An Introduction to PhilosophyFullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
An Introduction to Philosophy
Fullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
It is the historic and human interest that carries us back to these
things. We say: What ingenuity! what a happy guess! how well that was
reasoned in the light of what was actually known about the world in
those days! But we never forget that what compels our admiration does
so because it makes us realize that we stand in the presence of a great
mind, and not because it is a foundation-stone in the great edifice
which science has erected.
But it is not so in philosophy. It is not possible to regard the
philosophical reflections of Plato and of Aristotle as superseded in
the same sense in which we may so regard their science. The reason for
this lies in the difference between scientific thought and reflective
thought.
The two have been contrasted in Chapter II of this volume. It was
there pointed out that the sort of thinking demanded in the special
sciences is not so very different from that with which we are all
familiar in common life. Science is more accurate and systematic, it
has a broader outlook, and it is free from the imperfections which
vitiate the uncritical and fragmentary knowledge which experience of
the world yields the unscientific. But, after all, the world is much
the same sort of a world to the man of science and to his uncritical
neighbor. The latter can, as we have seen, understand what, in
general, the former is doing, and can appropriate many of his results.
On the other hand, it often happens that the man who has not, with
pains and labor, learned to reflect, cannot even see that the
philosopher has a genuine problem before him. Thus, the plain man
accepts the fact that he has a mind and that it knows the world. That
both mental phenomena and physical phenomena should be carefully
observed and classified he may be ready to admit. But that the very
conceptions of mind and of what it means to know a world are vague and
indefinite in the extreme, and stand in need of careful analysis, he
does not realize.
In other words, he sees that our knowledge needs to be extended and
rendered more accurate and reliable, but he does not see that, if we
are to think clearly and consciously, all our knowledge needs to be
gone over in a different way. In common life it is quite possible to
use in the attainment of practical ends knowledge which has not been
analyzed and of the full meaning of which we are ignorant. I hope it
has become evident in the course of this volume that something closely
analogous is true in the field of science. The man of science may
measure space and time, and may study the phenomena of the human mind,
without even attempting to answer all the questions which may be raised
as to what is meant, in the last analysis, by such concepts as space,
time, and the mind.
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