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
We have dropped attribute after attribute until we have reached the last
possible analysis; but we do not stop here, but by the assumption of
attributes we again reach the highest possible synthesis. This must be
the method of the divine activity, successive differentiation and
integration, the closing in of a mighty circle of infinity, embracing
all the finite, but never losing the essential characteristic of the
infinite.
Now, if this also represent the exact movement of the finite mind in
action--that is, in reasoning, man must be God. Man is finite. Even his
infinite is only the immeasurable--not that which is without the
category of measure. He cannot begin where the Infinite begins, at the
highest possible generalization,--but he must begin with the finite. If
what we have shown above be true, man must begin with the individual,
and the first mental act of the positive character of thinking, is the
reference of this individual notion to a class. Now the _class-notion_
is the same as the individual notion, less certain attributes as
_individual_ attributes, but gathered into a larger whole. This process
is plainly integration; we are rejecting from the new conception
whatever prevents enlarging the class. Each higher generalization
involves all the attributes of the lower, not individually, but
specifically or generically. In the final generalization, extension and
intension coalesce. Just as we reach the individual by differentiating a
universal through successive negations, we reach the universal again, by
integration, by successively denying the negations through which we just
now differentiated. The movement of the finite mind in reasoning is thus
from the individual through the universal to the individual again.
Science thus parts into two great branches--one seeking to establish
principles by what we have called integration, and the other the
elucidation of facts by _a priori_ reasoning instead of observation.
That is, the aim of true science is to free man from the restrictions of
the finite, and to place him in possession of the infinite--the closing
in of a lesser circle of infinite truth, yet never losing hold upon the
finite. In accordance with this view we see science pursuing its
integrations until it has identified as composing an essential unity all
the various manifestations of force. This is the finite becoming the
infinite, for unity is, in so far, infinity--God is one, a unity, not a
unit. But we also see science going beyond this point, and by a new
series of differentiations reaching truths new to experience, if indeed
not impossible to experience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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