Abstract
The necessity of a union between science and philosophy, which was the conclusion we reached in Book Three, seems at first glance to create an inextricable difficulty. If philosophy really needs only good will to accommodate itself to science and its changing aspects — the scientists of a given era always being more or less in agreement among themselves — science finds itself in an incomparably more difficult situation with regard to philosophy. For it is only too obvious that in philosophy there is only diversity and disputation; never has one particular metaphysical position truly reigned to the point of silencing all contradiction, let alone to the point of removing all doubt, and of course in our time this doubt more than ever reigns supreme. Now it may be argued that science cannot suspend all judgment in this matter. If it is true, as we have seen, that all scientific explanations are naturally, unconsciously, necessarily ontological, then science would seem to need this ontology immediately, not in the process of being worked out, but already completely worked out; in other words, it must have made a choice between the possible metaphysical systems.
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Notes
Pierre Duhem, La Science allemande (Paris: A. Hermann et Fils, 1915), pp. 135, 136, 138–139, 143. As the title indicates, Duhem means to limit his condemnation to the science on the other side of the Rhine, but obviously the theory of relativity found champions as ardent as they were authoritative among scientists and philosophers outside Germany as well; we need only recall the important works of Langevin (known to philosophers especially through his brilliant exposition of the theory in the July 1911 Revue de métaphysique et de morale under the title ‘L’Evolution de l’espace et du temps’) and the very interesting comparisons made by Herbert Wildon Carr (The Philosophy of Change, A Study of the Fundamental Principle of the Philosophy of Bergson, London: Macmillan, 1914, pp. v, 10 ff., 38). It does not seem too soon to predict that the number of supporters of the theory will be considerably increased by the dazzling success it recently recorded in explaining the anomaly of Mercury, which had so long defied all efforts of astronomers, and in predicting with a truly surprising exactitude the deviation of light rays, verified during a solar eclipse in 1919.
Henri Bergson, Matière et mémoire (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1903), p. 22 [Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (London: George Allen &Unwin, 1911), p. 26].
St. Vincentii Lirinensis, Commonitorium primum, Ch. 2, Patrologie Migne (Paris, 1846), 50:639: In ipsa item Catholica Ecclesia magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.
Lucretius, De rerum nat. I, 269–299; cf. also II, 112–141. It is quite remarkable that Lucretius considered this indirect demonstration, by the effects that moving air is capable of exercising, to be so convincing that he neglected to make use of Empedocles’ direct demonstration, which is undoubtedly one of the finest experiments coming down to us from antiquity (an illuminating exposition of this experiment is to be found in Burnet, L’Aurore de la philosophie grecque, trans. Reymond (Paris: Payot, 1919), pp. 251–252 [Early Greek Philosophy, 2nd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1908), pp. 253–254]). This is all the more significant because Lucretius knew Empedocles thoroughly, had consciously modeled the form of his poem on him, and had made him the subject of a dithyrambic eulogy (De rerum nat. I, 716 ff.).
Urbain’s views on energetics would seem in particular to fit into this category (‘La valeur des idées de A. Comte sur la chimie,’ Rev. de méta. 27 [1920] 151–179, and ‘Essai de discipline scientifique,’ La Grande Revue 24 [1920] 47–74).
It will perhaps not be superfluous to note that the fecundity of this admirable conception — Auguste Comte took pains to deny explicitly that it could ever offer “any real utility for guiding our mind in the effective study of optics” (Cours 2:453) — has not yet been exhausted even today after a century of important work it has inspired. Indeed, the theory by which Sagnac furnished the explanation of a curious phenomenon discovered by Gouy is directly connected to that of Fresnel (see G. Sagnac, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences 138 (1904) 479–481, 619–621, 678–680; 139 (1904) 186, and Festschrift Ludwig Boltzmann, Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1904, pp. 529 ff.).
Hadamard, an extremely valuable witness both because of his high authority in everything having to do with mathematics and by the fact that, being a non-physicist, he is probably less apt to be carried away by something that might be only a passing phase, notes that an “evolution toward the discontinuous is taking shape at the present time” in physics (Jacques Hadamard, ‘L’Oeuvre d’Henri Poincaré: le mathématicien,’ Rev. de méta. 21 [1913] 620). Furthermore, we know that atomism today dominates not only the theory of electricity (as we showed in Ch. 6, p. 164), but also that of magnetism (see Pierre Weiss, ‘Le Moment magnétique des atomes et le magnéton,’ Idées modernes 335, 344).
Zeller quite rightly argued that “the theory of the elements of Philolaus and Plato is closely related to that of the atonomists, given that they both set aside qualitative diversity of subtances and allow only shape and size to subsist as the sole differences” Phil. der Griechen 2:708 [erroneous citation]).
F.C.S. Schiller, ‘Realism, Pragmatism and William James,’ Mind 24 (1915) 521.
[Reading application for explication to conform to the Schiller quotation.]
Cf. Hermann Weyl, Raum, Zeit, Materie, 2nd ed. (Berlin: J. Springer, 1919), p. 3 [Space — Time — Matter, trans. Henry L. Brose (London: Methuen, 1921; reprint New York: Dover, 1952), p. 3].
Kant, Premiers Principes métaphysiques de la science de la nature, trans. Andler and Chavannes (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1892), pp. 5, 6 [Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, trans. James Ellington (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), pp. 5, 7]. We have already referred to this passage in Chapter 14, p. 386.
Premiers principes métaphysiques de la science de la nature 6 [Ellington 6], as quoted in Ch. 13, p. 353.
Sophie Germain, Considérations générales sur l’état des sciences et des lettres aux différentes époques de leur culture, Oeuvres philosophiques (Paris: Paul Ritti, 1879), pp. 157–158.
Aristotle, Metaphysics 991b21-27, 992a10-24. Zeller (Phil. der Griechen 22:297 ff. [Costelloe 1:319]) has admirably understood that Aristotle’s objections refer to the qualitative aspect of geometric conceptions. Burnet (L’Aurore de la philosophie grecque, trans. Reymond, Paris: Payot, 1919, pp. 335 ff. [Early Greek Philosophy, 2nd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1908), pp. 337 ff.]) believes that these objections were addressed less to Plato than to the Pythagoreans.
Joseph de Maistre, Examen de la philosophie de Bacon, 3rd ed. (Paris: J. B. Pélagaud, 1855), 2:200–201.
See Paul Langevin, ‘L’Oeuvre d’Henri Poincaré: Le physicien,’ Rev. de méta. 21 (1913) 676.
Lionel Dauriac, ‘Les Sources néocriticistes de la dialectique synthétique,’ Rev. de méta. 17 (1909) 487.
Harald Höffding, La Pensée humaine, trans. Jacques de Coussanges (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1911), p. 129.
‘Discours préliminaire des éditeurs,’ Encyclopédie (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1751), l:ii [Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, trans. Richard N. Schwab (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), p. 9].
Pierre Daniel Huet, Traité philosophique de la foiblesse de l’esprit humain (Amsterdam: Henri du Sauzet, 1723), p. 242.
Thomas Reid, Of the Human Mind, Works, ed. Hamilton (Edinburgh: Maclachlan, Stewart and Co., 1846), 1:183 [Meyerson’s brackets].
Désiré-Auguste Roustan, Leçons de philosophie, Vol. 1: Psychologie, 3rd ed. (Paris: Ch. Delagrave, 1911), p. 374.
Antoine Augustin Cournot, Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances et sur les caractères de la critique philosophique (Paris: Hachette, 1851), 2:21 ff., § 215 [An Essay on the Foundations of our Knowledge, trans. Merritt H. Moore (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1956), pp. 320 ff.].
Georges Urbain, ‘Essai de discipline scientifique,’ La Grande Revue [24 (1920) 60], p. 16 of the offprint.
Edmond Goblot, Traité de logique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1918), p. 153.
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Meyerson, É. (1991). Science and Philosophic Systems. In: Explanation in the Sciences. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 128. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3414-9_15
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