Curt Ducasse, Philosophy as a Science, 1941

INTRODUCTION

PHILOSOPHY, like the sciences, has been pursuing its inquiries for hundreds of years. The sciences, by this time, have succeeded in winning a vast body of knowledge, and daily make positive additions to it, notwithstanding their theoretical controversies. In philosophy, on the other hand, a very different picture presents itself. What we find there is rather

that all new theories do but add to the babel and confusion, that there is no cumulative co-operative advance from generation to generation, no funded stock of philosophical truths which can be taught as its established rudiments to beginners, and which are taken for granted by all experts as the basis of further enquiry. The same problems are ever examined afresh . . . the old problems remain persistently open.{1}

The difference between the case of philosophy and that of natural science is described by another writer as follows:

Science shows a gradual development. . . . . It cannot be seriously doubted for an instant that we know very much more about nature, for example, than people living in former centuries knew. There is unquestionably some kind of advance shown in science, but if we are perfectly honest, a similar kind of advance cannot be discovered in philosophy. The same great issues are discussed nowadays that were discussed in the time of Plato. When for a time it seemed as though a certain question were definitely settIed, soon the same question comes up again and has to be discussed and reconsidered.{2}

In this state of affairs, one is moved to wonder whether philosophy is doomed to remain forever not only inconclusive, but inconclusive always concerning the same problems; or whether, on the contrary, knowledge and positive progress are possible in its field in the same sense as in the sciences.

This question leads one in turn to ask why the success of philosophy in solving its problems has been so much less than that of science in respect to its particular sphere. The ultimate answer is perhaps that the task of philosophy is more elusive and more difficult than that of natural science. Such a suspicion is confirmed by the fact that when a scientist, rendered confident by his successes in science, turns his attention to some of the problems of philosophy, the result of his attempts to solve them is in most cases even less felicitous than that achieved by philosophers.{3}

But no real task, of course, is intrinsically difficult. The difficulty a task presents is a matter only of the equipment at our disposal. In the case of tasks of inquiry, equipment means chiefly a clear realization of the nature of the problem to be solved on the one hand, and, on the other, knowledge of the sort of method appropriate to the solution of problems of the nature given. Lack of this equipment is probably the chief reason why the philosopher's search for knowledge has met with relatively so little success. Philosophical writings -- often even those of philosophers considered great -- are notable for their use of highly ambiguous terms, their extreme vagueness of statement, their acceptance of hypotheses without adequate verification, and for transitions of thought logically too irresponsible to deserve the name of inference. It may be that fruits -- of certain sorts -- may be obtained notwithstanding, or even by means of, such procedures, But those fruits cannot be of the sort called knowledge.

In any novel task the first steps are the hardest and the slowest. The task of winning knowledge is no exception to this rule, for before it can proceed apace, its preliminary effort must discover, by the slow process of trial and error, both what kinds of problems are illusory and what are the genuine problems capable of solution. It must also discover methods adapted to the inquiry. Thus, a long period of groping and methodological blundering is unavoidable before the significant problems of any field of inquiry, the nature of knowledge-yielding method in general, or the particular manner of applying that method to a given field, becomes fully clear. During that period, progress necessarily consists in the exploration of blind alleys for the most pan, and at this stage the exploration of them is itself unsystematic. Progress of this kind is not obvious even to those who make it and, as in the exploration of a dark labyrinth, the task may easily seem the more hopeless the longer one labors at it. But with persistence an alley which is not blind is here and there found, and with even the dim light it provides, further search becomes a little easier. Of success in the search for knowledge it is certainly true that to them that have some, more shall be given.

The emergence of the physical sciences from their period of groping is a recent affair, and as a result of it these sciences have made more progress in the last hundred years than in all the preceding thousands. The problems of physical science, however, are the simplest amd easiest. Those of biological science are more complex and more difficult, those of social science still more so. These sciences are therefore not so far advanced. But philosophy, I believe, is still for the most part at a stage of potential development not very different from the stage that had been reached in Bacon's time by the natural sciences, whose earlier procedures he condemned. Only now is philosophy showing signs of beginning to emerge from its period of blind groping.

Which of its problems are genuine and which illusory, and what are the methods by which solutions of those that are genuine may be reached, are questions which indeed have arisen more than once in the past, but to which more attention is being given at present than perhaps ever before. The time seems at hand when an answer more convincing than any previously offered may be possible. The present volume constitutes an attempt to shed upon these questions such light as the writer believes he perceives.

A number of recent contentions concerning the nature of philosophy and its proper method which seem unsound will first be reviewed and criticized. The second part of the book will outline the amwers proposed by the writer to these two questions.
[Table of Contents] [Chapter 1]

Notes

{1} This indictment of philosophy is from R. F. A. Hoernlé's Studies in Contemporary Metaphysics (p. 48). His own attitude in this connection seems to be that, although the allegations are true, they are more or less irrelevant, because philosophy attempts something fundamentally different from what science aims at. [Back]

{2} Moritz Schlick, The Future of Philosophy, College of the Pacific Publications in Philosophy, I (1932), p. 48. [Back]

{3} See for example P. W. Bridgman's recent volume, The Nature of Physical Theory. The merits of Bridgeman's essential contention are obscured instead of demonstrated by the numerous confusions and the indefensible assertions to which these lead, and with which the first five chapters especially abound.[Back]


[Table of Contents] [Chapter 1]