The main doctrine of Comte’s positivism is the doctrine that first and final causes cannot be known, and we must abandon our search for them; that human knowledge is limited to the middle, while the two ends are inaccessible. These insoluble questions, he declares, have made no progress from the beginning. Mr. Lewes in his book “Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences” expresses this agnosticism in the following words (p. 31): “Our province is to study her [nature’s] laws, to trace her processes, and, thankful that we can so far penetrate the divine significance of the universe, be content—as Locke wisely and modestly says—to sit down in quiet ignorance of all transcendent[1] subjects.”
This idea has so far as I am aware never been given by Littré; it remained the basis of his belief in the unknowable and his works abound in expressions that concerning the main problems of life, “the positive philosophy will neither assert nor deny anything.”
Littré concludes the last article of his volume “La Science” with the following words:
“Le domaine ultérieur est celui des choses qui ne peuvent pas être connues. La science positive professe de n’y rien nier, de n’y rien affirmer; en un mot, elle ne connaît pas l’inconnaissable, mais elle en constate l’existence. Là est a philosophie suprême; aller plus loin est chimérique, aller moin loin est déserter notre destinée.”
This quotation alone, I think, settles the first main point at issue.
Now I maintain that Comte’s view of causation where he refers to first and final causes is fundamentally wrong; causation is transformation and causality is the formula under which we comprehend the changes of matter and energy that take place. The expressions first and final causes are misnomers (see “Fundamental Problems,” the chapter The Problem of Causality). First cause is either the starting point of a series of some longer chain of causes and effects, or as the term is generally applied or rather misapplied, stands for the last ground or reason, i.e. the answer given to the ultimate question why?, which is the most general raison d’être that would explain and contain all the other and less general raison d’être regarding the nature of existence. The term final cause, again, means either the last cause in a series of causes or (and so it is generally used) it is a misnomer for purpose; and the final cause supposed to be inaccessible to human comprehension is the purpose of the existence of the world at large. I object to there being three kinds of causes. There is one kind of causality only, and the causes of the causality in all the causal processes with which we are confronted are perfectly intelligible.
The problem of the first cause of the origin of our world, viz. the solar system and milky way, was attacked first by Kant and later by Laplace, and the latter, without knowing of Kant’s solution, solved it in the main in the same way. All recent investigations stand upon this Kant-Laplace hypothesis so called, having added corrections only as to details. Shall we declare that these labors are vain
- ↑ Italics are not mine.
