Chapter V: The Natural Sciences

The natural sciences as empirical concepts, and their practical nature--Elimination of an equivocation concerning this practical character--Impossibility of unifying them in one concept--Impossibility of introducing into them rigorous divisions--Laws in the natural sciences, and so-called prevision--Empirical character of naturalistic laws--The postulate of the uniformity of nature, and its meaning--Pretended impossibility of exceptions to natural laws--Nature and its various meanings. Nature as passivity and negativity--Nature as practical activity--Nature in its gnoseological significance, as naturalistic or empirical method--The illusions of materialists and dualists--Nature as empirical distinction of an inferior reality in respect to a superior reality--The naturalistic method, and the natural sciences as extending to superior not less than to inferior reality--Claim for such extension, and effective existence of what is claimed--Historical foundation of the natural sciences--The question whether history be foundation or crown of thought--Naturalists as historical investigators--Prejudices as to non-historicity of nature--Philosophic foundation of the natural sciences, and effect of philosophy upon them--Effect of natural sciences upon philosophy, and errors in conceiving such relation--Reason of these errors. Naturalistic philosophy--Philosophy as the destroyer of naturalistic philosophy, but not of the natural sciences. Autonomy of these.

VI

MATHEMATICS AND THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE OF NATURE

Idea of a mathematical science of nature--Various definitions of mathematics--Mathematical procedure--Apriority of mathematical principles--Contradictoriness of the _a priori_ principles. They are not thinkable, and not intuitive--Identification of mathematics with abstract pseudoconcepts--The ultimate end of mathematics: to enumerate, and, therefore, to aid the determination of the single. Its place--Particular questions concerning mathematics--Rigour of mathematics and rigour of philosophy--Loves and hates between the two forms--Impossibility of reducing the empirical sciences to the mathematical; and the empirical limits of the mathematical science of nature--Decreasing utility of mathematics in the loftiest spheres of the real.

VII

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES

Theory of the forms of knowledge and doctrine of the categories--Problem of classification of the sciences; its empirical nature--Falsely philosophic character that it assumes--Coincidence of that problem with the search for the categories, when understood with philosophic rigour--Forms of knowledge and literary-didactic forms--Prejudices derived from the latter--Methodical prologues to scholastic manuals, their impotence--Capricious multiplication of the sciences--The sciences and professional prejudices.

THIRD PART

THE FORMS OF ERROR AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

I

ERROR AND ITS NECESSARY FORMS

Error as negativity; impossibility of a special treatment of errors--Positive and existing errors--Positive errors as practical acts--Practical acts and not practical errors--Economically practical acts, not morally practical acts--Doctrine of error, and doctrine of necessary forms of error--Logical nature of all theoretical errors--History of errors and phenomenology of error--Deduction of the forms of logical errors. Forms deduced from the concept of the concept, and forms deduced from the other concepts--Errors derived from errors--Professionally and nationality of errors.

II

ÆSTHETICISM, EMPIRICISM AND MATHEMATICISM

Definition of these forms--Æstheticism--Empiricism--Positivism, the philosophy founded upon the sciences, inductive metaphysic--Empiricism and facts--Bankruptcy of Empiricism: dualism, agnosticism, spiritualism and superstition--Evolutionistic positivism and rationalistic positivism--Mathematicism--Symbolical mathematics--Mathematics as a form of demonstration of philosophy--Errors of mathematical philosophy--Dualism, agnosticism and superstition of mathematicism.

III

THE PHILOSOPHISM

Rupture of the unity of the _a priori_ synthesis--Philosophism, logicism or panlogicism--Philosophy of history--Contradictions in its assumptions--Philosophy of history and false analogies--Distinction between Philosophy of history and books so entitled--Merits of these, philosophic and historical--Philosophy of nature--Its substantial identity with Philosophy of history--Contradictions of Philosophy of nature--Books entitled Philosophy of nature--Contemporary seekings for a Philosophy of nature and their various meanings.

IV

THE MYTHOLOGISM

Rupture of the unity of the _a priori_ synthesis. The mythologism --Essence of myth--Problems relating to theory of myth--Myth and religion--Identity of the two spiritual forms--Religion and philosophy--Conversion of errors, the one into the other--Conversion of the mythologism into philosophism (theology) and of the philosophism into the mythologism (mythology of nature, historical apocalypses, etc.)--Scepsis.

DUALISM, SCEPTICISM AND MYSTICISM

Dualism--Scepsis and scepticism--Mystery--Critique of affirmations of mystery in philosophy--Agnosticism as a particular form of scepticism--Mysticism--Errors in other parts of philosophy--Conversion of these errors into one another and into logical errors.

VI

THE ORDER OF ERRORS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

Necessary character of the forms of errors. Their definite number --Their logical order--Examples of this order in various parts of philosophy--Erring spirit and spirit of search--Immanence of error in truth--Erroneous distinction between possession of and search for truth--Search for truth in the practical sense of preparation for thought; the series of errors--Transfiguration of error into tentative or hypothesis in the search so understood--Distinction between error as error and error as hypothesis--Immanence of the tentative in error itself as error--Individuals and error--Duplicate aspect of errors--Ultimate form of error: the methodological error or hypotheticism.

VII

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ERROR AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Inseparability of phenomenology of error from the philosophical system--The eternal course and recurrence of errors--Returns to anterior philosophies; and their meaning--False idea of a history of philosophy as history of the successive appearance of the categories and of errors in time--Philosophism case in point of this false view, as is the formula concerning the identity of philosophy and history of philosophy--Distinction between this false idea of a history of philosophy, and the books which take it as their title or programme--Exact formula: identity of philosophy and history--History of philosophy and philosophic progress--The truth of all philosophies; and criticism of eclecticism--Researches for authors and precursors of truths; reason for the antinomies which they exhibit.

VIII

"DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE"

Logic and defence of Philosophy--Utility of Philosophy and the Philosophy of the practical--Consolation of philosophy, as joy of thought and in the true. Impossibility of a pleasure arising from falsity and illusion--Critique of the concept of a sad truth --Examples: Philosophical criticism and the concepts of God and Immortality--Consolatory virtue, pertaining to all spiritual activities--Sorrow and elevation of sorrow.

FOURTH PART

HISTORICAL RETROSPECT

I

HISTORY OF LOGIC AND HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Reality, Thought and Logic--Relation of these three terms--Inexistence of a general philosophy outside particular philosophic sciences; and, in consequence, of a general History of philosophy outside the histories of particular philosophic sciences--Histories of particular philosophies and literary value of such division--History of Logic in its particular sense--Works dealing with history of Logic.