846 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



theory or hypothesis, and to appreciate the distinc- 

 tion between a " working hypothesis " and a theory 

 advanced with the cluim of its final validity or 

 truth. 



Now, the fact is, that for the purposes of the in- 

 quiry to which my book is devoted, I am not di- 

 rectly concerned with the " laboratory function " of 

 "working hypotheses" or physical thories at all. 

 My object is to consider current physical theories 

 and the assumptions which underlie them in the 

 light of the modern theory of cognition — a theory 

 which has taken its rise in very recent times, and is 

 founded upon the investigation, by scientific meth- 

 ods analogous to those employed in the physical sci- 

 ences, of the laws governing the evolution of thought 

 and speech. ^Among the important truths devel- 

 oped by the sciences of comparative linguistics and 

 psychology are such as these : that the thoughts of 

 men at any particular period are limited and con- 

 trolled by the forms of their expression, viz., by lan- 

 guage (using this term in its most comprehensive 

 sense) ; that the language spoken and " thought in " 

 by a given generation is to a certain extent a record 

 of the intellectual activity of preceding generations, 

 and thus embodies and serves to perpetuate its er- 

 rors as well as its truths ; that this Is the fact hint- 

 ed at, if not accurately expressed, in the old obser- 

 vation according to which every distinct form or 

 system of speech involves a distinct metaphysical 

 theory ; that the metaphysical systems in vogue at 

 any particular epoch, despite their apparent difibr- 

 ences and antagonisms, on proper analysis are found 

 to be characterized by certain common features in 

 which the latent metaphysics of the language in 

 which such systems have originated, or are pre- 

 sented, are brought to view ; that philosophers as 

 well as ordinary men are subject to the thralldom of 

 the intellectual prepossessions embodied in their 

 speech as well as in the other inherited forms of 

 their mental and physical organizations, and are un- 

 able to emancipate themselves from this thralldom 

 otherwise than by slow and gradual advances, in 

 conformity to the law of continuity which governs 

 all processes of evolution whatever. It being my 

 belief that all this applies to the votaries of science 

 as well as to the devotees of metaphysics or ontology, 

 I sought to enforce this belief by an examination of 

 the general concepts and theories of modern phys- 

 ics. According to the opinion of contemporary men 

 of science, these concepts and theories are simply 

 generalizations of the data of experience, and are 

 thus not only independent of the old a priori no- 

 tions of metaphysics, but destructive of them. But, 

 although the founders of modem physical science at 

 the outset of their labors were animated by a spirit 

 of declared hostility to the teachings of mediaeval 

 scholasticism— a fact which is nowhere more con- 

 spicuous than in the writings of Descartes— never- 

 theless, when they entered upon the theoretical dis- 

 cussion of the results of their experiments and ob- 

 servations, they unconsciously proceeded upon the 

 old assumptions of the very ontology which they 

 openly repudiated. That ontology— founded upon 

 the inveterate habit of searching for " essences '' by 

 the Interpretation of words and the analysis of the 

 concepts underlying them, before the relations of 

 words to thoughts and of thoughts to things were 

 properly understood — was characterized by three 



great errors : its hypostasis of concepts (notwith- 

 standing the protest of the nominalists against the 

 reification of universals) ; its disregard of the two- 

 fold relativity of all physical phenomena ; and its 

 confusion of the order of intellectual apprehension 

 with the order of Nature. These errors gave rise to 

 a number of cardinal doctrines respecting the " sub- 

 stance of things," among which were the assertion 

 of its existence as a distinct thing or real entity, 

 apart from its properties ; the further assertion of 

 its absolute permanence and immutability; and, 

 finally, the assertion of the absolute solidity and in- 

 ertia of its parts and their incapacity to act upon 

 each other otherwise than by contact. And all these 

 doctrines lie at the base, not only of Cartesian phys- 

 ics and metaphysics, but of the scientific creed of 

 the great majority of the physicists of the present 

 day. The eminent physicist and physiologist who 

 declares that "before the differential equations of 

 the world-formula could be formed" (i.e., before 

 the ultimate, true, and exhaustive theory of the uni- 

 verse could be constructed), "all processes of Nature 

 must be reduced to the motions of a substratum sub- 

 stantially homogeneous, and therefore totally desti- 

 tute of quality, of that which appears to us as het- 

 erogeneous matter — in other words, all quality must 

 be explained by the arrangement and motion of such 

 a substratum," and the equally distinguished physi- 

 cist and mathematician who enters upon the at- 

 tempt at a solution of the problem thus stated by 

 endeavoring to deduce the phenomenal diversities 

 and changes of the universe from imaginary vortical 

 motions of the undistinguishable parts of an as- 

 sumed universal, homogeneous, continuous, and in- 

 compressible fluid, are both as truly instinct with 

 the spirit of the old scientia entis quatenus entis 

 as the most ardent disciple of the Stagirite in the 

 times of Erigena or Aquinas. The physicist who in- 

 sists upon impact theories of gravitation, cohesion, 

 or chemical affinity, has the same intellectual blood 

 in his veins which coursed in those of the old dis- 

 putants about " first matter " or " substantial 

 forms." When the Professor of Physics in the 

 University of Edinburgh teaches that matter is ab- 

 solutely passive, dead, that all physical action is 

 action by contact, that nothing is real which is not 

 indestructible, etc., he stands as unmistakably upon 

 scholastic ontological ground as did Descartes or 

 any of his ecclesiastical contemporaries. The prop- 

 osition of the modern kinematist, that the true ex- 

 planation of the phenomena of heat, light, electricity, 

 magnetism, etc., consists in their reduction to the 

 elements of matter and motion, differs in fittle else 

 than its phraseology from the metaphysical theorem 

 that all the " secondary qualities " of the universal 

 substance are mere specifications or derivatives of 

 its " primary qualities." 



Aboriginal American Authors and their 

 Productions ; especially those in the 

 Native Languages. By Daniel G. Brin- 

 ton. Philadelphia: 115 South Serenth 

 Street. Pp. 63. Price, $1. 

 The present memoir is an enlargement 

 of a paper which the author presented to the 

 International Conference of Americanists at 



