January 23, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



141 



losophers were assigned the table at the 

 extreme left of the hall, separating, it was 

 suggested, the philosophic goats as far as 

 possible from the scientific sheep ; if so, 

 the laughter might have been turned the 

 other way when, on entering the hall, it 

 was found that the extreme left was at 

 the right of all the presidents of all the 

 scientific societies seated at the high table. 

 Really the present time, symbolized by 

 this affiliation, seems most favorable for 

 mutual understanding and a clearing up 

 of opinion on the important subject of the 

 relations of philosophy and the special sci- 

 ences. The philosophers, on their part, 

 are now pretty generally agreed that 

 speculation must keep in close touch with 

 experience and with the advances of the 

 natural sciences. Even the most abstract 

 and metaphysical of idealists profess that 

 their systems merely interpret experience, 

 and, as they assume that experience, when 

 properly interpreted, is self-consistent, they 

 too demand that philosophy and science 

 shall be, from the ultimate point of view, 

 one and harmonious, and eagerly endeavor 

 to explain away the glaringly apparent 

 contradictions. Scientists, on the other 

 hand, are becoming increasingly aware of 

 the limitations of their special fields of 

 research and of the purely methodological 

 character of many of their most funda- 

 mental -hypotheses. A striking illustra- 

 tion of this was given in the Washington 

 address of President Remsen before the 

 Chemical Society, in which, speaking of 

 the atomic hypothesis, he is reported to 

 have said that the conception of the atom 

 had been proved to be illogical, but was, 

 nevertheless, to be retained for the present 

 as a useful device ; but as to the djoiamies 

 of atoms he frankly admitted that we knew 

 nothing, that they possibly moved in some 

 mysterious way, and that perhaps all chem- 

 ical phenomena might be due to these mo- 

 tions. There is clearly here little left of 



the old dogmatism. And as the philo- 

 sophical aspects of natural science are be- 

 ing more and more recognized by students 

 of philosophy, so, it is to be hoped, the 

 scientific character of philosophy will come 

 to be more and more recognized by men 

 of science. For the function of philosophy 

 is, in fact, largely this, to criticise the cate- 

 gories of science and to develop, from a 

 point of view above that of all the special 

 sciences, the knowledge furnished by every 

 department of experience into a compre- 

 hensive science of experience as a whole^ 

 Wissenschaft, in the large sense of the 

 term. 



One of the sessions at the meeting was 

 devoted almost exclusively to one of these 

 aims, the handling, namely, of funda- 

 mental conceptions in natural science. 

 Dr. Singer, of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, attempted, in a thoughtful paper, 

 to define the ideal of mechanical explana- 

 tion; Brother Chrysostom, of Manhattan 

 College, criticised the empirical view of 

 causation; Dr. Spaulding, of Columbia, 

 sought to demonstrate the dogmatic char- 

 acter of the principle, ex nihilo nihil fit^ 

 and Professor Bawden, of Vassar, de- 

 fended by new arguments his functional 

 theory of psycho-physical parallelism. At 

 another session questions of a still more 

 general logical nature were discussed, in- 

 cluding a critique of cognition and its 

 principles by Dr. Karl Schmidt, of Har- 

 vard; an exposition of the function of 

 aesthetic form in judgments of value by 

 Professor R. MacDougall, of New York 

 University; and an examination of logical 

 method in metaphysics by Professor 

 Allans, of Western Reserve University, 

 the conclusions of the last being decidedly 

 negative as to metaphysics. But the chief 

 interest of the meeting attached to the 

 session of Tuesday afternoon, when the 

 subject, 'What should be our attitude as 

 teachers of philosophy towards religion?'' 



