The Philosophy of Evolution: Together With a Preliminary Essay on The Metaphysical Basis of ScienceCarpenter, Stephen H. (Stephen Haskins)
Religion
The Philosophy of Evolution: Together With a Preliminary Essay on The Metaphysical Basis of Science
Carpenter, Stephen H. (Stephen Haskins)
Evolution; Science
Complete knowledge, being complete generalization, the lines of all
science will necessarily converge, as they approach this generalization,
until all sciences coalesce in one science, and all truth is reduced to
a single expression in the utterance of the final conception. In
accordance with the laws of thinking, this general term is reached by
successive omissions of particularizing attributes, until at last we
reach Being--the absolute _summum genus_, wholly free from individual
attributes, and thereby embracing everything possible to thought,
whether material or immaterial. But this _summum genus_ must be
predicable of this whole. Matter and mind may thus be reduced to a
single category, and the physical and the intellectual finally coalesce
in this last generalization. Materialism and idealism thus differ merely
in the degree of generalization reached--or rather they both agree in
avoiding the final generalization which identifies both matter and mind.
Materialism must always deal with the individual, for matter can appear
under no other form. Idealism must always rest upon the general, for
thought, to be thought, must state a generalization. Each, however,
finds its explanation in the other, and both are harmonized by the
application of the law of intellectual action above given. Matter and
Mind are complementary, not incompatible. They differ with each other,
but they agree in being similarly related to a third term. Matter is
objective; it is thought taking form, becoming individual, manifesting
itself in space. Mind is subjective. The one appeals to the senses; the
other is known only to the consciousness.
Science reaches its full development only when it includes both physical
and intellectual phenomena within its scope. Every step which it takes
carries it further from the purely physical, and brings it nearer the
purely intellectual--that is the development of physical science is from
the individual towards the general, and it reaches its end, its
completion, only when the last distinction, that of subjective and
objective, has disappeared in the last possible generalization. When the
objective has been identified with the subjective, the distinction
between Mind and Matter has been obliterated, and we have reached the
Supreme Intelligence--the "I Am" of Scripture--simple Being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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