Conjecture

Use in the book

Explanations carried from physics into morals may multiply error if the first account already mistakes conjectures for facts. Comparison itself is called a kind of conjecture. Yet the hands-and-feet question refuses to abandon truth merely because it cannot be grasped in the preferred way; conjecture appears among the alternative means in an unfinished list. Poets combine knowledge of the terrestrial world with conjecture about the intellectual world, preserving a distinction between the two. The blind person’s stick supplies another image of indirect advance, beside induction. The later complaint about physical explanations then demands that conjecturing apply only to facts, rather than serving as a respectable name for unrestricted imagining. These tensions should remain visible.

Places to read

1. I, p. 179, entry 5, ¶1Mistaking conjecture for fact can compound errors across domains.
2. I, p. 238, entry 2, ¶1Comparison is classed as a kind of conjecture.
3. I, p. 269, entry 2, ¶1Conjecture can pursue truth by an indirect means.
4. II, p. 566, entry 1, ¶1Poetic composition combines knowledge with conjecture.
5. II, p. 756, entry 7, ¶1Induction and conjecture support movement without direct sight.
6. II, p. 819, entry 4, ¶1A methodological restriction reserves conjecturing for facts.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves conjecture and conjecturing. Medical physics makes the source’s elliptical la médicale readable without naming a modern clinical discipline. The final “ought” states Joubert’s prescription; the blindness image is his analogy, not a contemporary assessment of sensory ability.