The author, for this purpose, would at once refer to his Outlines of a System of Natural Philosophy, if he had not reason to suspect that many even of those who might consider those Outlines worthy of their attention, would come to it with certain preconceived ideas, which he has not presupposed, and which he does not desire to have pre-supposed.
The causes which may render an insight into the tendency of those Outlines difficult, are (exclusive of defects of style and arrangement) mainly, the following:
1. That many persons, misled perhaps by the word Natural Philosophy, expect to find transcendental deductions from natural phenomena, such as, in different fragments, exist elsewhere, and will regard natural philosophy generally as a part of transcendental philosophy, whereas it forms a science altogether peculiar, altogether different from, and independent of, every other.
2. That the notions of dynamical physics hitherto diffused, are very different from, and partially at variance with, those which the author lays down. I do not speak of the modes of representation which several persons, whose business is really mere experiment, have figured to themselves in this connection; for example, where they suppose it to be a dynamical explanation, when they reject a galvanic fluid, and accept instead of it certain vibrations in the metals; for these persons, as soon as they observe that they have understood nothing of the matter, will revert, of their own accord, to their previous representations, which were made for them. I speak of the modes of representation which have been put into philosophic heads by Kant, and which may be mainly reduced to this: that we see in matter nothing but the occupation of space in definite degrees, in all difference of matter, therefore, only mere difference of occupation of space (i. e. density,) in all dynamic (qualitative) changes, only mere changes in the relation of the repelling and attracting forces. Now, according to this mode of representation, all the phenomena of Nature are looked at only on their lowest plane, and the dynamical physics of these philosophers begin precisely at the point where they ought properly to leave off. It is indeed certain that the last result of every dynamical process is a changed degree of occupation of space—that is, a changed density; inasmuch, now, as the dynamical process of Nature is one, and the individual dynamical processes are only shreds of the one fundamental process—even magnetic and electric phenomena, viewed from this stand-point, will be, not actions of particular materials, but changes in the constitution of matter itself; and as this depends upon the mutual action of the fundamental forces, at last, changes in the relation of the fundamental forces themselves. We do not indeed deny that these phenomena at the extreme limit of their manifestation are changes in the relation of the principles themselves; we only deny that these changes are nothing more; on the contrary, we are convinced that this so-called dynamical principle is too superficial and defective a basis of explanation for all Nature’s phenomena, to reach the real depth and manifoldness of natural phenomena, inasmuch as by means of it, in point of fact, no qualitative change of matter as such is constructible (for change of density is only the external phenomenon of a higher change). To adduce proof of this assertion is not incumbent upon us, till, from the opposite side, that principle of explanation is shown by actual fact to exhaust Nature, and the great chasm is filled up between that kind of dynamical philosophy and the empirical attainments of physics—as, for example, in regard to the very different kinds of effects exhibited by simple substances—a thing which, let us say at once, we consider to be impossible.
We may therefore be permitted, in the room of the hitherto prevailing dynamic mode of representation, to place our own without further remark—a procedure which will no doubt clearly show wherein the latter differs from the former, and by which of the two the Doctrine of Nature may most certainly be raised to a Science of Nature.
VI.
INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE SYSTEM OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS.
1.
An inquiry into the Principle of speculative physics must be preceded by inquiries into the distinction between the speculative and the empirical generally. This depends mainly upon the conviction that between empiricism and theory there is such a complete opposition that there can be no third thing in which the two may be united; that, therefore, the idea of Experimental Science is a mongrel idea, which implies no connected thought, or rather, which cannot be thought at all. What is pure empiricism is not science, and, vice versâ, what is science is not empiricism. This is not said for the purpose of at all depreciating empiricism, but is meant to exhibit it in its true and proper light. Pure empiricism, be its object what it may, is history (the absolute opposite of theory), and, conversely, history alone is empiricism.[[19]]
Physics, as empiricism, are nothing but a collection of facts, of accounts of what has been observed—what has happened under natural or artificial circumstances. In what we at present designate physics, empiricism and science run riot together, and for that very reason they are neither one thing nor another.
Our aim, in view of this object, is to separate science and empiricism as soul and body, and by admitting nothing into science which is not susceptible of an à priori construction, to strip empiricism of all theory, and restore it to its original nakedness.