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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1SS3 



THE METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF 

 NATURAL SCIENCE 

 k'an/'s Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of 

 Natural Science. Translated, with a Biography and 

 Introduction, by Ernest Belfort Bax. (London : 

 George Bell and Sons, 1883.) 



I^HE pages of NATURE are not the appropriate place 

 for the review of works on general metaphysics. 

 The genius and methods of science are so different from 

 those of philosophy that, as their respective histories 

 have amply shown, these branches of intellectual activity 

 are as a rule best kept asunder. But there is at least one 

 important point of contact which cannot be overlooked. 

 And it is just because in the writings of Kant, and par- 

 ticularly in the second of the two treatises which are 

 translated in this volume, that alleged point of contact 

 was formulated for the first time that his work rightly or 

 wrongly demands notice in these pages. As regards the 

 translation, Mr. Bax has done his work with care. He 

 has undertaken simply to furnish a literal and accurate 

 translation of the " Prolegomena'' and " Metaphysische 

 Aufangsgriinde," and he has fulfilled his undertaking. 

 We should have been glad could he have seen his way to 

 banish such inelegant and inaccurate renderings of 

 " Vorstellung " and " Anschauurg " as " representation " 

 and " intuition," and to substitute for them "idea" and 

 "perception," which, despite their vagueness, are English 

 words of intelligible significance. But no one can fail to 

 find in the translation, as it stands, a faithful and con- 

 sistent rendering of the original. 



In an essay on the relation of philosophy to science 

 contributed to a volume entitled " Essays in Philosophical 

 Criticism," I had recently occasion, in conjun: tion with 

 my brother, to formulate in some detail what are con- 

 ceived to be not merely Kant's own criticisms of the sub- 

 ject, but certain definite results obtained by the applica- 

 tion of the Kantian analysis of the nature of knowledge 

 to some of the methods of science. I mention this cir- 

 cumstance because that essay has undergone vigorous 

 criticism at the hands of Mr. Romanes in a review which 

 appeared in Nature of August 23 (p. 386), and because 

 the concise and definite objections taken by him in limine 

 to the title of the theory of knowledge to criticise certain 

 of the leading scientific conceptions, form a point of appli- 

 cation for a review of Kant's teaching. 



In the first place it is necessary to state at the outset 

 what the somewhat increasing number of people who read 

 Kant intelligently think about science. That science has 

 justly dominated the region of knowledge generally is 

 for them a truism, and they repudiate in emphatic lan- 

 guage any attempt to speculate by a priori reasoning 

 upon matters which fall within the province of obseiva- 

 tion and experiment. Whenever there occurs a question 

 which is really one of fact in nature, that question they 

 recognise as for science alone. But then they say that it 

 is not the faith but the scepticism of men of science 

 which is too small. They ask men of science to consider 

 their general conceptions — to criticise their categories — a 

 little more than they have been in the habit of doing. 

 Vol. xxviii. — No. 728 



They doubt whether such questions as the common one 

 whether the phenomena denoted by the word " life " came 

 into existence at a particular time as the effect or creation 

 of some cause or conditions (whether inorganic or super- 

 natural is irrelevant) are really questions of fact. They 

 profess to be able to show that the dilemmas raised in 

 such cases are the result of the application of conceptions 

 which have really no application, and that such dilemmas 

 have as little foundation as that which arises when, to refer 

 to Mr. Romanes' illustration, we ask whether a piece of 

 mechanism is comical or not comical. It is alleged to be 

 the achievement of Kant to have shown that such questions 

 as we have indicated are irrational and absurd, and that 

 their existence necessitates on the part of men of science 

 the possession of philosophical knowledge. Of this diss 

 of questions there may be mentioned by way of illustra- 

 tion the general problems of the commencement or non- 

 commencement of the universe or of life in time, and of 

 the existence of an absolutely First Cause, and the 

 validity of a multitude of assumptions in our inquiries 

 into the facts of nature which pass more or less unques- 

 tioned. 



In the article already referred to, Mr. Romanes 

 peremptorily refuses to accept the result that it is im- 

 possible to regard biological phenomena as the effect of 

 mechanical causes, or, more accurately, to find in experi- 

 ence a case of abiogencsis. " It is," he says, "the worst 

 form of dogmatism thus to affirm on grounds of meta- 

 physical speculation alone the antecedent impossibility of 

 any discovery in science, most of all with reference to a 

 matter touching which we are so much in the dark.'' 

 Now this " demurrer to the relevancy " is an ignoratio 

 elenchi. Such a question is for Kant not one of discovery 

 in science at all, but a false issue, which discloses its un- 

 intelligible and absurd nature whenever we ask ourselves 

 the preliminary question, what is meant by organisation 

 and mechanism. Let us examine more closely the point 

 made by Mr. Romanes. The living organism is derived 

 from one more simple, and the latter from one yet more 

 simple, the process extending back without an apparent 

 limit. Therefore, says Mr. Romanes, it is unscientific to 

 deny the possibility that there may be a case of organisa- 

 tion so simple that it will be seen to be a mere mechani- 

 cal arrangement. But the series in like manner tends to 

 reach its limit and the curve to touch the asymptotic line, 

 and yet it is neither unscientific nor unwarrantable a 

 priori reasoning to show that a coincidence will never be 

 found in experience. We learn what we have here by 

 defining what is involved in the nature of the series and 

 the limit of the curve. Nobody wishes to deny that 

 organisation and the present state of the world generally 

 may have been attained by a process of evolution 

 from a mass of gaseous vapour. What is denied 

 is that it is the same thing or other than an unin- 

 telligible statement, to say that organisation is or may 

 have been evolved out of a mere mechanical arrange- 

 ment. There is a great distinction between these propo- 

 sitions. Science is a process of abstraction in which 

 attention is concentrated on a certain kind or category of 

 relation to the exclusion of other kinds. For instance, in 

 physical science we look only at those dynamical and 

 statical relations which are expressed in time and space, 

 s uch as causation and reciprocity. Again, in biology 



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