the sciences as a whole, a problem which has from the time of Aristotle attracted considerable attention. Its object is to delimit the spheres of influence of the positive sciences and show how they are mutually related. Of such attempts three are specially noteworthy, those of Francis Bacon, Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer.
Bacon’s classification is based on the subjective criterion of the various faculties which are specially concerned. He thus distinguished History (natural, civil, literary, ecclesiastical) as the province of memory, Philosophy (including Theology) as that of reason, and Poetry, Fables and the like, as that of imagination. This classification was made the basis of the Encyclopédie. Comte adopted an entirely different system based on an objective criterion. Having first enunciated the theory that all science passes through three stages, theological, metaphysical and positive, he neglects the two first, and divides the last according to the “things to be classified,” in view of their real affinity and natural connexions, into six, in order of decreasing generality and increasing complexity—mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology and biology (including psychology), and sociology. This he conceives to be not only the logical, but also the historical, order of development, from the abstract and purely deductive to the concrete and inductive. Sociology is thus the highest, most complex, and most positive of the sciences. Herbert Spencer, condemning this division as both incomplete and theoretically unsound, adopted a three-fold division into (1) abstract science (including logic and mathematics) dealing with the universal forms under which all knowledge of phenomena is possible, (2) abstract-concrete science (including mechanics, chemistry, physics), dealing with the elements of phenomena themselves, i.e. laws of forces as deducible from the persistence of forces, and (3) concrete science (e.g. astronomy, biology, sociology), dealing with “phenomena themselves in their totalities,” the universal laws of the continuous redistribution of Matter and Motion, Evolution and Dissolution.
Beside the above three systems several others deserve brief mention. In Greece at the dawn of systematic thought the physical sciences were few in number; none the less philosophers were not agreed as to their true relation. The Platonic school adopted a triple classification, physics, ethics and dialectics; Aristotle’s system was more complicated, nor do we know precisely how he subdivided his three main classes, theoretical, practical and poetical (i.e. technical, having to do with ποίησις, creative). The second class covered ethics and politics, the latter of which was often regarded by Aristotle as including ethics; the third includes the useful and the imitative sciences; the first includes metaphysics and physics. As regards pure logic Aristotle sometimes seems to include it with metaphysics and physics, sometimes to regard it as ancillary to all the sciences.
Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) drew up an elaborate paradigm of the sciences, the first stage of which was a dichotomy into “Naturall Philosophy” (“consequences from the accidents of bodies naturall”) and “Politiques and Civill Philosophy” (“consequences from accidents of Politique bodies”). The former by successive subdivisions is reduced to eighteen special sciences; the latter is subdivided into the rights and duties of sovereign powers, and those of the subject.
Jeremy Bentham and A. M. Ampère both drew up elaborate systems based on the principle of dichotomy, and beginning from the distinction of mind and body. Bentham invented an artificial terminology which is rather curious than valuable. The science of the body was Somatology, that of the mind Pneumatology. The former include Posology (science of quantity, mathematics) and Poiology (science of quality); Posology includes Morphoscopic (geometry) and Alegomorphic(arithmetic). See further Bentham’s Chrestomathia and works quoted under Bentham, Jeremy.
Carl Wundt criticized most of these systems as taking too little account of the real facts, and preferred a classification based on the standpoint of the various sciences towards their subject-matter. His system may, therefore, be described as conceptional. It distinguishes philosophy, which deals with facts in their widest universal relations, from the special sciences, which consider facts in the light of a particular relation or set of relations.
All these systems have a certain value, and are interesting as throwing light on the views of those who invented them. It will be seen, however, that none can lay claim to unique validity. The fundamenta divisionis, though in themselves more or less logical, are quite arbitrarily chosen, generally as being germane to a preconceived philosophical or scientific theory.
CLASTIDIUM (mod. Casteggio), a village of the Anamares,
in Gallia Cispadana, on the Via Postumia, 5 m. E. of Iria
(mod. Voghera) and 31 m. W. of Placentia. Here in 222 B.C.
M. Claudius Marcellus defeated the Gauls and won the spolia opima; in 218 Hannibal took it and its stores of corn by
treachery. It never had an independent government, and not
later than 190 B.C. was made part of the colony of Placentia
(founded 219). In the Augustan division of Italy, however,
Placentia belonged to the 8th region, Aemilia, whereas Iria
certainly, and Clastidium possibly, belonged to the 9th, Liguria
(see Th. Mommsen in Corp. Inscrip. Lat. vol. v. Berlin, 1877,
p. 828). The remains visible at Clastidium are scanty; there
is a fountain (the Fontana d’Annibale), and a Roman bridge,
which seems to have been constructed of tiles, not of stone,
was discovered in 1857, but destroyed.
See C. Giulietti, Casteggio, notizie storiche II. Avanzi di antichità (Voghera, 1893).
CLAUBERG, JOHANN (1622–1665), German philosopher,
was born at Solingen, in Westphalia, on the 24th of February
1622. After travelling in France and England, he studied the
Cartesian philosophy under John Raey at Leiden. He became
(1649) professor of philosophy and theology at Herborn, but
subsequently (1651), in consequence of the jealousy of his
colleagues, accepted an invitation to a similar post at Duisburg,
where he died on the 31st of January 1665. Clauberg was one
of the earliest teachers of the new doctrines in Germany and an
exact and methodical commentator on his master’s writings.
His theory of the connexion between the soul and the body is
in some respects analogous to that of Malebranche; but he is
not therefore to be regarded as a true forerunner of Occasionalism,
as he uses “Occasion” for the stimulus which directly produces
a mental phenomenon, without postulating the intervention
of God (H. Müller, J. Clauberg und seine Stellung im Cartesianismus).
His view of the relation of God to his creatures is held
to foreshadow the pantheism of Spinoza. All creatures exist
only through the continuous creative energy of the Divine
Being, and are no more independent of his will than are our
thoughts independent of us,—or rather less, for there are thoughts
which force themselves upon us whether we will or not. For
metaphysics Clauberg suggested the names ontosophy or ontology,
the latter being afterwards adopted by Wolff. He also devoted
considerable attention to the German languages, and his researches
in this direction attracted the favourable notice of
Leibnitz. His chief works are: De conjunctione animae et corporis humani;
Exercitationes centum de cognitione Dei et nostri; Logica vetus et nova;
Initiatio philosophi, seu Dubitatio Cartesiana; a commentary on Descartes’ Meditations; and
Ars etymologica Teutonum.
A collected edition of his philosophical works was published at Amsterdam (1691), with life by H. C. Hennin; see also E. Zeller, Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz (1873).
CLAUDE, JEAN (1619–1687), French Protestant divine, was born at La Sauvetat-du-Dropt near Agen. After studying at Montauban, he entered the ministry in 1645. He was for eight years professor of theology in the Protestant college of Nîmes; but in 1661, having successfully opposed a scheme for re-uniting Catholics and Protestants, he was forbidden to preach in Lower Languedoc. In 1662 he obtained a post at Montauban similar to that which he had lost; but after four years he was removed from this also. He next became pastor at Charenton near Paris, where he engaged in controversies with Pierre Nicole (Réponse aux deux traités intitulés la perpétuité de la foi, 1665), Antoine Arnauld (Réponse au livre de M. Arnauld, 1670), and J. B. Bossuet (Réponse au livre de M. l’évêque de Meaux, 1683).
