Zoology, Palaeontology

CHAPTER LX
PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY

Definitions

Philosophers, says Plato, are “those who are able to grasp the eternal and immutable”; their pursuit is wisdom. The history of philosophy is, therefore, the history of the ideas which have animated successive generations of man; so that in the wide sense the investigation includes all knowledge; the natural as well as the moral sciences; and the Greeks, to whom the western world owes the direction of its thought, so understood it. The several divisions of Philosophy (Vol. 21, p. 440), as we reckon them, were all fused by Plato in a semi-religious synthesis, with resulting confusion. Aristotle, the encyclopaedist of the ancient world, saw that the several issues should be regarded as separate disciplines, and became the founder of the sciences of logic, psychology, ethics, and aesthetics. His “first philosophy,” or, as we should say, “first principles,” which stood as introductions to his separate special inquiries, gradually acquired the name metaphysics. In more recent times the natural sciences: biology, physics, chemistry, medicine, etc., have been regarded as outside the strict boundaries of the philosophic schools; and theology, is excluded on the ground that its subject matter is so extensive that it may be looked upon as a separate science. The main divisions of philosophy are: Epistemology (Vol. 9, p. 701), which is concerned with the nature and origin of knowledge, i. e., the possibility of knowledge in the abstract; Metaphysics (Vol. 18, p. 224), the science of being, often called Ontology (Vol. 20, p. 118), dealing, that is to say, with being as being; and Psychology (Vol. 22, p. 547), the science of mind, an analysis of what “mind” means.

Some Important Articles and Their Writers

Metaphysics and Logic

It will be of interest to the reader if, at this point, we enumerate some of the more important articles in the Britannica covering this field with the names of their authors. Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, professor of logic and metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, wrote the general article Philosophy, which is a key to the whole subject, as well as the articles Mysticism (Vol. 19, p. 123), Scepticism (Vol. 24, p. 306), Scholasticism (Vol. 24, p. 346), Spinoza (Vol. 25, p. 687), and others. Of fundamental importance is the article Logic (Vol. 16, p. 879), which would occupy 124 pages of this Guide. It is divided into two parts: the first, by Thomas Case, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, formerly professor of moral and metaphysical philosophy in that university, treats of the science generally, and examines in detail the processes of inference. The second, by H. W. Blunt, of Christ Church, Oxford, and formerly fellow of All Soul’s, gives a brilliant account of the history of logic, that is, the history of the ideas which have been the basis of all attempts to regulate these processes of inference. This account is unique in that it is the first critical review of the types of logical theory that has been attempted. A lucid discussion of a most difficult subject is that given under Metaphysics (Vol. 18, p. 224); equivalent to 100 pages in this Guide by Professor Case, to whom, as one of the most distinguished of modern Aristotelians, the article Aristotle (Vol. 2, p. 501) was also assigned. The life and work of Plato are examined in a valuable article (Vol. 21, p. 808), the equivalent in length to 54 pages of this Guide, by the late Professor Lewis Campbell, of St. Andrews, one of the best known Platonists of the time.

Henry Sturt, author of Personal Idealism and many other books, is responsible for brilliant discussions of Utilitarianism (Vol. 27, p. 820), Nominalism (Vol. 19, p. 735), Metempsychosis (Vol. 18, p. 259), Space and Time (Vol. 25, p. 525), etc. And F. C. S. Schiller, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who, under the wider, and historically more significant title “Humanism,” has further developed the pragmatic philosophy of William James, contributed the articles on Pragmatism, Herbert Spencer, and Nietzsche.