NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21991, 24 December 1934, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE The claim that philosophy should control all theories established in science was put forward by Dr. Hans Driesch, formerly professor of philosophy at Leipzig, in a lecture at Manchester University. Philosophy he described as the systematic knowledge of everything, including that of "knowing itself, it was important to remember that the philosopher had to consider what it was to "know." Science was thus a part of philosophy. Ihe general theory of order in nature was what was usually called philosophy as opposed to science. It seemed to him that something very important followed —namely, that all axiomatic statements established in philosophy were absolutely valid and binding on every theory which any branch of our knowledge might bring upon the scene during its work. This implied that it was the legitimate task of philosophy to control all theories established in science and that the philosopher might allow certain scientific theories and forbid others. As science was the study of nature, it was important to give ft clear meaning to the word "nature." In ordinary life everyone, including the philosopher, behaved and worked as if nature were a clear and self-evident concept. The philosopher wanted to establish the form and order of this strange something nature, which appeared to him to be by no means selfevident. There were certain characteristics about a thing, an object in nature, which we could fix partly by intuition and partly by experience. A thing was quasi-independent of our own conceptions; it continued to exist when we no longer saw it. Further, when we spoke of a thing—a cigarette, for example—we meant more than wo actually saw when we looked at it. Finally, nature was unique; there was only one nature, while there was no limit to imaginary worlds. When one had grasped the concept of the "quasiindependent unique thing" one found thought enormously simplified. Nature became a concept of order. When the theory of order in nature was realised one could approach in detail the task of defining the sphere of philosophy in controlling the study of nature.