Philosophy and Natural Science.-In distinguishing philosophy
from the sciences, it may not be arniss at the outset to guard
against the possible misunderstanding that philosophy is concerned
with a subject-matter different from, and in some obscure
way transcending, the subject-matter of the sciences. Now
that psychology, or the observational and experimental study
of mind, may be said to have been definitively included among
the positive sciences, there is not even the apparent ground
which once existed for such an idea. Philosophy, even under
its most discredited name of metaphysics, has no other subject matter
than the nature of the real world, as that world lies
around us in everyday life, and lies open to observers on every
side. But if this is so, it may be asked what function can remain
for philosophy when every pcrtion of the field is already lotted
out and enclosed by specialists? Philosophy claims to be the
science of the whole; but, if we get the knowledge of the parts
from the different sciences, what is there left for philosophy to
tell us P To this it is sufficient to answer generally that the
synthesis of the parts is something more than that detailed
knowledge of the parts in separation which is gained by the man
of science. It is with the ultimate synthesis that philosophy
concerns itself, it has to show that the subject-matter which we
are all dealing with in detail really is a whole, consisting of
articulated members. Evidently, therefore, the relation existing
between philosophy and the sciences will be, to some extent,
one of reciprocal influence. The sciences may be said to furnish
philosophy with its matter, but philosophical criticism reacts
upon the matter thus furnished, and transforms it. Such transformation
is inevitable, for the parts only exist and can only be
fully, i.e. truly, known in their relation to the whole. A pure
specialist, if such a being were possible, would be merely an
instrument whose results had to be co-ordinated and used by
others. Now, though a pure specialist may be an abstraction
of the mind, the tendency of specialists in any department
naturally is to lose sight of the whole in attention to the particular
categories or modes of nature's working which happen to be
exemplified, and fruitfully applied, in their own sphere of investigation;
and in proportion as this is the case it becomes necessary
for their theories to be co-ordinated with the results of other
inquirers, and set, as it were, in the light of the whole. This task
of co-ordination, in the broadest sense, is undertaken by philosophy;
for the philosopher is essentially what Plato, in a happy
moment, styled him, ouvmrfrucés, the man who takes a “synoptic”
or comprehensive view of the universe as a whole. The aim of
philosophy (whether fully attainable or not) is to exhibit the
universe as a rational system in the harmony of all its parts;
and accordingly the philosopher refuses to consider the parts
out of their relation to the whole whose parts they are. Philosophy
corrects in this way the abstractions which are inevitably
made by the scientific specialist, and may claim, therefore, to be
the only “concrete” science, that is to say, the only science
which takes account of all the elements in the problem, and the
only science whose results can claim to be true in more than a
provisional sense.
For it is evident from what has been said that the way in which we commonly speak of “facts ” is calculated to convey a false impression. The world is not a collection of individual facts existing side by side and capable of being known separately. A fact is nothing except in its relations to other facts; and as these relations are multiplied in the progress of knowledge the nature of the so-called fact is indefinitely modified. Moreover, every statement of fact involves certain general notions and theories, so that the “ facts ” of the separate sciences cannot be stated except in terms of the conceptions or hypotheses which are assumed by the particular science. Thus mathematics assumes space as an existent infinite, without investigating in what sense the existence or the infinity of this U nding, as Kant called it, can be asserted. In the same way, physics may be said to assume the notion of material atoms and forces. These and similar assumptions are ultimate presuppositions or working hypotheses for the sciences themselves. But it is the office of philosophy, as a theory of knowledge, to submit such conceptions to a critical analysis, with a view to discover how far they can be thought out, or how far, when this is done, they refute themselves, and call for a different form of statement, if they are to be taken as a statement of the ultimate nature of the real.1 The first statement may frequently turn out to have been merely provisionally or relatively true; it is then superseded by, or rather inevitably merges itself in, a less abstract account. In this the same “facts ” appear differently, because no longer separated from other aspects that belong to the full reality of the known world. There is no such thing, we have said, as an individual fact; and the nature of any fact is not fully known unless we know it in all its relations to the system of the universe, or, in Spinoza's phrase, sub specie aeternitatis. In strictness, there is but one res completa or concrete fact, and it is the business of philosophy, as science of the whole, to expound the chief relations that constitute its complex nature.
The last abstraction which it becomes the duty of philosophy to remove is the abstraction from the knowing subject which is made by all the sciences, including, as we shall see, the science of psychology. The sciences, one and all, deal with a world of objects, but the ultimate fact as we know it is the existence of an object for a subject. Subject-object, knowledge, or, more widely, self-consciousness with its implicates-this unity in duality is the ultimate aspect which reality presents. It has generally been considered, therefore, as constituting in a special sense the problem of philosophy. Philosophy may be said to be the explication of what is involved in this relation, or, in Kantian phraseology, a theory of its possibility. Any would-be theory of the universe which makes its central fact impossible stands self-condemned. On the other hand, a sufficient analysis here may be expected to yield us a statement of the reality of things in its last terms, and thus to shed a light backwards upon the true nature of our subordinate conceptions.
Psychology, Epistemology and M etophysics.-This leads to the consideration of the main divisions of philosophy—PSYCHOLOGY (q 'v.), epistemology (theory of knowledge, Erkenntnisstheorie), and metaphysics (ontology; see l/IETAPHYSIC). A special relation has always existed between psychology and systematic philosophy, but the closeness of the connexion has been characteristic of modern and more particularly of English thought. The connexion is not difficult to explain, seeing that in psychology, or the science of mind, we study the fact of intelligence (and moral action), and have, so far, in our hands the fact to which all other facts are relative. From this point of view we may even see a truth in Jacobi's dictum as quoted by Sir W. Hamilton: “ Nature conceals God; man reveals God.” Nature by itself, that is to say, is insufficient. The ultimate explanation of things cannot be given by any theory which excludes from its survey the intelligence in which nature, as it were, gathers herself up. But knowledge, or the mind as knowing, willing, &c., may be looked at in two different ways. It may be regarded simply as a fact; in which case the evolutions of mind may be traced and reduced to laws in the same way as the phenomena treated by the other sciences. This study gives us the science of empirical psychology, or, as it is now termed, psychology sans phrase. In order to give an adequate account of its subject-matter, psychology may require higher or more complex categories than are employed in the other sciences, just as biology, for example, cannot work with mechanical categories alone, but introduces the conception of development or growth. But the affinities of such a study are manifestly with the sciences as such rather than with philosophy; and the definitive establishment of psychology as an independent science has already been alluded to. Since it has been taken up by specialists, psychology is being established on a broader basis of induction, and with the advantage, in some departments, of the employment of experimental methods of measurement. But it is not of mind in this aspect 1 The revisional office which philoso by here assumes constitutes her the critic of the sciences. It is in this connexion that the meaning of the definition of philosophy as “ the science of principles " can best be seen. This is perhaps the most usual definition, and. though vague, one of the least misleading.
