Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge

by Alexander Philip

Some years ago, in an essay on Schopenhauer, the author, Mr. Saunders, remarked, "How the matter of which my arm is composed and that state of consciousness which I call my Will [imagine anyone calling Will a state of consciousness!] are conjoined is a mystery beyond the reach of Science, and the man who can solve it is the man for whom the world is waiting."

Well, if that be so, then the world need not wait any longer. The required explanation is offered to metaphysics by the scientific work of the physicians who built up and consolidated the modern doctrine of Energy. It is true that most of them have continued to postulate the reality of material bodies. For their purpose there was no real difficulty in doing so. What they required was a datum of configuration, a phenomenal basis upon which their calculations could proceed and in terms of which, as a point of origin, their statement of transmutations was made. The persistence of material bodies is a condition precedent to the phenomenal manifestations in which our Experience arises. Organic existence in every form and the world in which it arises presuppose the actuality of these. But dynamically they are merely the phenomenal result of certain permanent forces constantly in operation. To beings, if there be such, inhabiting the Ether there is little doubt but that a gravitation system like that of the sun and its planets must present a corporate rigidity and identity somewhat similar to that which cohering masses present to our intelligence. But, in terms of reality, Energy, potential and kinetic, containing within itself the potency which generates the actual and sustains the constant transmutation in which phenomena arise is the sole and only postulate.

The rise of meta-geometrical methods and other branches of scientific speculation have led in recent years to a considerable amount of very interesting inquiry into the nature of our fundamental geometrical conceptions. Strange to say, a large body of respectable mathematicians have been found to favour the extraordinary view that our mathematical conceptions are derived from Sensation. We do not propose here to discuss at length this idea. It is merely another form of the old sensationalist view of Knowledge, but we suggest that the conditions of the problem will readily appear in their true light and real nature whenever such inquirers realise the fact that our exertional activity is the source of our cognitions of the external, and that therefore our pure exertional activity is the source of the basal concepts of geometry.

Here lies the root of the distinction between pure and empirical science. The propositions of geometry, being derived from our own pure activity, are of the former class; the inductive conclusions of physical experimental science, being gathered by observation and measurement from sensible data, are empirical and approximate. A geometrical proposition—such, for example, as the assertion that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles—is not merely approximate. It has no dependence on measurement. It is absolutely true. It is ascertained deductively, and therefore measurement is not involved, and is never employed. Its truth is not ascertained by measurement. It is not verified by measurement. It in no degree depends upon the sensible figure. It is equally true for every human being whatever be the degree of accuracy of the figure by the aid of which he studies it, or indeed whether he studies it by figure or otherwise, as must necessarily be the case with the born blind.

There may be many different forms of energetic transmutation which may determine many other forms of space besides that form of tridimensional space in which our Activity is involved. For such, a different geometry may and will be applicable; but for the tridimensional conditions of our activity the proposition is necessary and absolute. No measurement of any stellar parallax, however minute and whatever the result might be, could have any bearing on its truth. Geometry is the science of the pure forms of our motor activity amidst corporeal bodies.

A useful illustration of our argument is to be drawn from a consideration of the question of phonetic spelling. Occasionally we find persons urging that all spelling should be an exact reproduction of sound. Indeed, an improved alphabet has been designed to enable the idea to be carried out with greater accuracy.

Now it is quite true that it is by their sound that we recognise or denote our words. Hence our alphabet was originally phonetic in principle, and indeed still is so, although the correspondence is imperfect. As the use of visible signs develops spelling seems to fall into certain fixed frames and to deviate more and more from pure phonetic simplicity. But why is this so? It is because the sounds are merely the symbols or indicators of the different forms of vocal articulation (vocal acts), and it is really as the symbols and indicators of these actions that they possess any meaning and acquire such permanence and identity as they have. The phonetic system, therefore, becomes in use subordinated to the expression of the acts by which are produced these radical vocables which constitute the essentials of rational Discourse.

In all this the process of the expression of words in spelling is a microcosmic counterpart of the process of cognition as we have tried to explain it.