Truth and Error or the Science of Intellection/Chapter 25
CHAPTER XXV
SUMMARY[edit]
I have tried to demonstrate that an ultimate particle, and hence every body, has five essentials or concomitants, these terms being practically synonymous. It has been shown that there is something absolute and something relative in every one. The essentials of the particle are unity, extension, speed, persistence, and consciousness, which are absolute. The relations which arise from them, in order, are multeity, position, path, change, and choice, which give rise to number, extension, motion, time, and judgment, as properties that can be measured. It has been pointed out that particles are incorporated in bodies through affinity as choice, and by this incorporation the quantitative properties become classific properties which, in order, are class, form, force, causation, and conception. In the development of number into class, unity becomes kind and plurality becomes series. In the development of space into form, extension becomes figure and position becomes structure. In the development of motion into force, speed becomes velocity and path becomes inertia. In the development of time into causation, persistence becomes state and change becomes event. In the development of judgment into conception, consciousness becomes recollection and choice becomes inference.
As all particles, except those of the ether, are organized into bodies, all of these bodies may be viewed or considered from two standpoints—internal and external. If we consider the body internally we consider its particles externally to one another; therefore, we are compelled to recognize the reciprocality of the two views—the quantitative view is equal to or the reciprocal of the classific view. Now, we have three terms, concomitancy, relativity, and reciprocality, which, in all science and especially in psychology, must clearly be distinguished. The failure to distinguish them creates the fog of metaphysic.
In the ether we do not know of the existence of bodies, but it seems probable that only particles exist. We do know of astronomical bodies, geonomic bodies, phytonomic bodies, zoönomic bodies, and demotic bodies. In the last class the particles do not lose their three degrees of freedom of motion, but this freedom is transmuted into coöperative reciprocality. The freedom of the particles by development of motility as a mode of motion becomes the self-activity of the individuals, which is exhibited in promoting the welfare of the individual and of the demotic body.
Properties are not creations of the mind; they are founded in nature and are recognized in nature in the plainest manner, hence they are not artificial, but natural. In molecules numbers are organized into kinds and series, that is, into classes, the kinds appearing as substances and the series as totalities of substances. In stars spaces are integrated and differentiated as figures and structures, and hence forms are primarily organized in stars. In geonomic bodies motions are organized as forces, being integrated and differentiated as coöperative spheres. In plants times are organized as causations, antecedent and consequent, as parents and children, and heredity thus appears. In animals judgments are organized, in which times become states as memories and changes as inferences. In this realm mind first appears as conception, for concepts require memory and inference, thus only animals have minds; plants do not have minds, but their particles have judgment, for particles have affinity and make judgments of association, and only such judgments. They do not have memory, nor do they have conception, therefore they do not have inference.
All particles of plants, rocks, and stars have judgments as consciousness and choice, but having no organization for the psychical functions they have not recollection and inference; they therefore do not have intellections or emotions. Only animal bodies have these psychical faculties. Molecules, stars, stones, and plants do not think; that which we have attributed to them as consciousness and choice is only the judgment of particles; but it is the ground, the foundation, the substrate of that which appears in animals when they are organized for conception.
That which perchance may be called hylozoism in this work must radically be distinguished from that hylozoism which appears in metaphysical speculation, when it attributes mind to inanimate bodies, or from that belief of early mythology which also attributes mind to inanimate things. It is this error of primeval savagery, called animism, from which civilized men have long ago logically revolted, that must be distinguished from the hylozoism herein propounded. Perhaps it is this repugnance to primeval error which has chiefly been instrumental in causing the rejection of the fundamental principles of concomitance in the science of mind, for it has occurred to great thinkers many times since the revival of science effected by Columbus and Copernicus.
It is marvelous how often it has occurred to the great thinkers of science as well as of metaphysics; but so far as I know it was never clearly formulated in such a manner as to become a scientific doctrine. It has been held that mind itself belongs to the inanimate realm, when it should have been held that consciousness and choice only are inherent in this realm, which is developed into psychic faculties only by the organization of animate bodies.
In these chapters it has been affirmed that every particle or body may be considered severally in its essentials or concomitants, and that if we consider one property and not the others we consider it abstractly. Abstraction, therefore, is the consideration of one property of a body, neglecting the others which we are compelled to posit.
We cannot conceive one property as existing independently of the others, but the discovery of one property leads the mind by a habit, which is inexorable, to postulate the others. This postulation of all properties from one, if neglected, leads to what has here been called reification. The mind that deals with things when it reasons, cannot make this mistake, but the mind that deals with words and thus reasons by the methods of scholastic logic, is liable to this error, for a particle or a body may be designated by the name of one of its properties. The failure to make this distinction may be called the ground of the failure of Aristotelian logic as distinguished from scientific logic.
Having set forth the reciprocal properties of bodies, a brief chapter is given to explain how properties become qualities, in which it is demonstrated that qualities arise through the consideration of properties in relation to the purposes of animal bodies, especially of human bodies.
The failure to distinguish between properties and qualities is the fundamental error of modern metaphysic. For twenty-five centuries many great thinkers have considered the properties of a body, which are founded upon its essentials, and which essentials are the thing-in-itself, as if they were qualities. Discovering that qualities are forever changing with the point of view, as the purpose of the individual is changed, the reality of properties was questioned.
The unreality of properties when they are confounded with qualities finds expression in many ways. Thus it is affirmed that man is the measure of things, or that man is the measure of qualities, meaning that things or their qualities are generated by the mind. This is true of qualities, as I use the term, but it is not true of properties. Still, the ancients retained sanity, and believed in the thing-in-itself, and called it a noumenon. An attribute of a thing which seems to vary with the point of view is called a phenomenon. Then, many properties are imperfectly cognized, and their explanation depends upon investigation which has come to be recognized as scientific research; hence properties that are still improperly explained are also called phenomena, but when better explained are called noumena. Thus noumenon as used by the ancients is a term which means the thing which changes with the point of view, whether it is a change of purpose or a change of explanation. Thus errors of cognition in properties are confounded with what I call qualities, and both are called phenomena.
An attempt is then made to demonstrate that the cognition of these properties gives rise to five psychic faculties, which we have called sensation, perception, apprehension, reflection, and ideation.
In developing the five faculties of intellection an endeavor has been made to set forth the nature of the judgment and to show that its validity depends upon verification. Repeated judgments from like sense impressions become habitual or intuitive. I here speak of habitual judgments of intellection as intuitive, as in a later work I shall speak of habitual judgments of emotion as instinctive, and consider presentative judgments as being inductive, and representative judgments as being deductive. The division of the faculties into sense perception, understanding, and reason, to which metaphysic has been committed in a more or less clearly defined manner, is here rejected as a schematization that leads to psychological confusion.
That speculation which deals with the properties of bodies as if they were qualities, I call metaphysic. That theorizing which distinguishes properties from qualities and deals with properties as realities, I call science. That speculation which fails to find consciousness as an essential or concomitant ‘of bodies, but derives the mind from force or motion, I call materialism.
Metaphysic has a history which must be unraveled to properly understand contemporaneous opinion at any one stage, but especially to understand the successive stages through which it has passed. Before the birth of chemistry man believed the elements to be earth, air, fire, and water, which elements were mixed in all of the bodies of the world, and it becomes necessary for us to understand how the attributes of bodies were assigned to the several elements. Not only was metaphysic founded upon these doctrines, but it was out of a philosophy of these elements that science itself was developed. Gradually in the history of civilization there grew up a doctrine of substance or substrate as something which is not one of the essentials of matter, as particle or body, but to which essentials adhere or inhere or subsist. This substrate or substance was supposed to be the vehicle of properties which emanate from it. Two relics of this doctrine are especially of interest to scientific men. It was long believed that heat and light are corpuscular, and that heat is given off from the substrate or substance of one body and taken up by another. Even Newton thought light to be corpuscular. The doctrine that motion as speed emanates from one body as a substance or substrate and passes to another, comes from this source. This relic of ancient philosophy clings to much of modern physics, and is the foundation of a body of speculation in which scientific men indulge when they theorize about the dissipation of motion, the exhaustion of the heat of the sun, and the general running down of the solar system into a state in which life will be impossible.
In a very brief and inadequate way I have tried to set forth the origin and history of fundamental fallacies relating to properties. This history commences with the early Greeks, but we cannot understand its origin without going back to an earlier stage of society than that in which history presents the philosophy of the Hellenic tribes.
In tribal society all honor is due to the progenitor of a tribe for his goodness and wisdom, and his commands have perpetual authority. The ancient time was the golden age; the present is a time of degeneracy. In tribal society to say that a man is elder is to say that he is wiser and better and must be obeyed. An ancient who lived in the ancient of days was supremely wise and good. He who can trace his ancestry farthest into antiquity has the most honorable beginning. The most ancient, the first, the progenitor, the prototype, is the one to whom all glory must be given. In savagery, authority, wisdom, honor, and parentage are so intimately associated in the minds of tribal men, that their demotic organization is dependent upon this compound concept, taken as a single principle. With these people demotic organization is founded upon the authority of the parent over the offspring. To be a parent is to have wisdom, and to be a parent is to have authority. The parent seems to have reason upon his side when he seeks to control the offspring, for the parent is the author of the offspring; therefore, the progenitor is the wise and the powerful, and this principle, which is at the foundation of tribal society, is so thoroughly interwoven into the habits of thought of the people, that it seems to them a self-evident proposition that the progenitor is wise and should rule.
When a group of kindred is considered with parents and children, and collateral lines of consanguineal members, and further lines of kinship by affinity, the whole group organized into a tribe with authority in the relative elder, and all the items of authority parceled out in a hierarchy of real or conventional relative ages, we have the tribal plan of government.
Honor for ancestors is the most profound sentiment of savage men and is daily and systematically inculcated, so that the younger always yields obedience to the elder, and the elder is always held in reverence.
This principle leads to a gradation of the people of a savage tribe into recognized ranks by relative age, and if a man is promoted within a tribe, such promotion is a formal advancement in age, and kinship terms are readjusted so that the age received by promotion may be recognized in terms of address. In barbarism there comes another element to increase this respect, for the elder is not only obeyed, but is worshiped as a deity. In this manner often the chief of the gens, which is a group within the tribe, and also the chief of the tribe, is worshiped. Dead ancestors are also worshiped as ghosts. Clans of the savage tribe become gentes of the barbaric tribe, and the gentes are grouped in phratries as religious brotherhoods, and the dead chief of the phratry is usually worshiped, while other departed members of the phratry are also worshiped. Chiefs, who may be called the priests of the phratry when they become remarkable for their ability or for success in shamanism as diviners, medicine-men, and soothsayers, are held for a long time in great reverence, and their accomplishments are repeated in many a story. So in barbaric society the patriarch—the ancient—is held to be the progenitor or prototype of the gens, the phratry, or the tribe, as the case may be. In gentes, phratries, and tribes there is a constant veneration of ancestral ancients. This appears to have been the case among the Hellenic tribes, which belonged to that stage of culture which we call barbarism.
In savagery seven worlds are developed, as the east, west, north, south, zenith, nadir, and center; and they schematize or systematize all the attributes of things into seven groups. As geographic knowledge increases, those attributes which are assigned to the four quarters of the earth, are by natural methods transferred from the cardinal worlds to certain leading attributes of those worlds represented by earth, air, fire, and water. In this manner the worlds are transmuted into elements, but there still remain—the zenith, nadir, and center the zenith becoming a world of exalted attributes which they suppose to be good, the nadir becoming a world of evil.
Greek philosophy was developed at a time when tribal society was developing. Upon the ruins of tribal society imperialism was erected. The Greek philosophers inherited the cosmology of barbarism and with it the habits of thought characteristic of barbarism, especially the mental tendency to claim superiority for the ancient or first. Hence they claimed superiority for one or another of the four elements. Particularly was air, fire, or water held to be the first or progenitor of the others. In all their concepts about the absolutes of bodies, whether considering properties or qualities, there always seems to be a factor of this tribal concept. Thus we see that one of the barbaric elements was always taken as the substrate of the others. Thus was born the doctrine of substrate.
When imperialism had led to monotheism, and the school of theology was the school of philosophy also, a new substrate was discovered—the deity as something eminent in the world of attributes. At last, in comparatively modern times, another substrate was developed in speculation as a something to which the attributes could inhere. This reification still holds a place in the speculation even of scientific men and vitiates our popular physics. It is the chimera of substrate, this thing in itself as noumenon that leads to the belief in the world only as phenomenon. Since Berkeley and Hume a special school of metaphysicians has been developed who have the custody of this ghost and are its leal defenders. The fifth property, or consciousness as mind, is their ghost. These are the idealists. The war of philosophy is between Idealists and Materialists.
The philosophy here presented is neither Idealism nor Materialism; I would fain call it the Philosophy of Science.