only thing ever inferrible is a ratio of frequency. This truth compels the introduction of the conception of continuity throughout logic.
Logic teaches that Chance, Law, and Continuity must be the great elements of the explanation of the universe.
5. The philosopher must regard opinions as so many vivisectionsubjects, to be studied for their natural history affinities. He must even take this attitude to his own opinion. Opinion has a regular growth, though it may get stunted or deformed. To take the next step in philosophy vigorously and promptly, we must study our own historical position.
The drama of the last three centuries of struggling thought, in politics and sociology, in science, in mathematics, in philosophy, briefly narrated.
The ruling ideas of today.
6. How large numbers bring about regular statistics in social matters. The peculiar reasoning of political economy; the Ricardian inference.
Analogy between the laws of political economy and those of intellectual development. This teaches the necessity of similar ideas in philosophy. Darwin and Adam Smith.
7. Mathematicians have exploded axioms. Metaphysics was always an ape of mathematics, and the metaphysical axioms are doomed. The regularity of the universe cannot be reasonably supposed to be perfect. Absolute chance was believed by the ancients.
8. The present deadlock in molecular physics. If we are to cast about at random for theories of matter, the number of such theories must be at least ten million, and it must take the race a century to test each one. Hence the chances are that there will be five million centuries before any substantial advance.
Hence, the only hope is to get some notion what laws and forces are naturally to be expected. We must have a natural history of laws of nature. The only way to attain this is to explain these laws, and the only explanation is to show how they came about, how they have grown. But if they are growing, they are not absolutely rigid. Errors of observation and real chance departures from law.
9. The Darwinian hypothesis stated in skeleton form, or a Darwinian skeleton key to philosophy. Its elements are Sporting or accidental variation, heredity not absolute but a gentle force, and adaptation, which means reproductivity. This key opens a theory of evolution applicable to the inorganic world also. The Lamarckian principle is limited, the Darwinian general.
10. The modern psychology and the law of association. Habit and breaking up of habit. Feeling sinks in habit. Application to philosophy.
11. The monism of the modern psychologists is really materialism. The unreasonableness of it. The idea of supposing a particular kind of machine feels is repugnant to good sense and to scientific logic. “Ultimates” cannot be admitted. The only possible way of explaining the connection of body and soul is to make matter effete mind, or mind which has become thoroughly under the dominion of habit, till consciousness and spontaneity are almost extinct.
12. The Absolute in metaphysics fulfills the same function as the absolute in geometry. According as we suppose the infinitely distant beginning and end of the universe are distinct, identical, or nonexistent, we have three kinds of philosophy. What should determine our choice of these? Observed facts. These are all in favor of the first.
13. Résumé of all these principles of the method of philosophy. Method relaxed for this sketch.
APPLICATION OF THIS METHOD
14. The process, the beginning, the end.
15. The law of assimilation. Disturbance and its propagation.
16. Development of Time. How to conceive of time being developed. How its different properties came about.
17. Development of space and of the laws of matter and motion. They could not be otherwise.
18. Gravitation and molecular forces.
19. The chemical elements.
20. Protoplasm.
21. Consciousness. Development of God.
22. The end of things.
5
[On Framing Philosophical Theories]
| late Spring 1890 | Houghton Library |
Three questions, at least, I think it must be admitted, ought to form the subject of studies preliminary to the formation of any philosophical theory; namely, 1st, the purpose of the theory, 2nd, the proper method of discovering it, 3rd, the method of proving it to be true. I think, too, it can hardly be denied that it will be safer to consider these questions concerning the particular theory which is to be sought out, in the light of whatever we can ascertain regarding the functions, the discovery, and the establishment of sound theories in general. But these are questions of logic; and thus, no matter whether we ultimately decide to rest our philosophy upon logical principles as data, or upon psychological laws, or upon physical observations, or upon mystical experiences, or upon intuitions of first principles, or testimony, in any event these logical questions have to be considered first.
But if logic is thus to precede philosophy, will it not be unphilosophical logic? Perhaps logic is not in much need of philosophy. Mathematics, which is a species of logic, has never had the least need of philosophy in doing its work. Besides, even if logic should require subsequent remodelling in the light of philosophy, yet the unphilosophical logic with which we are obliged to set out will surely be better than no logic at all.
The object of a theory is to render something intelligible. The object of philosophy is to render everything intelligible. Philosophy thus postulates that the processes of nature are intelligible. Postulates, I say, not assumes. It may not be so; but only so far as it is so can philosophy accomplish its purpose; it is therefore committed to going upon that assumption, true or not. It is the forlorn hope. But as far as the process of nature is intelligible, so far is the process of nature identical with the process of reason; the law of being and the law of thought must be practically assumed to be one. Hence, in framing a theory of the universe, we shall do right to make use of those conceptions which are plainly essential to logic.
The two words logic and reason take their origin from two opposite views of the nature of thought. Logic, from λόγος, meaning word and reason, embodies the Greek notion that reasoning cannot be done without language. Reason, from the Latin ratio, originally meaning an account, implies that reasoning is an affair of computation, requiring, not words, but some kind of diagram, abacus, or figures. Modern formal logic, especially the logic of relatives, shows the Greek view to be substantially wrong, the Roman view substantially right. Words, though doubtless necessary to developed thought, play but a secondary role in the process; while the diagram, or icon, capable of being manipulated and experimented upon, is all-important. Diagrams have constantly been used in logic, from the time of Aristotle; and no difficult reasoning can be performed without them. Algebra has its formulae, which are a sort of diagrams. And what are these diagrams for? They are to make experiments upon. The results of these experiments are often quite surprising. Who would guess beforehand that the square of the hypotheneuse of a right-angled triangle was equal to the sum of the squares of the legs? Though involved in the axioms of geometry and the law of mind, this property is as occult as that of the magnet. When we make a mathematical experiment, it is
