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
In view of this fact of mutual participation of nature and idea among
the sciences that use each other, I have myself conceived, and in
another place have given expression to, what appropriately may be called
a physical psychology or epistemology.'[1] This new hybrid science is
especially concerned with nothing more nor less than those substitutes,
disguises, or [p.093] indirections, really present in all the physical
sciences, for the peculiar nature, for the peculiar sort of unity,
intensive instead of extensive or qualitative instead of quantitative,
or say also even vital and spiritual instead of physical, which is
always associated with mind. In conservation of matter, energy, what you
will, in plenitude, in motion as only relative and so as always under a
principle of uniformity and constancy or even immobility, in motion too
as inclining to vibration, which suggests poise or tension, or to
rotation, in which we see rest as well as motion, and finally, not to
extend what might be a long list, in the infinity of space and time or
of quantity, the physical sciences have hidden entrances for the silent,
usually unnoticed admission of what is psychical. But I may seem to be
jumping too far, to be presuming too much. Then put the case in this
way--not quite so direct, but to the same goal. All of these
conceptions, so necessary to a "working" physical science, need very
little examination to be seen to be treacherous to the physical
standpoint and its peculiar categories. One might as well try to make
water unsupported assume definiteness of form as to conceive the
conservation of energy or plenitude or the relativity of motion in the
character of what is physical, or at least of what is properly and
conventionally physical. Being treacherous, then, to the physical
science that has conceived them, they are, as was said, doors for what
is not physical; hidden doors, perhaps, but certainly doors to be opened
at will; and by them mind is bound to enter the physical world and its
sciences. To those familiar with the history of philosophy, the
speculation [p.094] of the early Greek thinkers, notably Anaximander,
Parmenides, and Anaxagoras, will afford illustration of the physical
view running, in spite of itself, into treacherous conceptions, and
eventually reaching the discovery of their treachery and with it the
idea of mind or _Nous_.[2]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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