The Approach to Philosophy

by Ralph Barton Perry

§ [62]. It has already been suggested that the test of Thales's conception lay in the possibility of deriving nature from it. A world principle must be fruitful. Now an abstract distinction has prevailed more or less persistently in metaphysics, between the general definition of being, called ontology, and the study of the processes wherewith being is divided into things and events. This latter study has to do primarily with the details of experience enumerated and systematized by the natural sciences. To reconcile these, or the course of nature, with the fundamental definition of being, is the problem of cosmology. Cosmology is the construing of the prima facie reality in terms of the essential reality. It is the proof and the explanation of ontology. Since the most familiar part of the prima facie reality, the part almost exclusively noticed by the naive mind, is embraced within the field of the physical sciences, the term cosmology has come more definitely to signify the philosophy of nature. It embraces such an examination of space, time, matter, causality, etc., as seeks to answer the most general questions about them, and provide for them in the world thought of as most profoundly real. Such a study receives its philosophical character from its affiliation with ontology, as the latter would find its application in cosmology.

Mechanical and Teleological Cosmologies.

§ [63]. But in addition to the consideration of the various parts of nature, cosmology has commonly dealt with a radical and far-reaching alternative that appeared at the very dawn of metaphysics. Differences may arise within a world constituted of a single substance or a small group of ultimate substances, by changes in the relative position and grouping of the parts. Hence the virtue of the conception of motion. The theory which explains all differences by motions of the parts of a qualitatively simple world, is called mechanism. Another source of change familiar to naive experience is will, or the action of living creatures. According to the mechanical theory, changes occur on account of the natural motions of the parts of matter; according to the latter or teleological conception, changes are made by a formative agency directed to some end. Among the early Greek philosophers, Leucippus was an exponent of mechanism.

"He says that the worlds arise when many bodies are collected together into the mighty void from the surrounding space and rush together. They come into collision, and those which are of similar shape and like form become entangled, and from their entanglement the heavenly bodies arise."[161:11]

Anaxagoras, on the other hand, was famed for his doctrine of the Nous, or Intelligence, to whose direction he attributed the whole process of the world. The following is translated from extant fragments of his book, "περὶ φύσεως":

"And Nous had power over the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve in the beginning. And it began to revolve first from a small beginning; but the revolution now extends over a larger space, and will extend over a larger still. And all the things that are mingled together and separated off and distinguished are all known by the Nous. And Nous set in order all things that were to be and that were, and all things that are not now and that are, and this revolution in which now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon, and the air and the ether that are separated off."[162:12]

Dualism.

§ [64]. It is clear, furthermore, that the doctrine of Anaxagoras not only names a distinct kind of cause, but also ascribes to it an independence and intrinsic importance that do not belong to motion. Whereas motion is a property of matter, intelligence is an originative power working out purposes of its own choosing. Hence we have here to do with a new ontology. If we construe ultimate being in terms of mind, we have a definite substitute for the physical theories outlined above. Such a theory is scarcely to be attributed to any Greek philosopher of the early period; it belongs to a more sophisticated stage in the development of thought, after the rise of the problem of epistemology. But Anaxagoras's sharp distinction between the material of the world on the one hand, and the author of its order and evolution on the other, is in itself worthy of notice. It contains the germ of a recurrent philosophical dualism, which differs from pluralism in that it finds two and only two fundamental divisions of being, the physical, material, or potential on the one hand, and the mental, formal, or ideal on the other.

The New Meaning of Monism and Pluralism.

§ [65]. Finally, the alternative possibilities which these cosmological considerations introduce, bear directly upon the general question of the interdependence of the parts of the world, a question which has already appeared as pertinent in ontology. Monism and pluralism now obtain a new meaning. Where the world process is informed with some singleness of plan, as teleology proposes, the parts are reciprocally necessary, and inseparable from the unity. Where, on the other hand, the processes are random and reciprocally fortuitous, as Leucippus proposes, the world as a whole is an aggregate rather than a unity. In this way uniformity in kind of being may prevail in a world the relations of whose parts are due to chance, while diversity in kind of being may prevail in a world knit together by some thorough-going plan of organization. Thus monism and pluralism are conceptions as proper to cosmology as to ontology.