Bygone Beliefs: Being a Series of Excursions in the Byways of ThoughtRedgrove, H. Stanley (Herbert Stanley)
Philosophy
Bygone Beliefs: Being a Series of Excursions in the Byways of Thought
Redgrove, H. Stanley (Herbert Stanley)
Alchemy; Magic; Superstition
I would suggest, in conclusion, that there is nothing really opposed
to the spirit of modern science in the thesis that "all experience
is magic, and only magically explicable." Science does not pretend
to reveal the fundamental or underlying cause of phenomena, does
not pretend to answer the final Why? This is rather the business
of philosophy, though, in thus distinguishing between science and
philosophy, I am far from insinuating that philosophy should be
otherwise than scientific. We often hear religious but non-scientific
men complain because scientific and perhaps equally as religious men do
not in their books ascribe the production of natural phenomena to the
Divine Power. But if they were so to do they would be transcending
their business as scientists. In every science certain simple facts of
experience are taken for granted: it is the business of the scientist
to reduce other and more complex facts of experience to terms of these
data, not to explain these data themselves. Thus the physicist attempts
to reduce other related phenomena of greater complexity to terms of
simple force and motion; but, What are force and motion? Why does force
produce or result in motion? are questions which lie beyond the scope
of physics. In order to answer these questions, if, indeed, this be
possible, we must first inquire, How and why do these ideas of force and
motion arise in our minds? These problems land us in the psychical or
spiritual world, and the term "magic" at once becomes significant.
"If, says THOMAS CARLYLE,... we... have led thee into the true Land of
Dreams; and... thou lookest, even for moments, into the region of
the Wonderful, and seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with
Wonder, and based on Wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are
Miracles,--then art thou profited beyond money's worth...."(1)
(1) THOMAS CARLYLE: _Sartor Resartus_, bk. iii. chap. ix.
VIII. ARCHITECTURAL SYMBOLISM
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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