Apeh, 27, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



657 



chiefly in a fresh, exposition of the author's 

 own well-known system of pluralistic idealism 

 — an exposition more technical and at points 

 more thorough than any of the earlier ones. 

 In view of Professor Howison's association, a 

 generation ago, with the St. Louis group of 

 philosophers, who did so much to introduce 

 the German philosophical tradition into 

 America, a certain historic appropriateness 

 attaches to his place on this occasion as the 

 first of the special representatives of philos- 

 ophy and as the spokesman of a new argument 

 which' seeks to utilize the Kantian and the 

 Hegelian logic to reestablish the Leibnitzian 

 monadology. The other 'departmental' paper 

 — one of the longest in the volume — ^by Pro- 

 fessor Ladd, on the development of philosophy 

 in the past century, is disappointing. The 

 theme was a most alluring one; nothing could 

 be more interesting than a review of the 

 genesis and gradual growth and ramification 

 of the several new fundamental concepts and 

 presuppositions which were chiefly the dis- 

 coveries of nineteenth-century thought — the 

 idea of evolution, in its several phases, the 

 invention of the philosophy of history and of 

 the historical and genetic fashion of dealing 

 with all problems, the manifold applications 

 of the idea of relativity, the vicissitudes of 

 the eighteenth century's favorite 'principle of 

 contradiction ' in subsequent logic and meta- 

 physics, etc. But Ladd's treatment is pretty 

 conventional, and, but for a few inconclusive 

 generalities about the relations of philosophy 

 and the sciences, consists largely in a dry cata- 

 logue of philosophers and their tendencies. 

 Nor is the catalogue entirely accurate. It is, 

 e. g., misleading to speak of Reinhold as " re- 

 jecting Kant's arbitrary and seK-contradic- 

 tory ' thing-in-itself .' " Though the Ding-an- 

 sich has a rather odd status in that system, it 

 is nearer the truth to say with Falckenberg 

 that Eeinhold ' changed the thing-in-itself 

 from a problematical negative, merely limit- 

 ing concept, into a positive element of doc- 

 trine.' The summary in which F. Schlegel is 

 disposed of is true only of his first period. 

 Such figures as Lamennais, J. de Maistre — 

 the great representative of the extreme reac- 



tion against the spirit of the Aufklarung^ 

 and Diihring, go unmentioned, while room is 

 found for such names as Whedon, Hazard, 

 Day and Tappan. The portrayal of the con- 

 temporary situation in philosophy is indefinite 

 and inadequate. 



Eight of the most important papers — ^those 

 of A. E. Taylor (metaphysics), Hammond 

 (logic), Woodbridge (logic), Ostwald (theory 

 of science), Erdmann (validity of the causal 

 law), M. Bocher (mathematics) and Boltz- 

 mann (applied mathematics) — though scat- 

 tered through different sections, form a con- 

 nected group dealing with essentially the same 

 topic — logic or epistemology. It is a pity 

 that the program did not explicitly provide in 

 advance for a single many-sided discussion of 

 the logical foundations of the sciences, by 

 the representatives of a number of distinct dis- 

 ciplines; here is a ease where the mechanical 

 uniformity of the scheme of the congress de- 

 feated its own purpose. But even as it is, these 

 papers, read together, present an instructively 

 diversified array of reasoning upon the same 

 set of problems — the relation of logic to psy- 

 chology, to metaphysics, to mathematics, the 

 connection of the formal and the empirical 

 elements in knowledge, the existence of intui- 

 tive or necessary truths, the ultimate criterion 

 of validity in inference, the relation of the 

 judgment to the ' transcendent object.' The 

 result seems to show a general need of a better 

 digestion of the work of the epistemological 

 century — the eighteenth. For much that is 

 ostensibly novel in the views presented seems 

 due less to a real transcending of earlier posi- 

 tions than to a forgetting or an imperfect con- 

 sideration of them. The question of the exist- 

 ence of ■' necessary ' truths and their relation to 

 experience (a question, surely, that is capable 

 of clear logical determination) still evokes 

 a sharp conflict of opinions. Taylor declares 

 that recent mathematical logic has only the 

 more clearly shown the reality of self-evident 

 principles and their primacy in knowledge, 

 though it has also shown them to be reducible 

 to a small number. Erdmann, in a similar 

 spirit, observes that ' the assertion of modern 

 scientific empiricism . . . that there is no 



