Our Philosophical Basis
We call nature what is given to us in space.
Of course we are not obliged in these lectures to discuss the psychological and epistemological problems of space with its three dimensions, nor are we obliged to develop a general theory of reality and its different aspects. A few epistemological points will be considered later at proper times, and always in connection with results of theoretical biology.
At present it must suffice to say that our general philosophical point of view will be idealistic, in the critical meaning of the word. The universe, and within the universe nature, in the sense just defined, is my phenomenon. That is what I know. I know nothing more, either positively or negatively; that is to say, I do not know that the world is only my phenomenon, but, on the other hand, I know nothing about its “absolute reality.” And more, I am not even able to describe in intelligible words what “absolute reality” might mean. I am fully entitled to state: the universe is as truly as I am—though in a somewhat different sense of “being”—and I am as truly as the universe is; but I am not entitled to state anything beyond these two corresponding phrases. You know that, in the history of European philosophy at least, Bishop Berkeley was the first clearly to outline the field of idealism.
But my phenomenon—the world, especially nature—consists of elements of two different kinds: some of them are merely passive, some of them contain a peculiar sort of activity in themselves. The first are generally called sensations, but perhaps would be better called elements or presentations; the others are forms of construction, and, indeed, there is an active element embraced in them in this sense, that they allow, by their free combination, the discovery of principles which are not to be denied, which must be affirmed, whenever their meaning is understood. You know that I am speaking here of what are generally called categories and synthetic judgments a priori, and that it was Kant who, on the foundations laid by Locke, Hume, and Leibnitz, first gave the outlines of what may be called the real system of critical philosophy. Indeed, our method will be to a great extent Kantian, though with certain exceptions; it is to be strictly idealistic, and will not in the Kantian way operate with things in themselves; and it regards the so-called “synthetic judgment a priori” and the problem of the relation between categorical principles and experience in a somewhat different manner. We think it best to define the much disputed concept “a priori” as “independent of the amount of experience”; that is to say, all categories and categorical principles are brought to my consciousness by that fundamental event which is called experience, and therefore are not independent of it, but they are not inferences from experience, as are so-called empirical laws. We almost might say that we only have to be reminded of those principles by experience, and, indeed, we should not, I think, go very far wrong in saying that the Socratic doctrine, that all knowledge is recollection, holds good as far as categories and categorical principles are in question.
But enough at present about our general philosophy.
As to the philosophy of nature, there can be no doubt that, on the basis of principles like those we have shortly sketched, its ultimate aim must be to co-ordinate everything in nature with terms and principles of the categorical style. The philosophy of nature thus becomes a system; a system of which the general type is afforded by the innate constructive power of the Ego. In this sense the Kantian dictum remains true, that the Ego prescribes its own laws to nature, though, of course, “nature,” that is, what is given in space, must be such as to permit that sort of “prescription.”
One often hears that all sciences, including the science of sciences, philosophy, have to find out what is true. What, then, may be called “true” by an idealistic philosopher, for whom the old realistic formula of the conformity between knowledge and the object cannot have any meaning? Besides its ordinary application to simple facts or to simple judgments, where the word truth only means absence of illusion or no false statement, truth can be claimed for a philosophical doctrine or for a system of such doctrines only in the sense that there are no contradictions amongst the parts of the doctrine or of the system themselves, and that there are no features in them which impel our categorical Ego to further analysis.
Those of you who attended Professor Ward’s lectures on “Naturalism and Agnosticism,” or who have read his excellent book on that subject, will know what the aims of a theory of matter are. You will also be aware that, at present, there does not exist any theory of matter which can claim to be “true”; there are contradictions in every theory of matter, and, moreover, there are always some points where we are obliged to ask for further information and receive no answer. Experience here has not yet aroused all the categorical functions which are needed in order to form one unity out of what seem to be incompatibilities at the present day. Why is that? Maybe because experience is not yet complete in this field, but maybe also because the whole subject is so complicated that it takes much time to attach categorical functions to what is experienced.
But it is not our object here to deal either with epistemology proper or with ontology: a full analysis of biological facts is our problem. Why, then, all these introductions? why all these philosophical sketches in fields of knowledge which have quite another relation to philosophy than biology has? Biology, I hear some one say, is simply and solely an empirical science; in some sense it is nothing but applied physics and chemistry, perhaps applied mechanics. There are no fundamental principles in biology which could bring it in any close contact with philosophy. Even the one and only principle which might seem to be an innate principle of our experience about life, the principle of evolution, is only a combination of more simple factors of the physical and chemical type.