This does not mean that systems of philosophy which have attempted to
state the nature either of thought and of reality at large, apart from
limits of particular crises in the growth of experience, have been
worthless--though it does mean that their industry has been somewhat
misapplied. The unfolding of metaphysical theory has made large
contributions to positive evaluations of the typical situations and
relationships of experience--even when its conscious intention has been
quite otherwise. Every system of philosophy is itself a mode of
reflection; consequently (if our main contention be true), it too has
been evoked out of specific social antecedents, and has had its use as
a response to them. It has effected something in modifying the situation
within which it found its origin. It may not have solved the problem
which it consciously put itself; in many cases we may freely admit that
the question put has afterward been found to be so wrongly put as to be
insoluble. Yet exactly the same thing is true, in precisely the same
sense, in the history of science. For this reason, if for no other, it
is impossible for the scientific man to cast the first stone at the
philosopher.
The progress of science in any branch continually brings with it a
realization that problems in their previous form of statement are
insoluble because put in terms of unreal conditions; because the real
conditions have been mixed up with mental artifacts or misconstructions.
Every science is continually learning that its supposed solutions are
only apparent, because the "solution" solves, not the actual problem,
but one which has been made up. But the very putting of the question,
the very giving of the wrong answer, induces modification of existing
intellectual habits, standpoints, and aims. Wrestling with the problem,
there is evolution of new forms of technique to control its treatment,
there is search for new facts, institution of new types of
experimentation; there is gain in the methodic control of experience.
And all this is progress. It is only the worn-out cynic, the devitalized
sensualist, and the fanatical dogmatist who interpret the continuous
change of science as proving that, since each successive statement is
wrong, the whole record is error and folly; and that the present truth
is only the error not yet found out. Such draw the moral of caring
naught for all these things, or of flying to some external authority
which will deliver once for all the fixed and unchangeable truth. But
historic philosophy even in its aberrant forms has proved a factor in
the valuation of experience; it has brought problems to light, it has
provoked intellectual conflicts without which values are only nominal;
even through its would-be absolutistic isolations, it has secured
recognition of mutual dependencies and reciprocal reinforcements. Yet if
it can define its work more clearly, it can concentrate its energy upon
its own characteristic problem: the genesis and functioning in
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