Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 8. Charles S. Peirce

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       8

      Review of Carus’s

      Fundamental Problems

      Fundamental Problems: The Method of Philosophy as a Systematic Arrangement of Knowledge. By Dr. Paul Carus. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1889.

      A book of newspaper articles on metaphysics, extracted from Chicago’s weekly journal of philosophy, the Open Court, seems to a New Yorker something singular. But, granted that there is a public with aspirations to understand fundamental problems, the way in which Dr. Carus treats them is not without skill. The questions touched upon are all those which a young person should have turned over in his mind before beginning the serious study of philosophy. The views adopted are, as nearly as possible, the average opinions of thoughtful men today —good, ripe doctrines, some of them possibly a little passées, but of the fashionable complexion. They are stated with uncompromising vigor; the argumentation does not transcend the capacity of him who runs; and if there be here and there an inconsistency, it only renders the book more suggestive, and adapts it all the better to the need of the public.

      The philosophy it advocates is superscientific. “There is no chaos, and never has been a chaos,” exclaims the author, although of this no scientific evidence is possible. The doctrine of “the rigidity of natural laws … is a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί.” Such expressions are natural to Chicago journalists, yet, emphatic as this is, we soon find the κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί is nothing but a regulative principle, or “plan for a system.” When we afterwards read that, “in our opinion, atoms possess spontaneity, or self-motion,” we wonder how, if this is anything more than an empty phrase, it comports with rigid regularity of motion.

      Like a stanch Lockian, Dr. Carus declares that “the facts of nature are specie, and our abstract thoughts are bills which serve to economize the process of exchange of thought.” Yet these bills form so sound a currency that “the highest laws of nature and the formal laws of thought are identical.” Nay, “the doctrine of the conservation of matter and energy, although discovered with the assistance of experience, can be proved in its full scope by the pure reason alone.” When abstract reason performs such a feat as that, is it only economizing the interchange of thought? There is no tincture of Locke here.

      Mathematics is highly commended as a “reliable and well established” science. Riemann’s stupendous memoir on the hypotheses of geometry is a “meritorious essay.” Newton is “a distinguished scientist.” At the same time, the views of modern geometers are correctly rendered: “Space is not a non-entity, but a real property of things.”

      The profession of the Open Court is to make an “effort to conciliate religion with science.” Is this wise? Is it not an endeavor to reach a foredetermined conclusion? And is not that an anti-scientific, anti-philosophical aim? Does not such a struggle imply a defect of intellectual integrity and tend to undermine the whole moral health? Surely, religion is apt to be compromised by attempts at conciliation. Tell the Czar of all the Russias you will conciliate autocracy with individualism; but do not insult religion by offering to conciliate it with any other impulse or development of human nature whatever. Religion, to be true to itself, should demand the unconditional surrender of free thinking. Science, true to itself, cannot listen to such a demand for an instant. There may be some possible reconciliation between the religious impulse and the scientific impulse; and no fault can be found with a man for believing himself to be in possession of the solution of the difficulty (except that his reasoning may be inconclusive), or for having faith that such a solution will in time be discovered. But to go about to search out that solution, thereby dragging religion before the tribunal of free thought, and committing philosophy to finding a given proposition true—is this a wise or necessary proceeding? Why should not religion and science seek each a self-development in its own interest, and then if, as they approach completion, they are found to come more and more into accord, will not that be a more satisfactory result than forcibly bending them together now in a way which can only disfigure both? For the present, a religion which believes in itself should not mind what science says; and science is long past caring one fig for the thunder of the theologians.

      However, these objections apply mainly to the Open Court’s profession, scarcely at all to its practice; for a journal cannot be said to wrench philosophy into a forced assent to religion which pronounces that “it is undeniable that immaterial realities cannot exist,” and that “the appearance of the phenomena of sensation will be found to depend upon a special form in which the molecules of protoplasma combine and disintegrate,” and that “the activity called life is a special kind of energy” (a doctrine whose attractiveness is inversely as one’s knowledge of dynamics).

      Dr. Carus writes an English style several degrees less unpleasant than that of many of our young compatriots who have imbibed the German taste by some years’ or months’ residence in Berlin or Heidelberg. And as to consistency, whatever may be its importance in a systematic work, in a series of brief articles designed chiefly to stimulate thought, strictly carried out, it would be no virtue, but rather a fault. On the whole, the Open Court is marked by sound and enlightened ideas, and the fact that it can by any means find support does honor to Chicago.