different beliefs are distinguished by different modes of action to which they give rise.” Like Mach, Peirce also warned against the trivial metaphysics that we have imbibed with our education since childhood. He said: “The truth is that common sense or thought as it first emerges above the level ofthe narrowly practical is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied.” He also emphasized that words such as “force” are only expedients for the representation of facts and that every question as to their “actual nature” is superfluous and useless. In the same article he said:
“Whether we ought to say that a force
is
an acceleration or that it
causes
an acceleration is a mere question of propriety of language which has no more to do with the real meaning than the difference between the French idiom
‘il fait froid’
and the English equivalent ‘it is cold.’ ”
An approach very similar to that of Mach was manifested by John Dewey in his first scientific article: “The Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism,” published in 1882. Dismissing the opinion that the reduction of all phenomena to the motions of material bodies is an explanation of nature, he said:
“First, it assumes the possibility of ontological knowledge, by which we mean knowledge of being or substance apart from a mere succession of phenomena.… Secondly, it assumes the reality of causal nexus and the possibility of real causation. In declaring that matter causes mind it declares that the relation is one of dependency and not one of succession.”
The struggle against materialism here is not carried on in the service of an idealistic philosophy, as with the average professors of philosophy in European and American universities, but entirely along the lines of central European positivism, which opposed mechanistic physics on the ground that it is not a sufficiently broad basis of science.
American pragmatism since then has developed into a powerful movement, finding its most characteristic expression in John Dewey and William James. It has devoted itself more to the problems of human life than to the logic of the physical sciences, in contrast to the development of positivism in Europe. Considered from the purely logical point of view, however, the basic tendency was the same on both sides of the Atlantic. The medieval idea of a philosophical explanation in contrast to a practical representation of facts vital to life lost prestige to an ever increasing degree. From a logical basis of science, metaphysics developed into a means of satisfying emotional needs.
11.
Science at the End of the Nineteenth Century
During the golden age of mechanistic physics it was generally felt that outside of its application lay the realm of the unknowable and the unintelligible, since “to understand” meant “to represent by analogy to a mechanism.” In 1872 the German scientist Du Bois-Reymond, in his famous lecture on “
Die Grenzen des Naturerkennens
(The Limits of Our Knowledge of Nature)” took as his point of departure the assertion, then regarded as self-evident, that “understanding” means “reduction to the laws of Newtonian mechanics.” He indicated two important problems of science that can certainly not be reduced to mechanics. These are, first, the problem of what “actually occurs in space where a force is acting” and, secondly, how it happens that “matter in the human brain can think and feel.” Since the answers to these questions can obviously not be obtained within the framework of mechanistic physics, he concluded that there are “insoluble problems” that are inaccessible to human knowledge. To these questions we should say
“ignorabimus”
(“we shall never know”) instead of
“ignoramus”
(“we do not know”). This word
“ignorabimus”
became the slogan of an entire period, the slogan of defeatism in science, which delighted all anti-scientific
“Whether we ought to say that a force
is
an acceleration or that it
causes
an acceleration is a mere question of propriety of language which has no more to do with the real meaning than the difference between the French idiom
‘il fait froid’
and the English equivalent ‘it is cold.’ ”
An approach very similar to that of Mach was manifested by John Dewey in his first scientific article: “The Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism,” published in 1882. Dismissing the opinion that the reduction of all phenomena to the motions of material bodies is an explanation of nature, he said:
“First, it assumes the possibility of ontological knowledge, by which we mean knowledge of being or substance apart from a mere succession of phenomena.… Secondly, it assumes the reality of causal nexus and the possibility of real causation. In declaring that matter causes mind it declares that the relation is one of dependency and not one of succession.”
The struggle against materialism here is not carried on in the service of an idealistic philosophy, as with the average professors of philosophy in European and American universities, but entirely along the lines of central European positivism, which opposed mechanistic physics on the ground that it is not a sufficiently broad basis of science.
American pragmatism since then has developed into a powerful movement, finding its most characteristic expression in John Dewey and William James. It has devoted itself more to the problems of human life than to the logic of the physical sciences, in contrast to the development of positivism in Europe. Considered from the purely logical point of view, however, the basic tendency was the same on both sides of the Atlantic. The medieval idea of a philosophical explanation in contrast to a practical representation of facts vital to life lost prestige to an ever increasing degree. From a logical basis of science, metaphysics developed into a means of satisfying emotional needs.
11.
Science at the End of the Nineteenth Century
During the golden age of mechanistic physics it was generally felt that outside of its application lay the realm of the unknowable and the unintelligible, since “to understand” meant “to represent by analogy to a mechanism.” In 1872 the German scientist Du Bois-Reymond, in his famous lecture on “
Die Grenzen des Naturerkennens
(The Limits of Our Knowledge of Nature)” took as his point of departure the assertion, then regarded as self-evident, that “understanding” means “reduction to the laws of Newtonian mechanics.” He indicated two important problems of science that can certainly not be reduced to mechanics. These are, first, the problem of what “actually occurs in space where a force is acting” and, secondly, how it happens that “matter in the human brain can think and feel.” Since the answers to these questions can obviously not be obtained within the framework of mechanistic physics, he concluded that there are “insoluble problems” that are inaccessible to human knowledge. To these questions we should say
“ignorabimus”
(“we shall never know”) instead of
“ignoramus”
(“we do not know”). This word
“ignorabimus”
became the slogan of an entire period, the slogan of defeatism in science, which delighted all anti-scientific
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