COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



vey of our projected course has already assured 

 us that we need not search for it among the 

 concrete sciences. Obviously the widest pro- 

 position which can possibly be furnished by 

 astronomy or biology, or any other concrete sci- 

 ence, cannot be wide enough to underlie a Syn- 

 thesis of all the sciences. The most general 

 theorems of biology are not deducible from the 

 most general theorems of astronomy ; nor vice 

 versa. But the most general theorems of each 

 concrete science are ultimately deducible from 

 theorems lying outside the region of concrete 

 science. Where shall we find such theorems ? 

 If we turn to the purely abstract sciences — logic 

 and mathematics — we shall get but little help. 

 Useful as these sciences are, as engines of in- 

 vestigation, they do not contain what we are 

 now looking for. Obviously mathematics, deal- 

 ing only with relations of number, form, and 

 magnitude, cannot supply the ultimate principle 

 from which may be deduced such phenomena 

 as the condensation of a nebula, the segmen- 

 tation of an ovum, or the development of a 

 tribal community. To build a system of philo- 

 sophy upon any possible theorem of mathemat- 

 ics would only be to repeat, after twenty-four 

 centuries, the errors of Pythagoras. And the 

 helplessness of abstract logic, for our purposes, 

 is too manifest to need illustration. 



Let us then turn to the abstract-concrete sci- 



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