"There is a creative element in every reasoning: this is most strongly manifested in explanation. [...] The generalization 'every S is P' may be interpreted either as a set of singular descriptions or as the relationship 'if something is S, then it is P'. If a generalization is a set of singular judgements, it covers not only those cases which have been investigated, but unknown cases as well. By assuming that the unknown cases behave like the known ones, we do not reproduce facts that are empirically given, but we create new judgements on the model of judgements about known cases.
If a generalization expresses a relationship, it introduces a factor that is alien to experience. Since Hume's time we have been permitted to say only that we perceive a coincidence or a sequence of events, but not a relationships between them. Thus a judgement about relationship does non reproduce facts that are empirically given, but again is a manifestation of man's creative thought"
"[...] which scientific judgements are pure reproductions of facts? For if generalizations, laws, and hypotheses, and hence all the theories of the empirical sciences and the entire sphere of the a priori sciences are the result of the creative work of the human mind, then there are probably few judgements in science that are purely reproductive.
The answer to this question appears to be easy. Only a singular statement about a fact which is directly given in experience can be a purely reproductive judgement, for instance: 'a pine grows here', 'this magnetic needle now deviates (from its previous position)', 'in this room there are two chairs'. But whoever investigates these judgements more closely will perhaps find creative elements even in them. The words 'pine', 'magnetic needle', and 'two' stand for concepts, and hence concealed labour of spirit through them. All the facts formulated in words are, primitively it may be, interpreted by me. A 'crude fact', untouched by the human mind, seems to be a limiting concept."
JAN LUKASIEWICZ
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