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
For other evidence against the integrity and adequacy of specialism,
showing how mind defies specialism and conserves its indivisible
universe, there are the following simple but certainly interesting
facts. All the different sciences, however special and however
apparently alien in subject matter, are wont to use the same general
methods--as, for example, the laboratory or experimental method or the
historical [p.096] method, the fatal consequences of which to the cause
of pure specialism may easily be inferred. History is famous for
overcoming differences. The common interest in mathematics must also be
mentioned, for mathematics, through its latest developments in danger of
turning into a pure logic, is quite independent of all those material
differences that separate the different sciences. It is formal and
universal, not special; so that the special science that would also be
mathematical appears somehow to be at least in aim as universal as it is
special. Perhaps mathematics more than anything else has fed the
voracity which we have seen veracity to exact. Has it not been the chief
agent in the virtual annihilation of the barriers between physics and
chemistry? This particular mingling of the special sciences has been
mentioned here already, but mathematics is threatening the party-walls
of all the other sciences also. Further, what are we to infer from the
idea that all sciences seek law? Certainly law is not special as science
has seemed to be. Somehow law is not many, but one. Many laws can only
be different phases or cases of one law. The very essence of law is to
be one and single and all-embracing. To put the case theologically,
could any one suppose that God made the laws of chemistry and sociology
and psychology as so many separate and independent enactments? On such a
supposition he had been a strange God indeed, lacking the very thing,
unity of being and character, which men have come to associate with
divinity, and what theology demands of God, science, even against its
own specialism, must demand of its object. Again, [p.097] the way in
which by implication, when not openly, one science is given to handing
over its hardest problems to another is very instructive as well as
amusing. Not many years ago I was present at a joint meeting, a
good-natured and doubtless honestly ambitious conference of biologists,
physiologists, and psychologists, and the addresses then made have often
reminded me of one of Thomas Nast's famous cartoons: A closed ring of
political grafters, none other than the notorious Tweed and his
followers, each pointing to his neighbour and putting on him the
responsibility of a very embarrassing situation. "Find the rogue" was
the artist's inscription; but with apologies for the association, we can
easily change it to "Find the special science." And, lastly, in this
list of the simple evidences against an adequate specialism there are
the conspicuous analogies other than those of common method or common
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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