us a little.
6. Objectivity of Science
I arrive at the question set by the title of this article: What is the objective value of science? And first what should we understand by objectivity?
What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through the communications that we have with other men, we receive from them ready-made reasonings; we know that these reasonings do not come from us and at the same time we recognize in them the work of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to fit the world of our sensations, we think we may infer that these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is we know we have not been dreaming.
Such, therefore, is the first condition of objectivity; what is objective must be common to many minds and consequently transmissible from one to the other, and as this transmission can only come about by that 'discourse' which inspires so much distrust in M. LeRoy, we are even forced to conclude: no discourse, no objectivity.
The sensations of others will be for us a world eternally closed. We have no means of verifying that the sensation I call red is the same as that which my neighbor calls red.
Suppose that a cherry and a red poppy produce on me the sensation A and on him the sensation B and that, on the contrary, a leaf produces on me the sensation B and on him the sensation A. It is clear we shall never know anything about it; since I shall call red the sensation A and green the sensation B, while he will call the first green and the second red. In compensation, what we shall be able to ascertain is that, for him as for me, the cherry and the