Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION TOGETHER WITH A PRELIMINARY ESSAY ON THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF SCIENCE. TWO PAPERS Read before THE WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS, AND LETTERS at the Annual Meetings of February, 1873 and February, 1874. BY STEPHEN H. CARPENTER, LL. D., _Professor of Logic, etc., in the University of Wisconsin, and President of the Department of Speculative Philosophy in the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters._ [REPRINTED FROM THE ACADEMY'S TRANSACTIONS.] MADISON, WIS.: ATWOOD & CULVER, PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS. 1874. THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF SCIENCE. All knowledge is essentially one. The object-matter upon which intellect exerts itself, does not affect the subjective act of knowing. Physics, when stripped of that which is merely contingent, becomes metaphysics. Physical science deals with object-matter, and discusses the signs by which nature communicates her message--that is, phenomena. Metaphysical science has to do with the subject-mind, and discusses the meaning of the message. The one converts God's hieroglyphics into easily-intelligible language; the other translates this language into Idea. If this be true, there must be a unity of method in all science, however great the diversity of the object-matter investigated. This method is subjectively determined, that is, by the constitution of the mind, and not by the particular form of matter upon which intellectual energy may be exerted. If there is an essential unity in all knowledge, it is because there is a corresponding unity of method in all mental activity. It is only when we look upon what is to be known, that truth separates into sciences; but particular truths become particular sciences only under assumed relations to the whole of which they form a part.