On the Philosophy of Discovery, Chapters Historical and Critical. William Whewell

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СКАЧАТЬ to: the disposition to cast off the prevalent reverence for the opinions and methods of preceding teachers with an eager expectation of some vast advantage to be derived from a change; and the belief that this improvement must be sought by drawing our knowledge from external observation rather than from mere intellectual efforts;—the Insurrection against Authority, and the Appeal to Experience. These two movements were closely connected; but they may easily be distinguished, and in fact, persons were very prominent in the former part of the task, who had no comprehension of the latter principle, from which alone the change derives its value. There were many Malcontents who had not the temper, talent or knowledge, which fitted them to be Reformers.

      The authority which was questioned, in the struggle of which we speak, was that of the Scholastic System, the combination of Philosophy with Theology; of which Aristotle, presented in the form and manner which the Doctors of the Church had imposed upon him, is to be considered the representative. When there was demanded of men a submission of the mind, such as this system claimed, the natural love of freedom in man's bosom, and the speculative tendencies of his intellect, rose in rebellion, from time to time, against the ruling oppression. We find in all periods of the scholastic ages examples of this disposition of man to resist overstrained authority; the tendency being mostly, however, combined with a want of solid thought, and showing itself in extravagant pretensions and fantastical systems put forwards by the insurgents. We have pointed out one such opponent[56] of the established systems, even among the Arabian schoolmen, a more servile race than ever the Europeans were. We may here notice more especially an extraordinary character who appeared in the thirteenth century, and who may be considered as belonging to the Prelude of the Reform in Philosophy, although he had no share in the Reform itself.

      2. Raymond Lully.—Raymond Lully is perhaps traditionally best known as an Alchemist, of which art he appears to have been a cultivator. But this was only one of the many impulses of a spirit ardently thirsty of knowledge and novelty. He had[57], in his youth, been a man of pleasure, but was driven by a sudden shock of feeling to resolve on a complete change of life. He plunged into solitude, endeavoured to still the remorse of his conscience by prayer and penance, and soon had his soul possessed by visions which he conceived were vouchsafed to him. In the feeling of religious enthusiasm thus excited, he resolved to devote his life to the diffusion of Christian truth among Heathens and Mahomedans. For this purpose, at the age of thirty he betook himself to the study of Grammar, and of the Arabic language. He breathed earnest supplications for an illumination from above; and these were answered by his receiving from heaven, as his admirers declare, his Ars Magna by which he was able without labour or effort to learn and apply all knowledge. The real state of the case is, that he put himself in opposition to the established systems, and propounded a New Art, from which he promised the most wonderful results; but that his Art really is merely a mode of combining ideal conceptions without any reference to real sources of knowledge, or any possibility of real advantage. In a Treatise addressed, in A.D. 1310, to King Philip of France, entitled Liber Lamentationis Duodecim Principiorum Philosophiæ contra Averroistas, Lully introduced Philosophy, accompanied by her twelve Principles, (Matter, Form, Generation, &c.) uttering loud complaints against the prevailing system of doctrine; and represents her as presenting to the king a petition that she may be upheld and restored by her favourite, the Author. His Tabula Generalis ad omnes Scientias applicabilis was begun the 15th September, 1292, in the Harbour of Tunis, and finished in 1293, at Naples. In order to frame an Art of thus tabulating all existing sciences, and indeed all possible knowledge, he divides into various classes the conceptions with which he has to deal. The first class contains nine Absolute Conceptions: Goodness, Greatness, Duration, Power, Wisdom, Will, Virtue, Truth, Majesty. The second class has nine Relative Conceptions: Difference, Identity, Contrariety, Beginning, Middle, End, Majority, Equality, Minority. The third class contains nine Questions: Whether? What? Whence? Why? How great? How circumstanced? When? Where? and How? The fourth class contains the nine Most General Subjects: God, Angel, Heaven, Man, Imaginativum, Sensitivum, Vegetativum, Elementativum, Instrumentativum. Then come nine Prædicaments, nine Moral Qualities, and so on. These conceptions are arranged in the compartments of certain concentric moveable circles, and give various combinations by means of triangles and other figures, and thus propositions are constructed.

      It must be clear at once, that real knowledge, which is the union of facts and ideas, can never result from this machinery for shifting about, joining and disjoining, empty conceptions. This, and all similar schemes, go upon the supposition that the logical combinations of notions do of themselves compose knowledge; and that really existing things may be arrived at by a successive system of derivation from our most general ideas. It is imagined that by distributing the nomenclature of abstract ideas according to the place which they can hold in our propositions, and by combining them according to certain conditions, we may obtain formulæ including all possible truths, and thus fabricate a science in which all sciences are contained. We thus obtain the means of talking and writing upon all subjects, without the trouble of thinking: the revolutions of the emblematical figures are substituted for the operations of the mind. Both exertion of thought, and knowledge of facts, become superfluous. And this reflection, adds an intelligent author[58], explains the enormous number of books which Lully is said to have written; for he might have written those even during his sleep, by the aid of a moving power which should keep his machine in motion. Having once devised this invention for manufacturing science, Lully varied it in a thousand ways, and followed it into a variety of developments. Besides Synoptical Tables, he employs Genealogical Trees, each of which he dignifies with the name of the Tree of Science. The only requisite for the application of his System was a certain agreement in the numbers of the classes into which different subjects were distributed; and as this symmetry does not really exist in the operations of our thoughts, some violence was done to the natural distinction and subordination of conceptions, in order to fit them for the use of the system.

      Thus Lully, while he professed to teach an Art which was to shed new light upon every part of science, was in fact employed in a pedantic and trifling repetition of known truths or truisms; and while he complained of the errors of existing methods, he proposed in their place one which was far more empty, barren, and worthless, than the customary processes of human thought. Yet his method is spoken of[59] with some praise by Leibnitz, who indeed rather delighted in the region of ideas and words, than in the world of realities. But Francis Bacon speaks far otherwise and more justly on this subject[60]. "It is not to be omitted that some men, swollen with emptiness rather than knowledge, have laboured to produce a certain Method, not deserving the name of a legitimate Method, since it is rather a method of imposture: which yet is doubtless highly grateful to certain would-be philosophers. This method scatters about certain little drops of science in such a manner that a smatterer may make a perverse and ostentatious use of them with a certain show of learning. Such was the art of Lully, which consisted of nothing but a mass and heap of the words of each science; with the intention that he who can readily produce the words of any science shall be supposed to know the science itself. Such collections are like a rag shop, where you find a patch of everything, but nothing which is of any value."

      CHAPTER XI.

       The Innovators of the Middle Ages—continued.

       Table of Contents

      Roger Bacon.

      We now come to a philosopher of a very different character, who was impelled to declare his dissent from the reigning philosophy by the abundance of his knowledge, and by his clear apprehension of the mode in which real knowledge had been acquired and must be increased.

      Roger Bacon was born in 1214, near Ilchester, in Somersetshire, of an old family. In his youth he was a student at Oxford, and made extraordinary progress in all branches of learning. He then went to the University of Paris, as was at that time the custom of learned Englishmen, and there received the degree of Doctor of Theology. At the persuasion СКАЧАТЬ