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

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СКАЧАТЬ to this step in science. In the same manner he requires a science of Harmonics which shall be free from the defects and inaccuracies which occur in actual instruments. This belief that the universe was full of mathematical relations, and that these were the true objects of scientific research, gave a vigour, largeness of mind, and confidence to the Greek speculators which no more cautious view of the problem of scientific discovery could have supplied. It was well that this advanced guard in the army of discoverers was filled with indomitable courage, boundless hopes, and creative minds.

      But we must not forget that this disposition to what Bacon calls anticipation was full of danger as well as of hope. It led Plato into error, as it led Kepler afterwards, and many others in all ages of scientific activity. It led Plato into error, for instance, when it led him to assert (in the Timæus) that the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, have, for the forms of their particles respectively, the Cube, the Icosahedron, the Pyramid, and the Octahedron; and again, when it led him to despise the practical controversies of the musicians of his time; which controversies were, in fact, the proof of the truth of the mathematical theory of Harmonics. And in like manner it led Kepler into error when it led him to believe that he had found the reason of the number, size and motion of the planetary orbits in the application of the five regular solids to the frame of the universe[7].

      How far the caution in forming hypotheses which Bacon's writings urge upon us is more severe than suits the present prospects of science, we may hereafter consider; but it is plainly very conceivable that a boldness in the invention and application of hypotheses which was propitious to science in its infancy, may be one of the greatest dangers of its more mature period: and further, that the happy effect of such a temper depended entirely upon the candour, skill and labour with which the hypotheses were compared with the observed phenomena.

      4. Plato has given a survey of the sciences of his time as Francis Bacon has of his. Indeed Plato has given two such surveys: one, in the Republic, in reviewing, as I have said, the elements of a philosophical education; the other in the Timæus, as the portions of a theological view of the universe—such as has been called a Theodicæa, a justification of God. In the former passage of Plato, the sciences enumerated are Arithmetic, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry, Astronomy and Harmonics[8]. In the Timæus we have a further notice of many other subjects, in a way which is intended, I conceive, to include such knowledge as Plato had then arrived at on the various parts of the universe. The subjects there referred to are, as I have elsewhere stated[9], these: light and heat, water, ice, gold, gems, rust and other natural objects:—odours, taste, hearing, lights, colour, and the powers of sense in general:—the parts and organs of the body, as the bones, the marrow, the brain, flesh, muscles, tendons, ligaments and nerves; the skin, the hair, the nails; the veins and arteries; respiration; generation; and in short, every obvious point of physiology. But the opinions thus delivered in the Timæus on the latter subject have little to do with the progress of real knowledge. The doctrines, on the other hand, which depend upon geometrical and arithmetical relations are portions or preludes of the sciences which the fulness of time brought forth.

      5. I may, as further bearing upon the Platonic notion of science, notice Plato's view of the constitution of the human mind. According to him the Ideas which are the constituents of science form an Intelligible World, while the visible and tangible things which we perceive by our senses form the Visible World. In the visible world we have shadows and reflections of actual objects, and by these shadows and reflections we may judge of the objects, even when we cannot do so directly; as when men in a dark cavern judge of external objects by the shadows which they cast into the cavern. In like manner in the Intelligible World there are conceptions which are the usual objects of human thought, and about which we reason; but these are only shadows and reflections of the Ideas which are the real sources of truth. And the Reasoning Faculty, the Discursive Reason, the Logos, which thus deals with conceptions, is subordinate to the Intuitive Faculty, the Intuitive Reason, the Nous, which apprehends Ideas[10]. This recognition of a Faculty in man which contemplates the foundations—the Fundamental Ideas—of science, and by apprehending such Ideas, makes science possible, is consentaneous to the philosophy which I have all along presented, as the view taught us by a careful study of the history and nature of science. That new Fundamental Ideas are unfolded, and the Intuitive Faculty developed and enlarged by the progress of science and by an intimate acquaintance with its reasonings, Plato appears to have discerned in some measure, though dimly. And this is the less wonderful, inasmuch as this gradual and successive extension of the field of Intuitive Truth, in proportion as we become familiar with a larger amount of derived truth, is even now accepted by few, though proved by the reasonings of the greatest scientific discoverers in every age.

      The leading defect in Plato's view of the nature of real science is his not seeing fully the extent to which experience and observation are the basis of all our knowledge of the universe. He considers the luminaries which appear in the heavens to be not the true objects of astronomy, but only some imperfect adumbration of them;—mere diagrams which may assist us in the study of a higher truth, as beautiful diagrams might illustrate the truths of geometry, but would not prove them. This notion of an astronomy which is an astronomy of Theories and not of Facts, is not tenable, for Theories are Facts. Theories and Facts are equally real; true Theories are Facts, and Facts are familiar Theories. But when Plato says that astronomy is a series of problems suggested by visible things, he uses expressions quite conformable to the true philosophy of science; and the like is true of all other sciences.

      CHAPTER IV.

       Aristotle.

       Table of Contents

      The views of Aristotle with regard to the foundations of human knowledge are very different from those of his tutor Plato, and are even by himself put in opposition to them. He dissents altogether from the Platonic doctrine that Ideas are the true materials of our knowledge; and after giving, respecting the origin of this doctrine, the account which we quoted in the last chapter, he goes on to reason against it. "Thus," he says[11], "they devised Ideas of all things which are spoken of as universals: much as if any one having to count a number of objects, should think that he could not do it while they were few, and should expect to count them by making them more numerous. For the kinds of things are almost more numerous than the special sensible objects, by seeking the causes of which they were led to their Ideas." He then goes on to urge several other reasons against the assumption of Ideas and the use of them in philosophical researches.

      Aristotle himself establishes his doctrines by trains of reasoning. But reasoning must proceed from certain First Principles; and the question then arises, Whence are these First Principles obtained? To this he replies, that they are the result of Experience, and he even employs the same technical expression by which we at this day describe the process of collecting these principles from observed facts;—that they are obtained by Induction. I have already quoted passages in which this statement is made[12]. "The way of reasoning," he says[13], "is the same in philosophy, and in any art or science: we must collect the facts (τὰ ὑπὰρχοντα), and the things to which the facts happen, and must have as large a supply of these as possible, and then we must examine them according to the terms of our syllogisms." … "There are peculiar principles in each science; and in each case these principles must be obtained from experience. Thus astronomical observation supplies the principles of astronomical science. For the phenomena being rightly taken, the demonstrations of astronomy were discovered; and the same is the case with any other Art or Science. So that if the facts in each case be taken, it is our business to construct the demonstrations. For if in our natural history (κατὰ τὰν ἱστορί αν) we have omitted none of the facts and properties which belong to the subject, we shall learn what we can demonstrate and what we cannot." And again[14], "It is manifest that if any sensation be wanting, there must be some knowledge wanting, which we are thus prevented from having. For we acquire СКАЧАТЬ