This chapter examines I. A. Richards’ sense of the function of criticism in the age of modern science. It argues that Richards’ project, developed across various texts and lectures from the early 1920s on, is to distinguish literary from scientific uses of language and to place the study of the latter on firm, philosophical footing. Through novel readings and contextualization of key terms in Richards’ vocabulary, including ‘pseudo-statement,’ ‘emotive,’ and ‘scientific,’ the chapter demonstrates that a meta-commitment, Richards’ devotion to the conditions of meaning’s possibility, shapes his critical oeuvre.