Synthetic philosophy

“ No one who understands the reason of the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori, as we have explained them above, will dare to affirm that this proposition can be known synthetically, and perfectly a priori, or by pure conceptions. ”

“ Synthesis is the knowing process rather than the known product. It is constitutive; it is creative; it conditions experience and puts the material of experience together. It must not be thought to be a voluntary act of the mind, which the mind will or will not do, as it pleases. When the mind acts, it synthesizes.
Furthermore, the synthetic functioning of all human minds everywhere is the same. However much their sensations differ, they combine and orderly arrange their sense-materials in the same ways. The synthesis of the human mind is the source of the universality belonging to knowledge ”

“ It attempts the only possible reconciliation between religion and science, by pointing to their common, final resting-place in the absolute. The works included in the "Synthetic Philosophy" form parts of a great system held together by the principle of evolution ”

“ By analytical propositions we become aware of the content of our intuitions and reflections; by synthetical propositions a posteriori we include new content derived from experience; but synthetic propositions a priori extend our knowledge independently of our experience. ”

“ After all the drawbacks are charged off, it still remains true that men who are able to be more critical than credulous may add cubits to their mental stature by studying the Synthetic Philosophy. If one is wavering about the value of such study, Mr. ”

“ While usually an idea means any thought, here it means the synthetic form of the special faculty of the reason, just as the categories are the form of the understanding, and space and time the form of sense-perception. The synthetic forms of the Reason are the three Ideas, viz., God, the soul, and the totality of the universe. ”

“ Now it is a well-established opinion in metaphysical philosophy, that while the analytical mode is the only true method for the discovery of truth not always known, the synthetic system has important advantages in teaching well-settled truth. ”

“ But if we understand ‘analytic’ in the sense just defined, namely, what is proved by the law of contradiction alone, it is plain that, if ‘synthetic’ means what is not proved by this alone, no truth can be both analytic and synthetic. ”

“ What we have here is not four ideas, but one idea of there being four chairs. A sum of ideas is not the same thing as the idea of their sum, just as in algebra the sum of squares is not the same as the square of the sum. I think a sentence took a stroll in the forest yesterday morning. The sentence, forms a multiplicity of words, but in spite of all that multiplicity, the phrase appears in consciousness as one whole, as a synthetized unity. Synthetic unity is the essence, the backbone of thought. ”

“ We could, to be more exact, make a distinction between the synthetic principle and the ideal conception which is a higher form of it. The fixation of an end and the discovery of appropriate means are the necessary and sufficient conditions for all invention. ”

“ He seeks a parallel for the union of two whole and perfect natures. He demands some reason for holding the central dogma of the incarnation to be intelligible and probable. The next step in the argument accordingly is to ask, "Why limit the synthetic power of personality?" If personality can synthesise parts of a nature, why should it not also synthesise natures? ”

“ The first reply is, that we cannot possibly know that our notion of their externality is a synthesis, with anything like the certainty with which we can know that their externality is real. As the reasoning employed to prove the synthetic nature of the realistic belief, is itself a synthesis of a highly complicated kind, whilst the synthesis of Realism is one of the simplest possible—so simple as to have become organic—it follows that any such objection to Realism is, like its many kindred ones, self-destructive; it repeatedly assumes the validity of that whose validity it questions. ”

“ It is synthetic in that it represents not merely a process of evaluating ends which match actually defined desires, but also a process in which the growing self, dissatisfied with any ends already in view, gropes for some new definition of ends that shall better respond to its living, creative capacity, its active synthetic character. ”

“ The truly general syntheses are so extraordinarily few in the history of the human mind, they lead to such wide and unexpected results when they stir the interest of the philosophic world, that any substantial synthesis lives and moulds opinion, even when its details are rejected and its conclusions are ignored. ”

“ The principle of synthesis, or rather, we should perhaps say, of subordination, by which these various habits of thought are combined in one philosophy, is a moral principle. It is a native power to conceive the ideal and a native loyalty to the ideal when once conceived. ”

“ Without what he calls synthetic judgments à priori, such as, Every phenomenon that begins to exist must have a cause, which includes the judgment of cause, of universal cause, and of necessary cause, we can form no synthetic judgment à posteriori. Hence he concludes that the categories, what some philosophers call first principles, necessary truths, necessary ideas, without which we do not and cannot think, are inherent forms of the subject, and are constitutive of reason and understanding. ”

“ Causality, therefore, is an example of a synthesis which over-arches sequences. The fact that the phenomena are sequent does not affect the principle involved. Whenever we contemplate an example of synthesis, that is, defined differentiæ of some sort, and a defined underlying unity of some sort, the mind affirms that reality exists. There are degrees of reality. ”

“ No mind can make a world synthetic if that world is not synthetic in itself. But again; no world can be synthetic in itself, that is, can possess universals as a part of its own nature, if its elements have not, pervading them, the living nexus and endeavour towards a whole which indicates participation in the nature of minds. ”

“ A characteristic synthesis first made its appearance at the height of classical Antiquity. It was art, chiefly plastic art, that determined the nature of this synthesis. Form as a unifying and systematising power is at the centre of life, takes possession of matter and organises it, transforms chaos into a cosmos; and in this exercise of power it realises itself, even though its fundamental nature is regarded as transcending all change and variation. ”

“ In fact, the power of what may be termed analytic synthesis,—the mental power which first resolves words or things into their elements, and then puts them together in new forms,—is a creative or co-ordinating force, indicative of a higher natural capacity than the act of mere analysis. ”

“ But unhappily, though right in asserting the necessity of a grand synthetic doctrine which shall embrace all the knowable and all the real, they forget that facts cannot be studied in their synthetic relations unless the mind is previously in possession of the grand synthetic doctrine which embraces and explains them, while the doctrine itself cannot be had till they are so studied. They must take the end as the means of gaining the end! ”

“ The analytic and synthetic tendencies of the human mind are traceable throughout history, great writers ranging themselves sometimes on the one side, sometimes on the other. Men of warm feelings, and minds open to the elevating impressions produced by nature as a whole, whose satisfaction, therefore, is rather ethical than logical, lean to the synthetic side; while the analytic harmonises best with the more precise and more mechanical bias which seeks the satisfaction of the understanding. ”

“ It is sometimes said that thought is synthetic, and this is true; but imagination is synthetic also; and the processes which yield the ideational train are the only processes at work in intellectual synthesis. Moreover, it would be arbitrary to say at what point the mere generic image ceases and the true concept begins—so continuous are the two. No wonder, therefore, that English psychology has been prone to regard thought as only a special kind of perception—perceiving the agreement or disagreement of ideas—and the ideas themselves as mainly the products of association. ”

“ Should such a universal synthesis be at all possible, it must certainly be something which is to be found and disclosed rather than something which simply is to be produced from ourselves. How could we hope to advance to it if it were not somehow involved in the depth of our being, and in our fundamental relation to the world, and if it did not already exist here in some way? ”

“ In short, a veritable synthesis, comprising the entire circle of the phænomena of the universe, ought to be able to resume in itself, and in a few words, all the particular facts which have been previously studied. This method being useful even to those who are already familiarised with the laws of the universe, I recommend them, while still pursuing without intermission the study of nature, which contributes more than anything else to the tranquillity and happiness of life, to make a concise statement or summary of their opinions. ”

“ Nature and evolution, let us say, have brought life to the present form; but this life lives, these organs have determinate functions, and human nature, here and now, in relation to the ideal energies it unfolds, is a fundamental essence, a collection of activities with determinate limits, relations, and ideals. The integration and determinateness of these faculties is the condition for any synthetic operation of reason. ”

“ With the discovery of sociological laws, a synthesis on the basis of Science becomes possible, science being now concentrated on the study of Humanity
When Science had expanded sufficiently to exist apart from Philosophy, it showed a rapid tendency towards a synthesis of its own, alike incompatible with metaphysics and with theology. ”

“ That the synthesis must exist would, on the hypothesis we are considering, be beyond doubt. For if both the lines of argument which lead respectively to the eternal reality of the Absolute Idea, and the existence of change could be known to be, not merely unrefuted, but true, then they must somehow be compatible. ”

“ A very widespread error consists in believing that when we have resolved a complex whole into its elements we have all the constituents. We are apt to forget that the greater number of combinations resemble rather chemical combinations than simple mixtures, that they are not formed by simple addition, and that there is more in the synthesis than there can be in the analysis.
The elimination of the synthetic point of view becomes less and less admissible as we rise from inorganic nature to life, consciousness, society. ”

“ Proposition I. affirms that, along with whatever a man is cognisant of, he must be cognisant of himself. In thinking, therefore, of the independent universe as a synthesis of objects plus another subject, must he not take himself into account as well, and must not the total synthesis of thought, in that case, be objects plus another me plus me? It is true that the synthesis which each of us cogitates is of this character. But the explanation is this: Propositions I. and II. lay down the essential constituents of all cognition, and, consequently, of all conception. ”

“ It is not synthesis, but analysis that has resolved it into unity. But can synthesis combine its manifold phases under one regulative notion? In realizing its general character we cannot discharge from our minds in turn all the known features of particular forces, so as to leave a vague resultant common to all, yet especially identified with none. The diverse types must have an archetype. What is that archetype?
It seems to us self-evident that we must seek for it, not in nature, but in man; not in the lower plane of the cosmical forces, but in the human will, the root of our personality. ”

“ Given a root to express flying, or bird, and another to express heap, then the joining together of the two to express many birds, or birds in the plural, is the natural effect of the synthetic power of the human mind, or, to use more homely language, of the power of putting two and two together. Some philosophers maintain indeed that this explains nothing, and that the real mystery to be solved is how the mind can form a synthesis, or conceive many things as one. ”

“ Thus it is that an intellectual synthesis, or systematic study of the laws of nature, is needed on far higher grounds than those of satisfying our theoretical faculties, which are, for the most part, very feeble, even in men who devote themselves to a life of thought. ”

“ There is no justification for concluding from the unity of psychic life, which manifests itself in synthesis, the fundamental form of consciousness, that the soul is a being which is distinct from the body or a substance. Synthesis is only a form, which we are not permitted to regard as a separate substance. It is impossible for psychology to be more than a science of experience. ”

“ But when the new ideas have become common property, and when a new expansion of thought has taken place in other directions,—in science, literature, religion,—it begins to be felt that a fresh synthesis is required to do perfect justice to the increased complexity of human life. ”

“ Reason, then, as an a-priori synthetical unity, necessarily refers all conditions of things to their final or absolute unities, which are in reality nothing but conceptional reflexes of Reason's own constructive synthetical identity. ”