Curt Ducasse, Philosophy as a Science, 1941


PART I

Some Recent Hypotheses as to the Nature and Method of Philosophy




CHAPTER ONE

Philosophy as More General than Science


ONE of the criteria most frequently offered by philosophers themselves, when asked what distinguishes philosophy from science, is that philosophy deals with questions more general in character than those of the sciences. Exactly what this means, however, is hardly ever made clear. Let us examine some of the meanings in which the assertion may be construed.

1. Philosophy as a Synthetic Picture of the World as a Whole. -- One interpretation would be that philosophy "deals with those most general truths which do not belong to the field of any special science," each of the special sciences being "concerned only with particular features and parts of the great whole," while philosophy aims at "a general world-view in which all the different truths of the special sciences find their places and are unified into one great picture."{1} The relation between the sciences and philosophy is thus conceived as analogous to that between the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and the coherent picture they make when properly assembled. The picture, let us say, might be that of a man; the separate pieces might be one a representation of an eye, another of an ear, another of an arm, a leg, etc. Each of the sciences puts together its part out of original smaller pieces, and philosophy then assembles these parts into the picture of the whole man.

This metaphor, describing philosophy as it does in terms of a very clear and familiar relation, seems illuminating and is quite plausible until one asks what literally are the facts that it figuratively describes. In just what sense does philosophy "unify" or "put together," for instance, physics and biology, or biology and psychology? What answers we actually get from philosophers on such a question as that of the relation of physics and biology are opinions as to whether "life" is explicable purely in terms of physics and chemistry, or, on the contrary, constitutes an additional principle. Facts bearing on this question -- as distinguished from guesses - - are brought forward only by persons who have a technical knowledge of biology and of physical science, whether or nor they are trained in philosophy. It is biologists like D' Arcy W. Thompson, or physicists like N. Rashevsky, and not metaphysicians, who point out, and alone are in a position to point out, the similarity between the pattern of cell division in the realm of biology and the pattern of aggregation of soap bubbles in the realm of physics, and the conformity of both these patterns to one common set of abstract physical and mathematical principles. Moreover, although what is thus brought to light is the essential unity in this respect of certain biological and physical phenomena, the synthesis effected does not have title to the name of philosophy.

On such a question as that of the relation of the truths of physics to those of biology, philosophers qua philosophers simply do not know the facts to be "unified." The "syntheses of which they deliver themselves have thus actually to do only with such vague current concepts as "life" and "inert matter." They represent not more comprehensive or more penetrating insights than are possible to biologists and physicists, but only either metaphorical statements quickly shown to be empty by any attempt to translate them into literal terms, or else irresponsible and unprecise lay guesses. As M. C. Otto has pointed out, "all-inclusive philosophical systems are not striking in virtue of how much they include, but in virtue of how much they leave out. The difference between them and other selective schemes consists in the nature of what is retained and rejected, and in the purpose that dominates the choices."{2} As will be pointed out in the chapter following, the purpose or criterion that has actually governed the choices required in the construction of all-inclusive world-pictures seems not infrequently to have been the suitability of the resulting world-picture to serve subjectively as a substitute for the knowledge of the universe man yet lacks to make himself secure. A world-picture does not need to be true to serve subjectively as such a substitute. It needs only to be believable and of such a nature that, if firmly believed, it generates in man the subjective feelings of hope and confidence that he craves, and rids him of the fear and bewilderment that go with a consciousness of ignorance as to matters of crucial importance.

2. Spencer's View of Philosophy as Knowledge of the Highest Generality. -- We may now consider a somewhat different account of what is meant by saying that philosophy is more general than science, viz., the account given by Herbert Spencer.{3} It is worded in less figurative language than most, but just because of this its untenability is the more evident.

Spencer characterizes philosophy as the "knowledge of the highest degree of generality," and explains what he means by this with three illustrations. The flow of a river, he points out, is a corollary of the more general facts stated by the laws of the dynamics of fluids. These laws themselves are corollaries of those of general dynamics, which describe how bodies in general -- whether fluid or solid -- move. Similarly the fact of warm-bloodedness is a corollary, ultimately, of rate of molecular motion. Again, the fact that excess of demand over supply determines price is a corollary of the general fact that man seeks satisfaction for his desires in ways costing the smallest efforts. Spencer goes on to say that "so long as these truths are known only apart and regarded as independent, even the most general of them cannot without laxity of speech be called philosophical." Philosophy is reached "by carrying a stage farther the process indicated," viz., that of generalization:

When, having been severally reduced to a simple mechanical axiom, a principle of molecular physics, and a law of social action, they are contemplated together as corollaries of some ultimate truth, then we rise to the kind of knowledge that constitutes philosophy proper. The truths of philosophy thus bear the same relation to the highest scientific truths that each of these bears to lower scientific truths.{4}

Unfortunately, as pointed out in the preceding section, it is in vain that we seek, among the truths or alleged truths of metaphysics or other branches of philosophy, for any laws under which the laws of mechanics, of molecular physics, and of social action could all be subsumed and from which they could each be deduced, in the same sense in which the laws of the dynamics of fluids can be subsumed under and deduced from those of general dynamics. Moreover, metaphysical generalizations, e.g., those that describe the world as being essentially material, or essentially mental, etc., have to those of any science a relation quite other than that which the more inclusive generalizations of one science have to its less inclusive ones. This is shown by the fact that philosophical materialism and philosophical idealism, although regarded as mutually incompatible, are, nevertheless, equally compatible with all the facts discovered by the natural sciences. They are compatible with them because, whereas the generalizations of natural science, even the very widest, provide a basis for the prediction of certain facts in nature, those philosophical generalizations do not claim to do this but only to "interpret" -- in some none too well defined sense of this term -- the facts described by the generalizations of the natural sciences.

Thus, it is simply not true that philosophy is more general than natural science in the sense that it carries farther the generalizing of the same facts. The generalizations which science formulates concerning the facts it observes are carried by it just as far as the facts themselves permit. The scientist does not hesitate to cross the boundaries -- which actually consist of nothing more permanent than ignorance -- between the subject matter of two sciences, if he finds himself able to state a true generalization applicable to both. Never do his descriptions of the facts he observes reach a degree of generality where, for lack of adequate powers of generalization, he finds that he has to leave further generalization to some Herr Teufelsdroeckh, professor of things-in-general!

Nor is philosophy more general than science in the sense that, in its own domain, it carries generalization farther thin does natural science in the domain it investigates. Philosophy, like science, deals with some questions that are highly specific and with some that are highly general. Like science, it has its special divisions, perhaps connected, but susceptible, like the special sciences, of being studied more or less independently of one another. The fact is that the questions philosophy asks are not essentially either more or less general than those which science asks, but simply different. Philosophy is curious about something else.

3. Origin of the Opinion that Philosophy it More General than Sciexce. -- The mistaken opinion that philosophy is "more general" than science is accounted for by two considerations. One of these is that the propositions formulated by philosophers, and especially by the metaphysicians, have very often been extremely vague, and the logical connections between them, or with known facts, correspondingly hard to discern. It is very easy to mistake ambiguity for generality, indefiniteness for abstractness. and absence of logical connection for depth or subtlety of connection.

The other consideration is that knowledge is one of the things philosophy studies, and that the sciences seem describable as constituting each a particular species of knowledge. When one adverts to this, it sounds very plausible to say that the branch of philosophy which studies knowledge studies something more general than any of the sciences. But such a conclusion springs only from confusion between knowledge in the sense of knowing and knowledge in the sense of facts known. The various sciences constitute not various species of knowing, but the knowing of various species of facts. What the philosopher, qua epistemologist, studies is thus not at all the same facts as the scientist studies, at a more general level, but the quite other fact constituted by the nature of the relation, called knowing, which the scientist is attempting to establish between himself and the facts he studies. The physicist, for example, seeks to know the nature of the physical world; but the epistemologisr seeks to know the nature of the relation, viz., knowing, which the physicist is seeking to establish between himself and the physical world.

4. Philosophy as Harmonizer of Religion and Science. -- A somewhat different and more restricted, yet allied, view of the task of philosophy is that it consists in harmonizing the truths of religion and those ot natural science. But, as S. K. Langer pointedly observes, "despite the hundreds of books that have been written in the past two or three centuries seeking to reconcile theology with biology, divine law with natural -law, and angels with anthropoids, philosophy has neither softened the conflict of ideas nor dictated the peace."{5} In any case, philosophy in general could not possibly be defined as the attempt to perform that task, for much of philosophy deals with quite other matters.

5. Philosoephy as Potential Natural Science. -- There is another conception of the nature of philosophy which resembles some of those above discussed, at least in that it too regards philosophy as a stage of science -- not, however, the stage of completion, but rather that at which science is yet infantile. According to this view, which, Langer points out, apparently was the one held by William James, philosophy is essentially "potential natural science." In James's own words, it is "a collective name for questions that have not yet been answered to the satisfaction of all by whom they have been asked."{6}

More explicitly, this means that if the questions James refers to are essentially of the same sort as those which natural science asks and answers little by little, then philosophy is a name not for the study of any distinctive subject matter, but only for a distinguishable stage in the study of any question concerning nature. As Langer remarks, philosophers could then be described only as "dilettantes interested laymen asking questions out of order, ever anticipating the expert's consistent, progressive exposition"; and philosophy itself would accordingly be merely "the Art of Making Hasty Generalizations."{7}

Philosophers, especially cosmologists, have, it is true, only too often themselves mistaken the proper subject matter of philosophy, and been led thus to deliver themselves of opinions, relating to certain scientific questions, that were indeed nothing but hasty generalizations. But these mistakes of philosophers are no more representative of the nature of philosophy than the equally hasty statements of Millikan or Einstein concerning God, or of Eddington conceming the relation of reality to mind, are representative of the nature of science.

The assertion that philosophy is only potential natural science is generally based on the historical fact that early thinkers, who were called philosophers, explored subjects some of which, when they became sufficiently developed, acquired names and exclusive devotees of their own, and from then on led existences independent of the parent mass, which kept the name of philosophy. When this process is completed, it is argued, philosophy will automatically vanish for lack of subject matter distinct from that of the several sciences.

But the fact that in early times the various fields of knowledge were not clearly distinguished, and that not only then but even until not so long ago anyone who sought knowledge for its own sake, no matter on what subject, was called a philosopher, constitutes no evidence whatever that the studies which have given up the name of philosophy do not, in subject matter, differ from philosophy as radically as does mathematics from the natural sciences.

So long as the process of separation of the sciences from the philosophical "mother" has not actually resulted in the vanishing of philosophy, the assertion that that process-will leave no final remainder, i.e., that philosophy does not have a subject matter distinct from that of the sciences, remains only a dogma. And it is a strange one indeed to base, as it usually is based, on the metaphorical description of philosophy as the mother of the sciences. For what the metaphor implies -- for whatever it is worth -- is not that a mother consists of nothing but the children growing in her womb, but only that her own individual nature is such as to fit her to nourish them in their embryonic and infant stages. Metaphors, however, really constitute no evidence, whichever way they point. That philosophy has a subject matter of its own, distinct from that of both the natural and the formal sciences, can be established only by pointing out explicitly what this consists in. The attempt to do this will be made in second part of the present volume.


[Table of Contents] [Chapter 2]

Notes

{1} Schlick, The Future of Philosophy, p. 51. This view is not Schlick's own, but his formulation is quoted because it is both brief and quite faithful to the conception of philosophy it represents. [Back]

{2} "Meditations on a Hill," Philosophical Review 39, No. 4 (July, 1930), p. 341. [Back]

{3} First Principles, #37. [Back]

{4} It my be noted that Spencer's second and third exmple, as set forth in detail in his text, do not illustrate the same thing as the first, viz., the daaiption of a given fact successively in terms of more general laws. The second illustrates successive corrections of the hasty generalization that breathing causes hot-bloodedness, and the third presents several facts as all of them corallaries of one generalization. [Back]

{5} The Practice of Philosophy (1930), p. 8. [Back]

{6} Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 23. [Back]

{7} The Practice of Philosophy (1930), pp. 10, 12. [Back]


[Table of Contents] [Chapter 2]