International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1 / Philosophy and Metaphysics

by Unknown

While organisms usually work with kinds of energy which we know well from the inorganic world, organs are found in the higher forms which without doubt cause or assist transfers of energy, but we cannot yet say definitely what particular kind of energy is active in them. These organs are called nerves, and their function is regularly that, after certain forms of energy have acted upon one end of them, they should act at the other end and release the energies stored up there which then act in their special manner. That energetical transformations also take place in the nerve during the process of nervous transmission can be looked upon as demonstrated. We shall thus be justified in speaking of a nerve energy, while leaving it undecided whether there is here an energy of a particular kind, or perhaps chemical energy, or finally a combination of several energies.

While these processes can be shown objectively by the stimulation of the nerve and its corresponding releasing reaction in the end apparatus (for instance, a muscle), we find in ourselves, connected with certain nervous processes, a phenomenon of a new sort which we call self-consciousness. From the agreement of our reactions with those of other people we conclude with scientific probability that they also have self-consciousness; and we are justified in making the same conclusion with regard to some higher animals. How far down something similar to this is present cannot be determined by the means at hand, since the analogy of organization and of behavior diminishes very quickly; but the line is probably not very long, in view of the great leap from man to animal. Moreover, there are many reasons for the view that the gray cortical substance in the brain, with its characteristic pyramidal cell, is the anatomical substratum of this kind of nervous activity.

The study of the processes of self-consciousness constitutes the chief task of psychology. To this science belong those fields which are generally allotted to philosophy, especially logic and epistemology, while æsthetics, and still more ethics, are to be reckoned with the social sciences.

The latter have to do with living beings in so far as they can be united in groups with common functions. Here in place of the individual mind appears a collective mind, which owing to the adjustment of the differences of the members of society shows simpler conditions than that. From this comes especially the task of the historical sciences. The happenings in the world accessible to us are conditioned partly by physical, partly by psychological factors, and both show a temporal mutability in one direction. Thus arises on the one hand a history of heaven and earth, on the other hand a history of organisms up to man.

All history has primarily the task of fixing past events through the effects which have remained from them. Where such are not accessible, only analogy is left, a very doubtful means for gaining a conception of those events. But it must be kept in mind that an event which has left no evident traces has no sort of interest for us, for our interest is directly proportional to the amount of change which that event has caused in what we have before us. The task of historical science is just as little exhausted, however, with the fixing of former events as, for instance, the task of physics with the establishment of a single fact, as the temperature of a given place at a given time. Rather the individual facts must serve to bring out the general characteristics of the collective mind, and the muchdiscussed historical laws are laws of collective psychology. Just as physical and chemical laws are deduced in order with their help to predict the course of future physical events (to be called forth either experimentally or technically), so should the historical laws contribute to the formation and control of social and political development. We see that the great statesmen of all time have eagerly studied history for this purpose, and from that we derive the assurance that there are historical laws in spite of the objections of numerous scholars.

After this brief survey, if we look back over the road we have come, we observe the following general facts. In every case the development of a science consists in the formation of concepts by certain abstractions from experience, and setting of these concepts in relation with each other so that a systematical control of certain sides of our experience is made possible. These relations, according to their generality and reliability, are called rules or laws. A law is the more important the more it definitely expresses concerning the greatest possible number of things, and the more accurately, therefore, it enables us to predict the future. Every law rests upon an incomplete induction, and is therefore subject to modification by experience. From this there results a double process in the development of science.

First, the actual conditions are investigated to find out whether, besides those already known, new rules or laws, that is, constant relations between individual peculiarities, cannot be discovered between them. This is the inductive process, and the induction is always an incomplete one on account of the limitlessness of all possible experience.

Immediately the relationship found inductively is applied to cases which have not yet been investigated. Especially such cases are investigated as result from a combination of several inductive laws. If these are perfectly certain, and the combination is also properly made, the result has claim to unconditional validity. This is the limit which all sciences are striving to reach. It has almost been reached in the simpler sciences: in mathematics and in certain parts of mechanics. This is called the deductive process.

In the actual working of every science the two methods of investigation are continually changing. The best means of finding new successful inductions is in the making of a deduction on a very insufficient basis, perhaps, and subsequently testing it in experience. Sometimes the elements of his deductions do not come into the investigator's consciousness; in such cases we speak of scientific instinct. On the other hand we have much evidence from great mathematicians that they were accustomed to find their general laws by the method of induction, by trying and considering single cases; and that the deductive derivation from other known laws is an independent operation which sometimes does not succeed until much later. Indeed there is to-day a number of mathematical propositions which have not yet reached the second stage and therefore have at present a purely inductive empirical character. The proportion of such laws in science increases very quickly with the rise in the scale (page 339).

Another peculiarity which may be mentioned here is that in the scale all previous sciences have the character of applied sciences (page 341) with reference to those which follow, since they are everywhere necessary in the technique of the latter, yet do not serve to increase their own field but are merely auxiliaries to the latter.