Essays Towards a Theory of KnowledgePhilip, Alexander
Philosophy
Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge
Philip, Alexander
Cycles; Force and energy; Knowledge, Theory of
The question ever and anon occurs to us--How upon this view can we solve
the problem of transcendence? How even on this view of the case do we
manage to get beyond ourselves? How are we in any way helped thereto by
the fact that Reality consists in potent action rather than in
Sensation?
Again, the answer is significant. In action, that is, in exertional
action, we are really _part_ of a larger _whole_. Our exertional action
is _ab initio_ mingled in and forms really an integral part of the
dynamic system in which our life is involved. The ever operative forces
of Gravity, Cohesion, Chemical Affinity, and so forth are the phenomenal
expression of the laws of energetic transmutation in which we partake
and of which we are organically a part, however apparently separate and
disparate our bodies may seem to be. It is life and feeling, not action,
which really distinguish the individual from his environment, at least
from his material dynamic environment. Be it noted that what is required
is not an explanation of how we transcend Experience. That by no effort
can we ever do in Knowledge. All we are required to explain is how we
transcend our Thought and our Sensibility. The answer is: Our Experience
begins in action, and it begins therefore in a sphere which is beyond
the mere subjective Consciousness, and yet is _organically one_ with the
organs of Cognition and Feeling.
It is only by a visual fiction that we come to regard our active selves
as distinct from the dynamic system. We cannot, in fact, shake off the
bonds of corporeality, of gravity, of all the various restraints of our
organic activity.
Relatively, however, the cerebral activity of Thought is liberated from
the stresses of the dynamic environment; hence the apparent freedom and
independence, under certain conditions, of Thought, Imagination, and
Volition.
A great difficulty in realising this view of Experience is to be found
in the apparent Solidity and Inertia of material bodies. Sensible
experiences group themselves round these _constancies_. But a material
body, when its sensible concomitants are abstracted, is nothing more
than a permanent process of energy transmutation the interruption of
which in one form or another may originate Sensation. It follows that
the world of spatially extended bodies is a homogeneous and consistent
whole, reflecting in its laws and forms the real operations by which it
is constituted and sustained. But all this actual World is nevertheless
phenomenal only, albeit the phenomena are derived from and related to
the Real as change is to the thing which changes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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