The Philosophy of Evolution: Together With a Preliminary Essay on The Metaphysical Basis of Science — John Shaqi
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
period of time the simplest and most rudimentary forms, and at another
the most complex and highly organized; we cannot do otherwise than
conceive these two extremes as related by intermediate terms, through
the operation of some law which holds good throughout the series. The
relation subsisting between any two, must be the same as that subsisting
between any other two similarly situated, or a departure from that
relation which is itself governed by a definite law discoverable from a
comparison of two sets of terms. The application of this law is so
universal and so rigid that we need not hesitate to interpolate a
missing term, and confidently assert that it either does exist or has
existed. To deny this principle is to deny the necessity of continuity
in reasoning. This continuity of thought is represented in matter by the
persistence of generic forms under specific differences. But just as the
specific is the generic with certain additions, so the individual is
this same generic with still further additions; and these additions,
whether considered solely in space, as given in the symbols of physical
science, or in time as in the conceptions of intellectual science, must
be determined by the same unvarying law. The persistence of the same
form furnishes us the means of identifying this relation, while the
differences reveal to us the successive steps by which the generic was
differentiated into the individual.
If the creative thought has been expressed by the forms of matter, the
laws of thought must be thus expressed in the relative forms of matter.
Anything less than this, while it might interpret isolated ideas, would
not communicate the method of the creative process, and science is
nothing but the discovery of this method. If the terms of the logical
process must be arranged in a series, the physical symbols rendering
this logical process cognizable, must be arranged in a similar series,
for science becomes impossible when the logical process becomes
undiscoverable.
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