 Hook’s analysis of the metaphysics of pragmatism focused on the issue of whether the practice of scientific method presupposed a set of beliefs about the world or any set of ontological commitments. According to Hook, the primacy of scientific method did not require any prior set of foundational metaphysical beliefs but was justified instead by its consequences. Decades later, after the great emphasis ascribed to the nature of Being in existentialist metaphysics, Hook returned to an analysis of this issue in his essay “The Quest for ‘Being.’” He reaffirmed his earlier view that the practice of scientific method did not presuppose a set of ontological commitments or metaphysical theses about the world. Hook recognized that an empirical analysis of experience and of the way scientific knowledge originated and functioned in the human environment could justify statements that represented the “great commonplaces” of experience and of the world. These statements could even be identified as “empirical metaphysics” in the sense that they asserted general traits about experience. From Hook’s perspective, however, these “great commonplaces” did not constitute a set of metaphysical doctrines about the nature of reality which could be demonstrated philosophically or verified scientifically (Hook, The Quest for Being, 1961, Part 3, “The Quest for ‘Being’”).