There is
probably no more widely diffused fallacy, or one which works more
mischief in all walks of life, than the notion that it is only those
whose business it is to persuade who need to be trained in the art
of proof, and that those who are to be persuaded need no process of
preparation at all.
The fact is that skill in reasoning is as necessary on the one side
as the other. He cannot be fully and rightly convinced who does not
himself know how to convince, and no man is competent to judge in
the last resort of the force of an argument who is not on something
like an equality of knowledge and dialectical skill with the
person using it. This is true in all fields of discussion; it is
pre-eminently true in scientific fields. Of course, therefore, the
real public of the scientific man--the public which settles finally
whether he has made out his case--is a small one. Outside of it
there is another and larger one on which his reasoning may act with
irresistible force; but just as the fact that it does so act does
not prove that his hypothesis is true, so also the fact that it has
failed to convince proves nothing against its soundness.
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