The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinkerLloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Philosophy
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker
Lloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Belief and doubt; Philosophy -- Introductions
But besides burying science in technique, and besides involving it in an
only disguised, albeit a socially significant subjectivity, the ideal of
wholly objective knowledge has also made science conservative in a way
that must have peculiar interest here. Reference is not now made to the
double truth or the double life which an objective science sanctions so
cordially that men can hold so-called advanced scientific ideas without
feeling them in any serious conflict with the traditional teachings of
religion and morality, but to something else perhaps not wholly
unrelated to this, and certainly not less suggestive of contradiction.
While science is commonly supposed to be advanced and radical and up to
date, if anything is, it is so only in a way which calls for a very
important qualification, for it manages to perpetuate, not indeed the
letter, but the spirit of old views. At its best a purely objective
science can give only a new material content, or a new arrangement
perhaps of an old content, to existing and time-worn forms of thought;
it cannot possibly do that in which real progress must always consist,
namely, develop, recognize, and adopt new forms of thought, new
categories; [p.082] it cannot do that without betraying its own ideal of
mere objectivism. Objective science--to give a commonplace example--has
said relatively to a certain doctrine of creation that spirit did not
precede matter, but instead matter preceded spirit, and--except for the
excitement of the drawn battle which such a startling declaration has
precipitated--this can hardly be said to have involved any great
advance. Cause and effect have indeed been made to change places by the
new deal, and perhaps in common fairness it was high time that a change
be made, but no new conception of causation itself has been recognized.
The new creationalism, the materialistic, has no essential advantage
over the old. Again, while deposing the First Cause, an objective
science has made all things causes after the same plan--individual,
arbitrary, antecedent causes; and this is only to multiply indefinitely,
perhaps infinitely, the offensive creationalism. "Not so," says some
one; "there is a splendid democracy in it, and it implies a great deal
more than mere multiplication. Indefiniteness, or at least infinity,
transforms anything or everything to which it is applied. By making all
things causes one forces into science the important principle of the
equation of action and reaction, everything being seen as acted upon as
well as acting, and this principle, as if by turning creationalism
fatally against itself, yields a new standpoint, that of mechanicalism."
Granted, and granted cordially, but has a purely objective science any
right to change its standpoint?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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