Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic AttitudeDewey, John
Philosophy
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
Dewey, John
Philosophy; Pragmatism
There is a strong temptation to lodge these supposititious
fact-structures in a world of conceptual objects, molecules, atoms,
electrons, and the like. For these at least lie beyond the range of
perception by their very definition. They seem to be in a realm of
things-in-themselves. Yet they also are found now in the field of
fact and now in that of ideas. Furthermore, a study of their structure
as they exist in the world of constructive science shows that
their infra-sensible character is due simply to the nature of our
sense-processes, not to a different metaphysical nature. They occupy
space, have measurable dimensions, mass, and are subject to the same
laws of motion as are sensible objects. We even bring them indirectly
into the field of vision and photograph their paths of motion.
The ultimate elements referred to above provide a consistent symbolism
for the finding and formulating of applied mathematical sciences, within
which lies the whole field of physics, including Euclidian geometry as
well. However, they have succeeded in providing nothing more than a
language and logic pruned of the obstinate contradictions, inaccuracies,
and unanalyzed sensuous stuff of earlier mathematical science. Such a
rationalistic doctrine can never present in an unchanged form the
objects with which natural science deals in any of the stages of its
investigation. It can deal only with ultimate elements and forms of
propositions. It is compelled to fall back on a theory of analysis
which reaches ultimate elements and an assumption of inference as an
indefinable. Such an analysis is actually impossible either in the field
of the conceptual objects into which physical science reduces physical
objects, or in the field of sensuous experience. Atoms can be reduced
into positive and negative electrical elements and these may, perhaps
do, imply a structure of ether that again invites further analysis and
so on ad infinitum. None of the hypothetical constructs carry with
themselves the character of being ultimate elements unless they are
purely metaphysical. If they are fashioned to meet the actual problems
of scientific research they will admit of possible further analysis,
because they must be located and defined in the continuity of space and
time. They cannot _be_ the points and instants of modern mathematical
theory. Nor can we reach ultimate elements in sensuous experience, for
this lies also within a continuum. Furthermore, our scientific analyses
are dependent upon the form that our objects assume. There is no general
analysis which research in science has ever used. The assumption that
psychology provides us with an analysis of experience which can be
carried to ultimate elements or facts, and which thereby provides the
elements out of which the objects of our physical world must be
constructed, denies to psychology its rights as a natural science of
which it is so jealous, turning it into a Berkeleyan metaphysics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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