Philosophy of science

“ The notion of science—the notion therefore with which we start—which, for the very reason that it is initial, implies a separation between the thought which is our object, and the subject philosophising which is, as it were, external to the former, must be grasped and comprehended by the science itself. This is in short the one single aim, action, and goal of philosophy—to arrive at the notion of its notion, and thus secure its return and its satisfaction. ”

“ Besides which, let positive science, or rather the positive philosophy, in the name of positive facts, proscribe metaphysic as it will, is it not evident that the fundamental conceptions of all science—number, atom, force, matter, cause, law—are metaphysical conceptions? Is it not evident that all science whatever is impossible without a certain number of principles or notions,—in a word, of intellectual laws, which even govern experience itself? ”

“ Such a history has, in truth, its natural place in the Philosophy of Science; for the Philosophy of Science at the present day must contain the result and summing up of all the truth which has been disentangled from error and confusion during these past controversies. ”

“ To make its nature intelligible to those who are not acquainted with it, we must explain what we mean by the philosophy of a science, as distinguished from the science itself. The proper meaning of philosophy we take to be, what the ancients understood by it—the scientific knowledge of Man, as an intellectual, moral, and social being. Since his intellectual faculties include his knowing faculty, the science of Man includes everything that man can know, so far as regards his mode of knowing it: in other words, the whole doctrine of the conditions of human knowledge. ”

“ What is all we know of mechanics, astronomy, and optics, but connections established by nature, and discovered by experience or observation, and consequences deduced from them? All the knowledge we have in agriculture, gardening, chymistry, and medicine, is built upon the same foundation. And if ever our philosophy concerning the human mind is carried so far as to deserve the name of science, which ought never to be despaired of, it must be by observing facts, reducing them to general rules, and drawing just conclusions from them. ”

“ Answer this and science is satisfied; but in being so satisfied it proves itself to be a thing of secondary and ancillary significance, resting, like the mathematician’s demonstrations, on principles which it belongs to a superior science to evolve. The whole doctrine of causes, efficient as well as final, belongs to philosophy, to that grand doctrine of fundamental realities which dictates to mere science both its starting-point and its goal. ”

“ There is, if we will but reflect and understand that the course of procedure proper to the physical sciences, namely, the assumption that their, objects and the facts appertaining to these objects lie before them ready-made—is utterly inadmissible in true philosophy—is totally at variance with the scope and spirit of a science which professes to deal fairly with the phenomena of man. ”

“ With less perfection, harmony, and unity of thought about the world, science will never rest content so long as she continues to be science. But for this very reason science postulates that this perfect order must be already realized in the world. ”

“ Permit me first to recall the two rules which I have constantly followed in the solution of the questions, sometimes so ardently contested, which the history of man raises. The first is to put away absolutely every consideration borrowed from dogma or philosophy, and to invoke only science—that is, experiment and observation. ”

“ The advance of science, which for a time overshadowed philosophy, has brought men face to face once more with ultimate questions, and has revealed the impotence of science to deal with its own conditions and pre-suppositions. The needs of science itself call for a critical doctrine of knowledge as the basis of an ultimate theory of things. Philosophy must criticize not only the categories of science but also the metaphysical systems of the past.—Prof. ”

“ We must now consider more carefully how we must treat the scientific postulates that were our only comfort in studying reality before we reached our present insight.
When we postulated that the world must in the best sense satisfy our fundamental intellectual needs, we assumed what is necessary for science, but what science itself does not satisfactorily explain. ”

“ The systematic development of truth in scientific form can alone be the true shape in which truth exists. To help to bring philosophy nearer to the form of science—that goal where it can lay aside the name of love of knowledge and be actual knowledge—that is what I have set before me. The inner necessity that knowledge should be science lies in its very nature; and the adequate and sufficient explanation for this lies simply and solely in the systematic exposition of philosophy itself. ”

“ On this point even physicists agree. "Instead of regarding the proper object of physical science as a search after essential causes," says one of the best modern champions of scientific progress, "it ought to be, and must be, a search after facts and relations." [90] Hence, physical science deals with natural facts and their relations exclusively; the search after causes and essential principles constitutes the object of a higher science; and such a science is real philosophy, or metaphysics proper. ”

“ It would seem as if, before long, those who now profess to take things as they come, and make light of all attempts to construct a philosophy applicable to human affairs, might be compelled to humble themselves to believe that Science may have a word to say in regard to the highest order of phenomena just as she has had in regard to all orders up to the highest. ”

“ Two conditions are thus necessary to all science: a body of knowable truth capable of being systematized; and an intelligence capable of apprehending and systematizing it. One of these conditions is physical and one is metaphysical; and all true science must be the resultant of Law and Idea, the Objective and the Subjective, the twin forces of Nature and Man. ”

“ In investigating any new claims whatever, experts—consciously or unconsciously—keep this order in mind: they first inquire whether the claims can be explained by laws already known to experts; if not so explained, then they are referred to the second order—the unknown in Nature—and attempts are made to bring them into the first order, or the known in Nature: such is the philosophy of all human progress in science. But when men go further, and assert that these unknown phenomena are of supernatural character, they bid good-by to the scientific method ”

“ Yet Biology and Psychology now rightly claim to be sciences, each with its own special methods and tests distinct from those of Mathematics and Mechanics. Indeed, the wisest and most fruitful philosophy is now coming to see that 'Reality generally eludes our thought, when thought is reduced to mathematical formulas'. [38] Concrete thought, contrariwise, finds full room also for History, Philosophy, Religion, for each as furnishing rich subject-matters for Knowledge or Science, of a special but true kind. ”

“ It implies a clear account of what that is which entitles any portion of knowledge to the designation of scientific, what the methods are by which vague, and narrow or imperfect knowledge may become science, what the principles may be which mark off one science into a province distinct from another, and what the bond of connexion among all the sciences is, with the scale of their relative value and importance, and the place of each as a part of that organic whole into which the philosophic mind seeks to mould all its knowledge. ”

“ The postulate of science amounts to this, that the real connections among facts must be such as would be rationally comprehensible if they were known. But we have found in fact that all facts not only must be rationally comprehensible, but are rationally comprehended, in and by the one Divine Mind. The postulate of science expresses therefore in part and as a mere assumption, what we now know as a whole, and as a result of demonstration. ”

“ If we could place this general work of thinking on a scientific basis, if we could find a theory of general thought, if we were able to discover the means by which reason arrives at understanding, if we could develop a method by which truth is produced scientifically, then we should acquire for science in general and for our individual faculty of judgment the same certainty of success which we already possess in special fields of science. ”

“ 'The Philosophy of Nature takes up the material, prepared for it by physics out of experience, at the point to which physics has brought it, and again transforms it, without basing it ultimately on the authority of experience. Physics therefore must work into the hands of philosophy, so that the latter may translate into a true comprehension (Begriff) the abstract universal transmitted to it, showing how it issues from that comprehension as an intrinsically necessary whole. ”

“ And may not the determination of this one characteristic, wherein they all agree, suffice to determine the conception of philosophy itself? A science has systematic form. All propositions in it are connected in one single fundamental proposition or principle, and unite with it to form a whole. ”

“ Science, originally, was entangled in similar motives, and was thereby hindered in its advances. It is, I maintain, from science, rather than from ethics and religion, that philosophy should draw its inspiration.
But there are two different ways in which a philosophy may seek to base itself upon science. It may emphasise the most general results of science, and seek to give even greater generality and unity to these results. ”

“ Everybody allows that to know any other science you must have first studied it, and that you can only claim to express a judgment upon it in virtue of such knowledge. Everybody allows that to make a shoe you must have learned and practised the craft of the shoemaker, though every man has a model in his own foot, and possesses in his hands the natural endowments for the operations required. For philosophy alone, it seems to be imagined, such study, care, and application are not in the least requisite. ”

“ Much philosophy inspired by science has gone astray through preoccupation with the results momentarily supposed to have been achieved. It is not results, but methods that can be transferred with profit from the sphere of the special sciences to the sphere of philosophy. What I wish to bring to your notice is the possibility and importance of applying to philosophical problems certain broad principles of method which have been found successful in the study of scientific questions. ”

“ An exposition and discussion of the Fundamental Ideas of each Science may, with great propriety, be termed the Philosophy of such Science. These ideas contain in themselves the elements of those truths which the science discovers and enunciates; and in the progress of the sciences, both in the world at large and in the mind of each individual student, the most important steps consist in apprehending these ideas clearly, and in bringing them into accordance with the observed facts. ”

“ What the 'physical world' may be in itself, how 'states of mind' can exist at all, and exactly what 'taking cognizance' may imply, are inevitable further questions; but they are questions of the kind for which general philosophy, not natural science, is held responsible. ”

“ Yet this is only because philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science—problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science. ”

“ Indeed, every true science has for its object the determination of certain phenomena by means of others, in accordance with the relations which exist between them. ”

“ It is by this process, in fact, that science, in its present advanced state, is chiefly promoted. Most of the phenomena which nature presents are very complicated; and when the effects of all known causes are estimated with exactness, and subducted, the residual facts are constantly appearing in the form of phenomena altogether new, and leading to the most important conclusions. ”

“ Philosophy attempts the answer by reasoning and meditation, while science uses inventions, such as the telescope, mathematical calculation, and all other means of obtaining accurate information regarding the physical environment and nature of man. ”

“ Noted natural scientists, reflecting upon the principles of their science, have observed that the definitions of the concepts and the presuppositions of science must seek their justification in the fact that they furnish the possibility of an intellectual elaboration and interpretation of the facts. ”

“ Formal philosophy is called Logic. Material philosophy, however, which has to do with determinate objects and the laws to which they are subject, is again two-fold; for these laws are either laws of nature or of freedom. The science of the former is Physics, that of the latter, Ethics; ”

“ Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom. ”

“ Why should the scientist escape the questioning of other men? Subtle and wonderful as science is, does it transcend humanity? Surely, when all is said, the scientific consciousness is not formally different from the ordinary consciousness. ”

“ Our objective science of modern knowledge concerns itself only with phenomena, and with phenomena as regarded in their cause-and-effect relationship. I have nothing to say against our science. It is perfect as far as it goes. ”