On Science and Philosophy

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

Volume 9 Article 13

1956

On Science and PhilosophyHarold D. HantzUniversity of Arkansas, Fayetteville

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ON SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY^/

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Harold D. HantzUniversity of Arkansas

Iam sure that some ofyou are thinking that onlya philosopher would dare select a title so compre-hensive, and even vague, as one "CnScience and Philo-sophy." You are probably wondering whether or notthere can be anything definite concerning a topicthis broad. Like you,Ihope that Ishall have some-thing more specific to say than the title might indi-cate. As a matter of fact, Ihad more specifictitles, some fancy, some plain, but none quite ap-propriate. Finally Igave up on titles, trustingthat if you were not driven away by the present one,you would be pleased to find any specificity whatso-ever, and the title would then be forgotton, or atleast forgiven.

My theme, then, is this: That the objectives ofscientific inquiry in itls best sense and of philo-sophic inquiry inits best sense are inmany respectsidentical; that in the intellectual history of Wes-tern civilization the union of scientific and philo-sophic inquiry has often provided its most fruitfulmoments; and that separation of scientific inquiryand philosophic inquiry (a separation which in ourday seems ever more acute) is perilous to both.

The initial step inexploring this theme consistsin making as precise as possible the meaning of theexpressions "scientific inquiry in its best sense"and "philosophic inquiry in its best sense." Thisstep might be put somewhat more loosely as defini-tions of "science" and "philosophy." The step is

y A paper read at a general meeting of the ArkansasAcademy of Science at the University of Arkan-sas, April 23, 1954.

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Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science, Vol. 9 [1956], Art. 13

Published by Arkansas Academy of Science, 1956

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not an easy one to take. "Why not?" you ask, "Forsurely every scientist knows what 'science 1 meansand every philosopher knows, or should know, what'philosophy' means." Let me illustrate what Imeanby the difficultyof definition here, beginning withnot even a definition of science in general, but onebranch of science, physics. The definition is takenfrom a well-known textbook. (3) "Physics deals withthe properties and phenomena of inanimate matter asaffected by forces, and is especially concerned withthe properties common to all kinds of matter andthose changes of form and state which matter under-goes without being changed in kind, as well as suchgeneral phenomena as sound, heat, electricity, andmagnetism." Now the definition may be technicallysound, but it is pedagogically absurd. How many be-ginning students, for example, could do anything morethan parrot the words? The student should find thisdefinition meaningful at the close of the course,but hardly at the beginning. Icite this definitionto point to a difficulty,not only for exploring thetheme Ihave chosen, but also in a larger sense forcommunication among scientists and between scientistsand laymen. We are immersed indisparate disciplineswhich become ever more technical. How do we tellthe outsider what we are up to? Isn't this the waythe questions come: "You are a mathematician, nowwhat ±s_ mathematics?" "So you are a nuclear physi-cist. Fine, just what is nuclear physics all about?"And so it goes. And what do we answer? We give thekind of definition of "physics" above. Ihave doneitmany times for philosophy, myself. We have some-thing pat, highly abstract, and generally meaning-less to someone outside the field.Ihope you willbear with me a little more on

this problem, for its implications for mutual under-standing are important. Let me now take a definitionof "science" from a respectable book on logic andscientific method by Cohen and Nagel. "We reserve

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the term 'science' for knowledge which is , generaland systematic, that is, in which specific propo-sitions are all deduced from a few general princi-ples. "(1) At first blush this definition seems clearenough and perhaps adequate insofar as such brevity-can ever be adequate for extensive disciplines suchas the sciences. But a little reflection presentscertain stumbling blocks. By this definition St.Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica is science. Theknowledge there noted is general and systematic. Hededuces specific propositions, even to the adornmentof women and the economics of the market place, fromgeneral principles. Yet today, a certain uneasinessdevelops when a definition of "science" embraces atonce, without qualification, Thomas' Summa and New-ton's Principia. Such a definition would seem toslur over important distinctions between the twoworks, and Idoubt that Iam alone in suspecting thatthe definition requires some clarification.

We are back where wa started without a definition.It would be easy, but unprofitable here, to supplyother definitions presenting difficulties. In viewof .such difficulties we might ask after the tremen-dous burst of scientific investigation over the past300 years providing a vast store of knowledge, whyis it so troublesome to state simply and clearlywhat science is? Isuggest that one reason is thisvery growth of a considerable variety of sciencesand that these sciences in turn are in varying stagesof development. Physics is much older than sociologyand possesses a precision which the latter cannotbegin to approximate at the moment. Is it then pos-sible to find a common core to the sciences such thatthe term "science" can be used in any meaningful wayat all? With some recent writers the attempt isabandoned altogether to the extent that even the ex-pression "scientific method" is considered naive.The new locution should rather be "scientific methods."

Before we too quickly accept this latest fad, I

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shall be old-fashioned enough to suggest that it isstill meaningful to speak of scientific method, andthat if it is meaningful to speak of scientificmethod then the word "science" has significance atleast in terms of a basic unity of method. Today noone, of course, willdeny that the various sciencesneed instruments, techniques, and theoretical con-structs appropriate to their particular problems.Clearly one of the retarding factors in the develop-ment of the social sciences was an almost blind apingof physics in the 17th and 18th centuries, especiallyas to approach and types of theory construction. Theideal in the social sciences was the achievement ofa kind of social physics. In more than one writer,man was conceived as a social atom, motivated byvarious imputed forces

—pure selfishness, enligh-

tened self-interest, a social sympathy, or one ofthese in common with reason, and so on, in much thesame way as physical atoms moved in terms of the lawof gravitation and the invariant laws of motion.Fortunately this unhappy mimicry of physics has beentranscended. But if it has been transcended, doesthis mean that there is nothing in common between,say, physics and sociology?Isuggest that there are present in all scien-

tific investigations certain factors o r traits ofsufficient importance to warrant our speaking of acommon scientific method. What then are these com-mon factors? Ishall list them in one, two, threefashion, but Ido not mean that they are so manyserial steps followed in every inquiry. They arerather common traits. 2/

1. A problematic situation. The origin of scien-tific inquiry is in problematic situations, situationsof indeterminacy, perplexity, doubt. It is these

=/ My indebtedness to methodological analyses of JohnDewey will be obvious.

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which generate investigations. The investigator whohas no doubts, no questions, no perplexities, liter-ally ceases to investigate. Inquiry is at an end.On the other hand, the seminal mind in a science isthe mind that in a sense flourishes on doubt, per-plexities, questions leading to the formulation ofnew problems. One of the prominent characteristicsthat distinguishes science from religion, as religionis frequently conceived, is precisely this searchfor novelty in contrast witha passion for certainty.There is, furthermore, a close relationship betweenthe determination of problematic situations and ahabit of mind of the scientist. This habit is thatof holding his beliefs, even his most cherished andconfirmed beliefs in some degree of suspension.Should this suspension become rigid, genuine inquiryceases.

2. The careful formulation of a definite problem

out of the problematic situation. This factor con-sists ofprocedures utilized to transform an initiallyperplexing, doubtful, indeterminate situation intoone of greater precision. The techniques are numer-ous and usually include such matters as the examina-tion of procedures and the results of investigationsin allied problems and the search for significantas opposed to irrelevant elements in the situationunder investigation.

3. The formulation of possible solutions to theroblem or, inmore sophisticated language, the de-

velopment of hypotheses. The search may be brief orlengthy. The first proposal may be successful, ormany alternatives may fail in the tests. All thisis familiar. It is this element inthe process whichis perhaps the focal point of the creative activityof scientific inquiry. It is also here that the moresystematic a science becomes, the more the symbolicformulation of hypotheses tends to be mathematical.

4. The testing of the hypotheses. From the 17thcentury to the present day the insistence has been

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upon some sort of experimental situation for thetesting or confirmation of hypotheses. If this ex-periential situation can be experimental, the actualmanipulation of the conditions of the problem, somuch the better. With the development of the experi-mental sciences, the testing is increasingly a func-tion of instrumentation. In an important way thehistory of modern science is a function of the his-tory of instrumentation. In 1925 Whitehead commen-ted: "The reason why we are on a higher imaginativelevel than earlier scientists is not because we havefiner imagination, but because we have better in-struments. In science, the most important thing thathas happened during the last forty years is the ad-vance in instrumental design.

"(10)

5. The systematic development of the logical con-sequences of hypotheses. Sometimes an hypothesis isnot directly testable; hence logical consequencesare deduced, usually mathematically, for the purposeof finding testable situations. Thus Galileo couldnot test directly his hypothesis that the accelera-tion of a freely falling body was proportional tothe time of the fall. A logical consequence is thatthe distance of the fallis proportional to the squareof the times. This proposition could be experimen-tally confirmed. The situation was, of course, hisclassic inclined-plane experiment. Again, if an hy-pothesis is confirmed in one instance, what otherconsequences can be developed to be tested? As theconfirming tests increase, confidence in the adequacyof the hypothesis grows.

Again, the five factors just described may, ormay not, occur in the order named. The formulationof a definite problem, the formulation of hypotheses,the testing, the development of logical consequencesinterpenetrate one another in the actual reflectionof the scientist as he goes about his work. Butthese factors can be discerned in the analysis ofinquiry called scientific and constitute basic dis-tinguishing traits of that inquiry.

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The end results of inquiry as here described yieldstatements about "Comparative Effects of Total Bodyand Tail Heating on the Peripheral Leukocyte Countof the Rat," (7) or "The Effects of Wind-Drift ofUeed- Killer or Some Puerto Rican Trees," (8) or "ANew Dense Crystalline Silica,"(9) or inother words,that vast store of experientially verified proposi-tions or the so-called factual information about thephysical, biological, and social world.

But scientific inquiry also yields statements ofa higher degree of generality than those just noted;e.g., Galileo's Law ofFalling Bodies, Boyle's Law ofGases, Ohm's Law, and the like. (Irealize the term"law"is subject to criticism in contemporary method-ological analyses. Imerely mention these hypothesesas they are usually referred to in the literature.)Their greater generality comes inpart from the large,perhaps indefinite,number of phenomena falling with-in the law.

Noting this matter of generality, we turn now toa sixth trait or element in scientific inquiry: Thesearch for system and sometimes its achievement interms of a relatively few abstract hypotheses fromwhich propositions of less generality are deduced.This is that aspect of science referred to previousD.yas Cohen and Nagel's definition of "science." Tocall it the meaning or the nature of science seemsnarrow, since this trait obviously is not present inevery scientific investigation. It is more aptlycalled the ideal of science. A clue to this factoras an ideal is that such systematization is foundonly in the so-called advanced sciences. As a mat-ter of fact,Isuspect "advanced science" and "achieve-ment of systemat; zation" are equivalent expressions.In the early nistory of modern science the illustra-tion which leaps to mind of this sort of ideal ofscience is Newton's Principia. There the ofinvestigrtions in certain branches of physics andof astronomy from Copernicus to Newton over a period

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of 144 years received the consummate systematization.Because of this achievement Newton's name became inthe 17th to the end of the 19th century virtuallysynonymous with science. It is this same sort ofachievement of even a higher order of generality thatin our own day Einstein has accomplished, Iam told.(Ihave to add the "I am told" forIdo not have thetechnical equipment to understand the mathematics ofwhat he has accomplished.) Ishould like to read afairly lengthy quotation from Einstein on preciselythis matter of generality:

Among the various pictures of the worldwhich are formed by the artist and the philos-opher and the poet, what place does the world-picture o f the theoretical physicist occupy?Its chief quality must be scrupulous correct-ness and internal logical coherence, which onlythe language of mathematics can express. Onthe other hand, the physicist has to be severeand self-denying in regard to the material heuses. He has to be content with reproducingthe most simple processes that are open to oursensory experience, because the more complexprocesses cannot be represented by the humanmind with the subtle exactness and logical se-quence which are indispensable for the theo-retical physicist.

Even at the expense of completeness, we haveto secure purity, clarity, and accurate cor-respondence between the representation and thething represented. When one realizes how smalla part of nature can thus be comprehended andexpressed in an exact formulation, while allthat is subtle and complex has to be excluded,it is only natural to ask, what sort of at-traction this work can have? Does the resultof such self-denying selection deserve thehigh-sounding name of World-Picture?

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Ithink it does; because the most generallaws on which the thought -structure of theo-retical physics is built have to be taken intoconsideration in studying even the simplestevents in nature. If they were fully knownone ought to be able to deduce from them bymeans of purely abstract reasoning the theoryof every process of nature, including that oflife itself. Imean theoretically, because inpractice such a process of deduction is en-tirely beyond the capacity of human reasoning.Therefore the fact that in science we have tobe content with an incomplete picture of thephysical universe is not due to the nature ofthe universe itself but rather to us.

Thus the supreme task of the physicist isthe discovery of the most general elementarylaws from which the world-picture can be de-duced logically... In every important advancethe physicist finds that the fundamental lawsare simplified more and more a s experimentalresearch advances. He is astonished to noticehow sublime order emerges from what appearedto be chaos. (5)

This ultimate search for comprehensive order is whatIreferred to in my theme as "the objective of scien-tific inquiry in its best sense."

But now what are we going to do with philosophyin this paper? Ihave struggled so long in tryingto point to what seems to me to be the common ele-ments of scientific inquiry that little time is leftfor philosophy. Iam sure that any one of you, thepracticing scientist, could have made wonderfullyclear in one-half or one-fourth the time just whatthe essence of science is. Isuspect that since Iama practicing philosopher you expect me with similardispatch to make wonderfully clear precisely whatphilosophy is. And it is here that Iam embarrassed,

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for Imust confess Ido not find it easy to statebriefly the nature of philosophy. Oh, it is easyenough to toss off the pat definitions to which Ireferred earlier. Philosophy is the love of wisdom.Philosophy is seeing life steadily and seeing itwhole. But these vignettes require a world of elabo-ration, and thus we are back to our old difficulty.Ican make quite clear, quite briefly, what I

think philosophy is not. Philosophy is not a systemof static beliefs. A man willoften ask his neighbor,"Well, just what is your philosophy of life?" Mean-ing frequently, what is that system o f last-standbeliefs to which you willhold no matter what. Inthis sense philosophy becomes identical with somepeople's view of religion as a set of ultimate, un-challengeable beliefs. Philosophy may be

—in fact,

it is in some of its branches --concerned with last-stand beliefs, but it is not concerned with them inthis manner. For philosophy is preeminently a quest,an inquiry.

What then is the nature of this quest? The bestanswer to this question is the study of the historyof philosophy. Since such a proper study would beout of the question in so short a time as five orten minutes, Ishall have to indicate what my ownstudy finds characteristic of its history. Ithinkphilosophy in its best moments is a quest, an in-quiry working toward a critical, systematic, and com-prehensive view of man's experience. Now "experi-ence," as William James pointed out, is a double-barreled word. It means both the objects of experi-ence and the way we experience them. Iuse "experi-ence" here in this double-barreled sense. Quiteobviously the objects of our experience are the total-ity of what we do experience: the natural worldaround us, the totality of culture with its complexinstitutional framework, and our own internal experi-ence. "Incredible," you say, "that any man shoulddare to embrace so much." Incredible itmay be, but

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a few have so dared, and Ithink their daring hasbeen profitable for mankind. Very early in its his-tory certain types of questions emerged as the mostpersistent in this quest; questions which have promp-ted the development of, broadly speaking, three majorareas of philosophic inquiry: (a) Questions aboutnature, producing metaphysics, the study of the mostpervasive characteristics of nature; ©.•£•> space,time, and causality, and cosmology or theories ofthe development of the universe; (b) questions aboutknowledge, which have led to studies, in the languageof Locke, of "the origin, certainty, and extent ofhuman knowledge," and to logic, the analysis of theweight of evidence for our belief s;and (c) questionsabout values or what men consider worthwhile, leadingto ethics, the analysis of religious experience, andto theories of art. The effort in the greatest ofthe philosophers has been just this: In these fieldsto examine critically the foundations of each, to at-tempt some systematic treatment within each, and toundertake some comprehensive, systematic view of therelations among these fields. Itis this sort ofenterprise that in its history the greatest of thephilosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, andKant, or on the contemporary scene, Whitehead, Rus-sell, Santayana, and Dewey undertook. This is phil-osophy in its best sense.

What, then, has this conception of philosophy todo with the theme of this paper? If Ihave inter-preted correctly the objectives ofscience and phil-osophy in their best senses, it should be clear thatthey are identical in the search for comprehensiveorder within man's experience. The physical scien-tist takes a portion of that experience; e_.£., thephysical world, and in this selection his objectiveis more restricted. The philosopher undertakes tounderstand the unity there achieved and to relate itto other types of experience: biological, social,moral, religious, aesthetic. What the physical sci-

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entist achieves has always, and will always, influ-ence profoundly the nature of the unity achieved bythe philosopher, for the exploration of the relationbetween man and nature is one of the crucial philo-sophic problems. Every philosopher worth his salthas always tried to understand and appropriate thebest available knowledge of the natural worldof hisday. Ican see no other road for a genuine philoso-phy.

From what Ihave just said, the idea might arisethat there is but a one-way path from science tophilosophy; that is, the scientist provides compre-hensive unities which the philosopher employs, butthe philosopher has nothing to offer in return. Ido not think this is the case. Actually Ihave madea second claim in my theme

—that in the intellec-

tual history o f Western civilization the union ofscientific and philosophic inquiry has often provi-ded its most fruitful moments. Ibelieve this con-tention can be documented abundantly, but Ishallillustrate briefly only from ancient Greece and the17th century.

It was in ancient Greece that the enterprises ofphilosophy and science, as we have come to know them,were born; born, one might say, as twins. The his-tory of Western philosophy began about 600 B.C. witha group o f Greek philosophers who wrote "about Na-ture." What is it they sought? They sought to un-derstand the material basis of the universe and theenergizing forces that are responsible for the cease-less change that takes place. Here was formulatedat least the clear notion of a universe, the idea ofa comprehensive order. The theories were naive, butthis idea is not naive, and within two-hundred yearsDomecritus stated the not so naive theory that theuniverse consists only of atoms in motion governedby inexorable laws. Iam sure that Democritus wouldhave felt very much at home in1687, the year Newton'sPrincipia was published.

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A second extravagant speculation, but of the mostprofound importance for the entire history of science,was the Fythagorean notion that number is the key-to nature. The Pythagoreans were bewitched by theircontrolling idea and readily generated a numericalmagic, but their faith that nature is through andthrough a mathematical order was to work later akind of magic inmodern science. Plato readily adop-ted the notion and made ita cardinal element in histheory of knowledge and theory of nature. It wasthis Plato, poet mathematician, philosopher, who wasto contribute to the birth of modern science by be-inga factor in the transmission of this mathematicalfaith. In the Italian Renaissance, there was a strongrevival of Platonism, and through it impetus was givento the search for mathematical relationships in na-ture. Galileo himself says:

Here /in his collected works/ willbe per-ceived from innumerable examples what is theuse of mathematics for judgment in the naturalsciences and how impossible it is to philoso-phize correctly without the guidance of Geome-try, as the wise maxim of Plato has it Truephilosophy expounds nature to us; but she canbe understood only by him who has learned thespeech and symbols in which she speaks to us.This speech is mathematics, and its symbolsare mathematical figures. Philosophy is writ-ten in this greatest book, which continuallystands open here to the eyes of all, but can-not be understood unless one first learns thelanguage and characters in which it is writ-ten. This language is mathematics, and thecharacters are triangles, circles, and othermathematical figures." (6)

A third illustration of the intimate tie betweenscience and philosophy in their early years was a

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Greek discovery which lies at the heart of the very-possibility of both. It was the Greek philosopherswho discovered discourse, and Aristotle more thanany other at that time who systematized this discov-ery. What does the discovery of discourse mean? Itwas the Greeks who found that the pushes and pullsof nature could be transmuted into discourse whichthen has meaning in terms o f the actual events outof which the discourse is generated. It is dis-course, statements, propositions, which are seen tohave meaning and to be true or false. Events are nottrue or false. And it is our statements and propo-sitions a s they are systematized and tested whichconstitute the heart of science. This the Greeksclearly saw, a discovery which Dewey calls the great-est single discovery of man. Logos, the word, dis-course, is then itself made an object of study toprovide us with logic, and within this general studythe first careful treatment of the idea of scienceas system is found in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics.

Ishall turn to only one more example in classicalGreece of the tie between philosophy and science.Aristotle, Isuppose, is the best example at thattime of scientist and philosopher. Few people, some-times even in philosophy, seem to realize that Aris-totle wrote on biology more than on any other subjectmatter. Historians of science are wont to call himthe father of biology. No less a biologist than Lar-win commented, "Cuvier and Linnaeus have been my twogods, though in very different ways, but they weremere schoolboys to old Aristotle.

"(2) But we cannot pause to examine why these encomia are made.One of the rare occasions when Aristotle, the dis-passionate writer, shows any sign of emotion is ina passage at the close of the first book of a work,On the Parts of Animals, in which he eloquently urgesthe study of animal and plant life. The influenceof Aristotle's work in biology upon his total philos-ophy was profound. Itpermeates, for example, his

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ethics, one of the finest statements ofa naturalis-tic ethic that has ever been written. Man is a per-fectly natural, not a supernatural creature, Aristotleargues. In terms of this natural basis and the factthat he possesses intelligence to a higher degreethan the other animals, what is the good life for man?Those who pursue science as a naturalistic undertak-ing, but put man in a separate non-natural categoryfor his moral behavior, would do well to read thischallenge to their supernaturalistic assumptions.

Well, Ihave come here not to praise the Greeks,but to illustrate the virtual union o f science andphilosophy, as they were born in Western culture.The union persisted in the social sciences until re-cent date and still does in some respects down tothe present. It continued with the physical scien-ces Ithink at least until Newton. Galileo foughtwith more than one philosophy professor of his day,usually to the discredit of the philosophy professor,but Ithink the argument was not about science asagainst philosophy, but what was correct in philos-ophy. It seems he argues in this way: Does notphilosophy have something to do with the advancementof knowledge? Scholastic philosophy has become ster-ile in its blind obedience to authority. Correctphilosophy is to be found in getting on with thestudy of nature, a view, interestingly enough, thatAristotle pushed hard in the first book ofhis Meta-physics.

The union between the scientist and the philoso-pher in the 17th century was often so close as to bevirtually indistinguishable. Descartes, you willremember, invented analytical geometry. He saw thisinvention as an illustration of a new method of phil-osophizing which he would apply to all of man's ex-perience. This method is described in his Discourseon Method and is further illustrated in his Principlesof Philosophy, a work on a theory of nature. Hismathematical discovery he did not see as something

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separate from his philosophizing. Galileo was nevermore critical of scholastic philosophy than Descartes;yet curiously enough there is the common notion thatGalileo fits into the history of science and notphilosophy whereas Descartes fits into the historyof philosophy and not, or only secondarily, in sci-ence. Isuspect they both belong in both streams.Descartes

'most speculative hypothesis was his mech-

anical view of nature. This is, of course, a revivalof the Democratean view: Nature is composed only ofmatter in motion, operating in terms of invariantlaws. This is the view that has given Descartes'name to what some historians call the Cartesian Revo-lution. The history of modern science until the lat-ter part of the l°th century seemed documentary proofof the hypothesis. It was Newton, of course, whoprovided evidence for this view in a way that Des-cartes never accomplished.

Newton's work is so frequently referred to by asingle word of its title, Principia, Isometimesthink that, ifnot the title, then certainly the sig-nificance, has been forgotten. You will recall it,Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica; i,.£.,Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Whatdid Newton mean by this title? Perhaps it was anaccident. Perhaps Newton didn't really know what hemeant. Or perhaps itmeans what it says, that he isdealing with the mathematical principles of naturalphilosophy, or as he himself says in his introduc-tion, "Ihave in this treatise cultivated mathematicsas far as it relates to philosophy." (4) What theearly Greek philosophers had dreamed about ,a theoryof nature which would make intelligible the greatebb and flow of things in nature, is now realized ina language they could not yet know, a highly developedmathematics, and with evidence that required the pa-tient observation of numerous individuals. A generaltheory of nature; yes, a science of nature had nowbeen achieved. What remains is primarily the com-

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pletion of the details, an undertaking which seemsto have been the primary occupation of the energiesof physical scientists during the 18th and well in-to the 19th century untilnew evidence within physicsrequired reexamination of the basis of the NewtonianTheory. You willnote this reexamination and refor-mulation came from no promptings and virtually nohelp from within the philosophic fraternity.

"Why is this so? The reasons probably are numer-ous, but one clearly is a product of the 19th cen-tury. If the 19th century did not invent, at leastit fostered, specialization of inquiry ina way neverknown before. The advancement of knowledge turnedinto a kind of assembly-line process. The resultshave been both a blessing and a curse. Items, onemight almost say atoms ofknowledge have proliferatedat an unbelievable rate. But high specializationhas fostered an insularity such that one social scien-tist can hardly talk to another of different breed,let alone to a physical scientist. Except in physi-cal theory, the systematic organization of largeareas of experience seems not only to lag, but evento be shunned. The same trend has operated in phil-osophy. The men in 20th century philosophy Imen-tioned earlier are all dead except Russell; and hehas passed, Isuppose, the peak of his imaginativeproduction. Where are the young men in philosophywho dare to see man's experience steadily and wholly?They haven't spoken yet. For one thing, Ican seeno adequate philosophy without an adequate theory ofnature, and it is a plain fact that most philosopherstoday do not know enough about contemporary physicaltheory. Ishould be the first to confess this igno-rance. On the other hand an adequate theory of na-ture is not an adequate philosophy of life because,fortunately or unfortunately, man is a moral andaesthetic creature besides a thinking creature. Thespectacle of certain scientists who have suddenlybecome excited about the consequences o f the atom

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bomb and turned moral philosophers, has not been anencouraging one. The world did not have to wait forthe atom bomb to raise the question of the relationbetween man's knowledge and his moral beliefs. Thequestion has been explored and clarified over a per-iod of twenty-five-hundred years in Western philos-ophy. Why not be aware of and use that analysis?

What then would seem to be the lesson in this pre-dicament? Ihave tried to show that the objectivesof scientific inquiry in its best sense and of phil-osophy in its best sense have much in common; thatin the intellectual history o f the West the inter-penetration of science and philosophy has providedsome of its most fruitful moments. Would not thelesson seem to be that somehow, as scientists andphilosophers, we must disenthrall ourselves? Thatsomehow we must rise above our specialties for theenhancement and enlargement of one another's mindsin the pursuit of what seems to be a common objec-tive

—to understand nature and man's place in it.

LITERATURE CITED

(l) Cohen, M.R. and E. Nagel. Introductions to Logicand Scientific Method, p. 191. Harcourt, Brace.New York. 1934.

(2) Darwin, Charles. The Life and Letters of CharlesDarwin. 2:427. D. Appleton. New York. 1891.

(3) Kimball, A.L. A College Text-book ofPhysics, 4thed. p. 1. Henry Holt. New York. 1929-

(4) Newton, Isaac. Mathematical Principles of NaturalPhilosophy and His System of the World. Trans,

by Florian Cajori, 1917. University of Cali-fornia Press. Berkeley. 1934.

(5) Plank, Max, Albert Einstein, Prologue to WhereIs Science Going?, 9-XL, W.W. Norton. New York.1932.

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(6) Randall, J.H., Jr. The Making of the Modern Mindp. 237. Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 1940.

(7) Science. 118:20-21. 1953.(8) Ibid. 74-75.(9) Ibid. 131-132.(10) Whitehead, A. N. Science and the Modern World

pp. 166-167. MacMillan. New York. 1948 printing.

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