Track (evidence)

“ That is a mere statement of opinion. To some minds eight miles an hour is very fast; to more enterprising persons fifteen miles an hour is necessary in order to make travel seem fast. Those are matters of opinion. But a statement that the horse can trot twelve miles an hour, or has trotted one mile [Pg 98] in three minutes on the track, are statements of fact, and if untrue are fraudulent. ”

“ Once you set up an hypothesis you unconsciously, and in spite of yourself, accentuate unduly the importance of all data making toward that hypothesis, while, on the other hand you either utterly neglect, misconstrue, or fail to fully appreciate, the evidence oppugnant to your theory. In chemical research I gather the material for an entire series of experiments before performing any, so that the first few shall not, either by satisfying or discouraging me, cause me to leave the bush half beaten.
“Let us see how, from the officers’ standpoint, the murder hypothesis now stands. ”

“ In most cases we have to deal with mixed evidence, and frequently it has become habitual to change the problem to be solved according to our convenience, or at least to set aside some one thing. Suppose{141} that the issue deals with a discovered, well-retained footprint of a man. We then suspect somebody and compare the sole of his shoe with the impression. They fit in length and width, in the number of nails and in all the other possible indices, and we therefore assert: It is the footprint of the suspect, for “whose footprint?” is the problem we are troubling ourselves to solve. ”

“ The negative portion of the evidence will naturally be developed with less accuracy. The proof is limited to the assertion that such shoes as were indicated in the evidence were very rarely or never worn in that region, also that no native could have been present, that the form of the nails allowed inference of somebody from foreign regions, one of which might be the home of the suspect, etc. Such an examination shows that what we call evidence is only probability or possibility. ”

“ As a matter of fact few people have thought of another way of gaining evidence from the finger tips, but it is a method possible to the scientist, and is not only practicable but exceedingly effective. ”

“ To this class may be added the extraordinary phenomenon that from the train objects easily seem too near and hence appear smaller than they are. It may be, however, that the converse is true and objects appear smaller, or at least shorter, and that inasmuch as we are in the habit of attributing the diminution of size in objects to their distance, we tax the latter as false. So much is certain—that whenever we ourselves move quickly we make false judgments of size, distance, and even color. ”

“ Even as regards Thought-Transference, in which the number of careful experiments that have been made is far greater than in any other class of phenomena, it is still most important to multiply the quantity of the evidence. In most of the branches of the subject no expensive apparatus is required, and no special scientific or intellectual training. Accurate observation and careful recording, at the time, of all that [14] occurs, without prejudice, and without discouragement at apparent failure, are the chief requisites. ”

“ Remember, this is only a pocket-compass with no dial, and it will jump frightfully. And the mode of estimating distance is very rough."
"That is all perfectly true," Thorndyke answered. "But you are overlooking certain important facts. The track-chart that you will produce can be checked by other data. The house, for instance, has a covered way by which you could identify it if you knew approximately where to look for it. Then you must remember that your carriage is not travelling over a featureless plain. ”

“ But it is not only in regard to lengths and distances that the law in question holds good; in most, if not all cases in which a psycho-optical estimate is possible, the mental standard is unstable and tends to assimilate itself, as regards the quality or condition to be estimated, to the entity in which the same is manifested. This is true, for example, in judging of an angle of inclination or slope; of a motion in space; of luminous intensity, or of the purity of a colour.
Every cyclist knows how difficult it is to form a correct judgment of the steepness of a hill by merely looking at it. ”

“ In fact, however, the clue to the interpretation of the more striking phenomena, in the case of which, since they occur for the most part spontaneously, direct experiment or even methodical and continuous observation are rarely possible, is furnished by actual experiment on a smaller scale and with mental affections of a less unusual kind. ”

“ Tracking was then the supreme accomplishment of mankind. By signs and traces that would be invisible to any modern civilized eye they would be reading the story of the previous day's trek of the herd of sturdy little horses ahead of them. They would be so expert that they would go on from one faint sign to another with as little delay as a dog that follows a scent. ”

“ In any science other than psychology the datum is primarily a perception, in which only the sensational core is ultimately and theoretically a datum, though some such accretions as turn the sensation into a perception are practically unavoidable. But if we postulate an ideal observer, he will be able to isolate the sensation, and treat this alone as datum. There is, therefore, an important sense in which we may say that, if we analyse as much as we ought, our data, outside psychology, consist of sensations, which include within themselves certain spatial and temporal relations. ”

“ But when we attempt to infer from one finite portion of a path to another finite portion, inference will be only more or less probable, according to the comparative lengths of the portions and the accuracy of observation; the longer our experience is, the more probable our inference will be; the greater the length of time or space over which the inference extends, the less probable. ”

“ The idea is that the man to be experimented on is to find as quickly as possible those points on the track which are threatened by the red figures, that is, those letters in the 26 track units at which the red figures would land, if they make the steps which their number indicates. ”

“ The magnitude of the task then began to appear, when the forty or fifty thousand employés of five thousand miles of track, with their ten or twelve thousand men actually dependent upon signals of color for their guidance, of whom four per cent might be color-blind, and ten per cent so defective in visual power, for form and hearing, as to render them dangerous, arose before the imagination. ”

“ In the course of my research anomalies have sprung up in every direction. I have felt like a traveler, navigating some mighty river in an unexplored continent. I have seen to the right and the left other channels opening out, all claiming investigation, and promising rich rewards of discovery for the explorer who shall trace them to their source. Time has not allowed me to undertake the whole of a task so vast and so manifold. ”

“ I found this to be a particular complicated act of attention by which the manifoldness of objects, the pedestrians, the carriages, and the automobiles, are continuously observed with reference to their rapidity and direction in the quickly changing panorama of the street. Moving figures come from the right and from the left toward and across the track, and are embedded in a stream of men and vehicles which moves parallel to the track. In the face of such manifoldness there are men whose impulses are almost inhibited and who instinctively desire to wait for the movement of the nearest objects ”

“ Motion is never transformed into thought, but only into some other form of measurable (in fact, or at any rate in theory, measurable) motion that takes place in nerve-threads and ganglia. It is not the thought, but the nerve-action that accompanies the thought, that is really "transformed motion." I say that if we are going to verify the theory of correlation, it must be done (actually or theoretically) by measurement; quantitative equivalence must be proved at every step ”

“ In tracking where it is difficult to see the track, such as on hard ground, or in the grass, note the direction of the last foot-print that you can see, then look on ahead of you a few yards, say, 20 or 30, in the same direction, and, in grass, you will probably see the blades bent or trodden, and, on ground, you will probably see stones displaced or scratched—or some other small sign which otherwise would not be noticed. ”

“ Beyond those vitiations of evidence due to random observations, to the subjective states of the observers, to their enthusiasms, or prepossessions, or self-interests beyond those that arise from the general tendency to set down as a fact observed what is really an inference from an observation, and also those that arise from the general tendency to omit the dissection by which small surface results are traced to large interior causes there come those vitiations of evidence consequent on its distribution in Space. ”

“ Ignorance of one's accomplices beyond a few adjoining stations was naturally felt to be a safeguard. The local character of the information resulting from such precautions places the investigator under the necessity of patiently studying his materials for what may be called the cumulative evidence in regard to the geography of the system. It is because the evidence gathered has been cumulative and corroborative that a general map can be prepared. ”

“ This testing is an essential part of the process. “If my guess be true, then so-and-so as to which I can decide by inspection or experiment, must be true also,” is the form which the argument takes, and the inquiry is thus brought to a point where observation can decide the truth of the hypothesis or first guess. In every-day life we have often to be content without fully testing the truth of our guesses, and hurry into action based on such unverified suppositions. ”

“ Now, I have formed a habit of interpreting the passing of outside bodies as motion in myself and the coach, and when the trains outside move I infer that I and my coach move, and so strong is this inference that I am impelled to look for some verification before I can decide in which body the molar motion inheres, for the contradictory judgments are both intuited. ”

“ Motion Study and Time Study Are the Method of Measurement Under Scientific Management. — Under Scientific Management, much measuring is done by motion study and time study, which measure the relative efficiency of various men, of various methods, or of various kinds of equipment, surroundings, tools, etc. Their most important use is as measuring devices of the men. They have great psychological value in that they are founded on the "square deal" and the men know this from the start. Being operated under laws, they are used the same way on all sorts of work and on all men. ”

“ Still, there are generally certain surviving data, in place-names, natural features, and so forth, which enable those who can detect them, and make use of them, to piece together something like a connected outline of what we may take, with some degree of probability, as an approximation to what have been actual facts, although lacking, at the time, the chronicler to record them. ”

“ But, take the problem as a whole, whether applied to the commonest example, that of forming an hypothesis and then finding whether it could be sustained, or to the most exceptional (as where we found the Road making straight for a point in a river where there was no ford) , the general method was always the same: to consider the geographical and geological conditions, the analogy of existing trails of the same sort, the characters we had found in the Road itself throughout its length as our research advanced, and to apply these to the parts where we were in doubt. ”

“ Therefore, before an assertion of a short-sighted man is doubted an experiment should be made, or at least another trustworthy short-sighted person should be asked for his opinion.
The background of objects, their movement and form have decided effects on the difference in visual perception. It is an ancient observation that lengthy objects like poles, wires, etc., are visible at incomparably greater distances than, e.g., squares of the same length. In examination it has been shown that the boundary of accurate perception can hardly be determined. ”

“ This experience shows that we unconsciously estimate the force necessary to raise the vessel, but only become conscious of this train of inference when it happens to lead to conclusions contradictory of the fact. The perception of distance, once thought to be as primitive a factor in cognition as the impression of a color, is likewise the result of complex though unrealized inferences ”

“ The expectation of a storm when the thunder-clouds are heavy is a case of perceptual inference. It is the outcome of a long-established association, and is not reached by a process of reasoning involving an analysis of the phenomena. But if, though the sky is clear, a west wind and a rapidly falling barometer lead me to predict rain, the inference is conceptual, and gained by me or for me by a process of reasoning; for the barometer was the outcome of the analysis of phenomena. ”

“ To define movement as a series of positions, with a generating law, with a time-table or correspondence sheet between places and times, is surely a ready-made presentation. Are we not confusing the trajectory and its performance, the points traversed and the traversing of the points, the result of the genesis of the result; in short, the quantitative distance over which the flight extends, and the qualitative flight which puts this distance behind it? In this way the very mobility which is the essence of movement vanishes. There is the same common mistake about time. ”