Science is supreme in its own sphere, the sphere, or hemisphere, of the
objective world, but it does not embrace the whole of human life,
because human life is made up of two spheres, or hemispheres, one of
which is the subjective world. There is a world within us also, the
world of our memories, thoughts, emotions, aspirations, imaginings,
which overarches the world of our practical lives and material
experience, as the sky overarches the earth. It is in the spirit of
science that we conquer and use the material world in which we live; it
is in the spirit of art and literature, philosophy and religion, that we
explore and draw upon the immaterial world of our own hearts and souls.
Of course the man of science is also a philosopher--may I not even say
he is also a prophet and poet? Not otherwise could he organize his
scientific facts and see their due relations, see their drift and the
sequence of forces that bind the universe into a whole. As a man of
science he traces out the causes of the tides and the seasons, the
nature and origin of disease, and a thousand and one other things; but
only as a philosopher can he see the body as a whole and speculate about
the mystery of its organization; only as a philosopher can he frame
theories and compare values and interpret the phenomena he sees about
him.
II
We can only know, in the scientific sense, the physical and chemical
phenomena of life; its essence, its origin, we can only know as
philosophy and idealism know them. We have to turn philosophers when we
ask any ultimate question. The feeling we have that the scientific
conception of life is inadequate springs from the philosophical habit of
mind. Yet this habit is quite as legitimate as the scientific habit, and
is bound to supplement the latter all through life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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