for science may be expected to
| consist also in a contribution of rigor and clarity -- a sharpening of
| the concepts of science.  Such sharpening of concepts should serve both
| to disclose hitherto hidden consequences of given scientific hypotheses,
| and to obviate subtle errors which may stand in the way of scientific
| progress.
|
| Quine, 'Mathematical Logic', pages 7-8.
|
| Quine, Willard Van Orman,
|'Mathematical Logic', Revised Edition,
| Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA,
| 1940, 1951, 1981.

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