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
proportion to the rest, we arrive, through an infinity of gradations,
at a combination of any complexity.
Thus, then, the Science which deals with the inter-action of
hypothetical bodies in space, is _absolutely continuous_ with General
Mechanics. We have already seen that it is _absolutely discontinuous_
with that account of the heavenly bodies which has been called
Astronomy from the beginning. When these facts are recognized, it seems
to me that there cannot remain a doubt respecting its true place in a
classification of the Sciences.
ENDNOTES TO _THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES_.
[2] I have been charged with misrepresenting Kant and misunderstanding
him, because I have used the expression “forms of Thought” instead of
“forms of Intuition.” Elsewhere I have shown that my argument against
him remains equally valid when the phrase “forms of Intuition” is used.
Here I may in the first place add that I did but follow some Kantists
in saying “forms of Thought,” and I may add in the second place that
the objection is superficial and quite irrelevant to the issue. Thought
when broadly used as antithetical to Things includes Intuition: it
comprehends in this sense all that is subjective as distinguished from
all that is objective, and in so doing comprehends Intuition. Nor is
this all. There cannot be Intuition without Thought: every act of
intuition implies an act of classing without which the thing intuited
is not known as such or such; and every act of classing is an act of
thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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