Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
For a full reply, given by implication, I must refer Prof. Bain to
§ 56 of _The Principles of Psychology_, where I have contended that
“while, under its objective aspect, Psychology is to be classed as one
of the Concrete Sciences which successively decrease in scope as they
increase in speciality; under its subjective aspect, Psychology is a
totally unique science, independent of, and antithetically opposed to,
all other sciences whatever.” A pure idealist will not, I suppose,
recognize this distinction; but to every one else it must, I should
think, be obvious that the science of subjective existences is the
correlative of all the sciences of objective existences; and is as
absolutely marked off from them as subject is from object. Objective
Psychology, which I class among the Concrete Sciences, is purely
synthetic, so long as it is limited, like the other sciences, to
objective data; though great aid in the interpretation of these data
is derived from the observed correspondence between the phenomena of
Objective Psychology as presented in other beings and the phenomena of
Subjective Psychology as presented in one’s own consciousness. Now it
is Subjective Psychology only which is analytic, and which affords aid
in the {106} development of Logic. This being explained, the apparent
incongruity disappears.
A difficulty raised respecting the manner in which I have expressed the
nature of Mathematics, may next be dealt with. Prof. Bain writes:―
“In the first place, objection may be taken to his language, in
discussing the extreme Abstract Sciences, when he speaks of the _empty_
_forms_ therein considered. To call Space and Time empty forms, must
mean that they can be thought of without any concrete embodiment
whatsoever; that one can think of Time, as a pure abstraction, without
having in one’s mind any concrete succession. Now, this doctrine is in
the last degree questionable.”
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