DEPARTMENT I—PHILOSOPHY
(Hall 6, September 20, 11.15 a. m.)
| Chairman: | Professor Borden P. Bowne, Boston University. |
| Speakers: | Professor George H. Howison, University of California. |
| Professor George T. Ladd, Yale University. |
In opening the Department of Philosophy, the Chairman, Professor Borden P. Bowne, LL.D., of Boston University, made an interesting address on the Philosophical Outlook. Professor Bowne said in part:—
I congratulate the members of the Philosophical Section on the improved outlook in philosophy. In the generation just passed, philosophy was somewhat at a discount. The great and rapid development of physical science and invention, together with the profound changes in biological thought, produced for a time a kind of chaos. New facts were showered upon us in great abundance, and we had no adequate philosophical preparation for dealing with them. Such a condition is always disturbing. The old mental equilibrium is overthrown and readjustment is a slow process. Besides, the shallow sense philosophy of that time readily lent itself to mechanical and materialistic interpretations, and for a while it seemed as if all the higher faiths of humanity were permanently discredited. All this has passed away. Philosophical criticism began its work and the naïve dogmatism of materialistic naturalism was soon disposed of. It quickly appeared that our trouble was not due to the new facts, but to the superficial philosophy by which they had been interpreted. Now that we have a better philosophy, we have come to live in perfect peace with the facts once thought disturbing, and even to welcome them as valuable additions to knowledge....
The brief naturalistic episode was not without instruction for us. It showed conclusively the great practical importance of philosophy. Had we had thirty years ago the current philosophical insight, the great development of the physical and biological sciences would have made no disturbance whatever. But being interpreted by a crude scheme of thought, it produced somewhat of a storm. Philosophy may not contribute much of positive value, but it certainly has an important negative function in the way of suppressing pretentious dogmatism and fictitious knowledge, which often lead men astray. It is these things which produce conflicts of science and religion or which find in evolution the solvent of all mysteries and the source of all knowledge.
Concerning the partition of territory between science and philosophy, there are two distinct questions respecting the facts of experience. First, we need to know the facts in their temporal and spatial order, and the way they hang together in a system of law. To get this knowledge is the function of science, and in this work science has inalienable rights and a most important practical function. This work cannot be done by speculation nor interfered with by authority of any kind. It is not surprising, then, that scientists in their sense of contact with reality should be indignant with, or feel contempt for, any who seek to limit or proscribe their research. But supposing this work all done, there remains another question respecting the causality and interpretation of the facts. This question belongs to philosophy. Science describes and registers the facts with their temporal and spatial laws; philosophy studies their causality and significance. And while the scientist justly ignores the philosopher who interferes with his inquiries, so the philosopher may justly reproach the scientist who fails to see that the scientific question does not touch the philosophic one....
In the field of metaphysics proper I note a strong tendency toward personal idealism, or as it might be called, Personalism; that is, the doctrine that substantial reality can be conceived only under the personal form and that all else is phenomenal. This is quite distinct from the traditional idealisms of mere conceptionism. It holds the essential fact to be a community of persons with a Supreme Person at their head while the phenomenal world is only expression and means of communication. And to this view we are led by the failure of philosophizing on the impersonal plane, which is sure to lose itself in contradiction and impossibility. Under the form of mechanical naturalism, with its tendencies to materialism and atheism, impersonalism has once more been judged and found wanting. We are not likely to have a recurrence of this view unless there be a return to philosophical barbarism. But impersonalism at the opposite pole in the form of abstract categories of being, causality, unity, identity, continuity, sufficient reason, etc., is equally untenable. Criticism shows that these categories when abstractly and impersonally taken cancel themselves. On the impersonal plane we can never reach unity from plurality, or plurality from unity; and we can never find change in identity, or identity in change. Continuity in time becomes mere succession without the notion of potentiality, and this in turn is empty. Existence itself is dispersed into nothingness through the infinite divisibility of space and time, while the law of the sufficient reason loses itself in barren tautology and the infinite regress. The necessary logical equivalence of cause and effect in any impersonal scheme makes all real explanation and progress impossible, and shuts us up to an unintelligible oscillation between potentiality and actuality, to which there is no corresponding thought....