is fashioned for the needs of human action, is an intellect which
proceeds at the same time by intention and by calculation, by adapting
means to ends and by thinking out mechanisms of more and more
geometrical form. Whether nature be conceived as an immense machine
regulated by mathematical laws, or as the realization of a plan, these
two ways of regarding it are only the consummation of two tendencies of
mind which are complementary to each other, and which have their origin
in the same vital necessities.
For that reason, radical finalism is very near radical mechanism on many
points. Both doctrines are reluctant to see in the course of things
generally, or even simply in the development of life, an unforeseeable
creation of form. In considering reality, mechanism regards only the
aspect of similarity or repetition. It is therefore dominated by this
law, that in nature there is only _like_ reproducing _like_. The more
the geometry in mechanism is emphasized, the less can mechanism admit
that anything is ever created, even pure form. In so far as we are
geometricians, then, we reject the unforeseeable. We might accept it,
assuredly, in so far as we are artists, for art lives on creation and
implies a latent belief in the spontaneity of nature. But disinterested
art is a luxury, like pure speculation. Long before being artists, we
are artisans; and all fabrication, however rudimentary, lives on
likeness and repetition, like the natural geometry which serves as its
fulcrum. Fabrication works on models which it sets out to reproduce; and
even when it invents, it proceeds, or imagines itself to proceed, by a
new arrangement of elements already known. Its principle is that "we
must have like to produce like." In short, the strict application of the
principle of finality, like that of the principle of mechanical
causality, leads to the conclusion that "all is given." Both principles
say the same thing in their respective languages, because they respond
to the same need.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account