PHILOSOPHY
35
PHILOSOPHY
on the constitution, of the heavenly and terrestrial
bodies, the nature of the vital principle, etc. Be-
sides, the whole Aristotelean classification of the
branches of philosophy (see section II) is inspired
by the same idea of making philosophy — general
science — rest upon the particular sciences. The
early Middle Ages, with a rudimentary scientific
culture, regarded all its learning, built up on the Tri-
vium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and Quadrivium
(arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music), as a
preparation for philosophy. In the thirteenth cen-
tury, when Scholasticism came under Aristotelean
influences, it incorporated the sciences in the pro-
gramme of philosophy itself. This may be seen in a
regulation issued by the Faculty of Arts of Paris,
19 March, 1255, "De libris qui legendi essent".
This order prescribes the study of commentaries on
various scientific treatises of Aristotle, notably those
on the first book of the "Meteorologica", on the
treatises on Heaven and Earth, Generation, the
Senses and Sensations, Sleeping and Waking, iSIem-
ory, Plants, and Animals. Here are amply sufficient
means for the magisiri to familiarize the "artists"
with astronomy, botany, physiology, and zoology,
to say nothing of Aristotle's "Physics", which was
also prescribed as a classical text, and which afforded
opportunities for numerous observations in chemistry
and physics as then understood. Grammar and
rhetoric served as preliminary studies to logic;
Bible history, social science, and politics were intro-
ductory to moral philosophy. Such men as Albertus
Magnus and Roger Bacon expressed their views on
the necessity of linking the sciences with philosophy,
and preached it by example. So that both antiquity
and the Middle Ages knew and appreciated scientific
philosophy.
In the seventeenth century the question of the relation between the two enters upon a new phase: from this period modern science takes shape and begins that triumphal march which it is destined to continue through the twentieth century, and of which the human mind is justly proud. Modern scientific knowledge differs from that of antiquity and the Middle Ages in three important respects: the multi- plication of sciences; their independent value; the divergence between common knowledge and scien- tific knowledge. In the Middle .-Vges astronomy was closely akin to astrology, chemistry to alchemy, physics to divination; modern science has severely excluded all these fantastic connexions. Considered now from one side and again from smother, the physical world has revealed continually new aspects, and each specific point of view has become the focus of a new study. On the other hand, by defining their respective limits, the sciences have acquired autonomy; useful in the Middle Ages only as a prep- aration for rational physics and for metaphysics, they are nowadays of value for themselves, and no longer play the part of handmaids to philosophy. Indeed, the progress achieved within itself by each particular science brings one more revolution in knowledge. So long as instruments of observation were imperfect, and inductive methods restricted, it was practically impossible to rise above an elementary knowledge. People knew, in the Middle Ages, that wine, when left exposed to the air, became vinegar; but what do facts like this amount to in comparison with the complex formulae of modern chemistry? Hence it was that an Albertus Magnus or a Roger Bacon could flatter himself, in those days, with having acquired all the science of his time, a claim which would now only provoke a smile. In every department progress has drawn the line sharply between popidar and scientific knowledge; the former is ordinarily the starting-point of the latter, but the conclusions and teachings involved in the sciences are unintelligible to those who lack the requisite preparation.
Do not, then, these profound modifications in the
condition of the sciences entail modifications in the
relations which, until the seventeenth century, had
been accepted as existing between the sciences and
philosophy? Must not the separation of philosophy
and science widen out to a complete divorce? Many
have thought so, both scientists and philosophers,
and it was for this that in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries so many savants and philosophers
turned their backs on one another. For the former,
philosophy has become useless; the particular sci-
ences, they say, multiplying and becoming perfect,
must exhaust the whole field of the knowable, and a
time will come when philosophy shall be no more.
For the philosophers, philosophy has no need of the
immeasurable mass of scientific notions which have
been acquired, many of which possess only a pre-
carious and provisional value. Wolff, who pro-
nounced the divorce of science from philosophy,
did most to accredit this view, and he has been fol-
lowed by certain Catholic philosophers who held that
scientific study may be excluded from philosophic
culture.
What shall we say on this question? That the reasons which formerly existed for keeping touch with science are a thousand times more imperative in our day. If the profound synthetic view of things which justifies the existence of philosophy presup- poses analytical researches, the multiplication and perfection of those researches is certainly reason for neglecting them. The horizon of detailed knowledge widens incessantly; research of every kind is busy exploring the departments of the universe which it has mapped out. And philosophy, whose mission is to explain the order of the universe by general and ulti- mate reasons applicable, not only to a group of facts, but to the whole body of known phenomena, cannot be indifferent to the matter which it has to explain. Philosophy is like a tower whence we obtain the panorama of a great city — its plan, its monuments, its great arteries, with the form and location of each — things which a visitor cannot discern while he goes through the streets and lanes, or visits libraries, churches, palaces, and museums, one after another. If the city grows and develops, there is all the more reason, if we would know it as a whole, why we should hesitate to ascend the tower and study from that height the plan upon which its new quarters have been laid out.
It is, happily, evident that contemporary phi- losophy is inclined to be first and foremost a scientific philosophy; it has found its way back from its wan- derings of yore. This is noticeable in philosophers of the most opposite tendencies. There would be no end to the list if we had to enumerate every case where this orientation of ideas has been adopted. "This union", says Boutroux, .speaking of the sci- ences and philosophy, "is in truth the chissic tradition of philosophy. But there had been established a psychology and a metaphysics which aspired to set themselves up beyond the sciences, by mere reflection of the mind upon itself. Nowadays all philosophers are agreed to make scientific data their starting-point " (Address at the International Congress of Philosophy in 1900; Revue de Metaph. et de Morale, 1900, p. 697). Boutroux and many others spoke similarly at the International Congress of Bologna (April, 1911). Wundt introduces this union into the very definition of philosophy, which, he says, is "the gen- eral science whose function it is to unite in a system free of all contradictions the knowledge acquired through the particular sciences, and to reduce to their principles the general methods of science and the conditions of knowledge supposed by them" ("Einlei- tung in die Philosophic", Leipzig, 1901, p. 19). And R. Eucken says: "The farther back the limits of the observable world recede, the more conscious are we
