Biograpgical Frament - Philosophical Fragment

1.3-7     G-c.1897-1
1.8-14    G-c.1879-2


  3. The reader has a right to know how the author's opinions
were formed. Not, of course, that he is expected to accept any
conclusions which are not borne out by argument. But in
discussions of extreme difficulty, like these, when good judgment
is a factor, and pure ratiocination is not everything, it is
prudent to take every element into consideration. From the
moment when I could think at all, until now, about forty
years, I have been diligently and incessantly occupied with the
study of methods [of] inquiry, both those which have been and
are pursued and those which ought to be pursued. For ten
years before this study began, I had been in training in the
chemical laboratory. I was thoroughly grounded not only in
all that was then known of physics and chemistry, but also in
the way in which those who were successfully advancing
knowledge proceeded. I have paid the most attention to the methods
of the most exact sciences, have intimately communed with
some of the greatest minds of our times in physical science, and
have myself made positive contributions -- none of them of any
very great importance, perhaps -- in mathematics, gravitation,
optics, chemistry, astronomy, etc. I am saturated, through
and through, with the spirit of the physical sciences. I have
been a great student of logic, having read everything of any
importance on the subject, devoting a great deal of time to
medieval thought, without neglecting the works of the Greeks,
the English, the Germans, the French, etc., and have produced
systems of my own both in deductive and in inductive logic.
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In metaphysics, my training has been less systematic; yet I
have read and deeply pondered upon all the main systems,
never being satisfied until I was able to think about them as
their own advocates thought.
  4. The first strictly philosophical books that I read were of
the classical German schools; and I became so deeply imbued
with many of their ways of thinking that I have never been
able to disabuse myself of them. Yet my attitude was always
that of a dweller in a laboratory, eager only to learn what I did
not yet know, and not that of philosophers bred in theological
seminaries, whose ruling impulse is to teach what they hold to
be infallibly true. I devoted two hours a day to the study of
Kant's Critic of the Pure Reason for more than three years,
until I almost knew the whole book by heart, and had critically
examined every section of it. For about two years, I had long
and almost daily discussions with Chauncey Wright, one of the
most acute of the followers of J. S. Mill.
  5. The effect of these studies was that I came to hold the
classical German philosophy to be, upon its argumentative
side, of little weight; although I esteem it, perhaps am too
partial to it, as a rich mine of philosophical suggestions. The
English philosophy, meagre and crude, as it is, in its
conceptions, proceeds by surer methods and more accurate logic. The
doctrine of the association of ideas is, to my thinking, the finest
piece of philosophical work of the prescientific ages. Yet I can
but pronounce English sensationalism to be entirely destitute
of any solid bottom. From the evolutionary philosophers, I
have learned little; although I admit that, however hurriedly
their theories have been knocked together, and however
antiquated and ignorant Spencer's First Principles and general
doctrines, yet they are under the guidance of a great and true
idea, and are developing it by methods that are in their main
features sound and scientific.
  6. The works of Duns Scotus have strongly influenced me.
If his logic and metaphysics, not slavishly worshipped, but
torn away from its medievalism, be adapted to modern culture,
under continual wholesome reminders of nominalistic
criticisms, I am convinced that it will go far toward supplying the
philosophy which is best to harmonize with physical science.
But other conceptions have to be drawn from the history of
science and from mathematics.
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  7. Thus, in brief, my philosophy may be described as the
attempt of a physicist to make such conjecture as to the
constitution of the universe as the methods of science may permit,
with the aid of all that has been done by previous philosophers.
I shall support my propositions by such arguments as I can.
Demonstrative proof is not to be thought of. The
demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine. The best that
can be done is to supply a hypothesis, not devoid of all
likelihood, in the general line of growth of scientific ideas, and
capable of being verified or refuted by future observers.
  8. Religious infallibilism, caught in the current of the
times, shows symptoms of declaring itself to be only practically
speaking infallible; and when it has thus once confessed itself
subject to gradations, there will remain over no relic of the
good old tenth-century infallibilism, except that of the
infallible scientists, under which head I include, not merely the
kind of characters that manufacture scientific catechisms and
homilies, churches and creeds, and who are indeed "born
missionaries," but all those respectable and cultivated persons
who, having acquired their notions of science from reading,
and not from research, have the idea that "science" means
knowledge, while the truth is, it is a misnomer applied to the
pursuit of those who are devoured by a desire to find things
out....
  9. Though infallibility in scientific matters seems to me
irresistibly comical, I should be in a sad way if I could not
retain a high respect for those who lay claim to it, for they
comprise the greater part of the people who have any
conversation at all. When I say they lay claim to it, I mean they
assume the functions of it quite naturally and unconsciously.
The full meaning of the adage Humanum est errare, they have
never waked up to. In those sciences of measurement which are
the least subject to error -- metrology, geodesy, and metrical
astronomy -- no man of self-respect ever now states his result,
without affixing to it its probable error; and if this practice is
not followed in other sciences it is because in those the probable
errors are too vast to be estimated.
  10. I am a man of whom critics have never found anything
good to say. When they could see no opportunity to injure me,
they have held their peace. The little laudation I have had has
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come from such sources, that the only satisfaction I have
derived from it, has been from such slices of bread and butter as
it might waft my way. Only once, as far as I remember, in all
my lifetime have I experienced the pleasure of praise -- not for
what it might bring but in itself. That pleasure was beatific;
and the praise that conferred it was meant for blame. It was
that a critic said of me that I did not seem to be absolutely sure
of my own conclusions. Never, if I can help it, shall that critic's
eye ever rest on what I am now writing; for I owe a great
pleasure to him; and, such was his evident animus, that should
he find that out, I fear the fires of hell would be fed with new
fuel in his breast.
  11. My book will have no instruction to impart to
anybody. Like a mathematical treatise, it will suggest certain
ideas and certain reasons for holding them true; but then, if
you accept them, it must be because you like my reasons, and
the responsibility lies with you. Man is essentially a social
animal: but to be social is one thing, to be gregarious is
another: I decline to serve as bellwether. My book is meant for
people who want to find out; and people who want philosophy
ladled out to them can go elsewhere. There are philosophical
soup shops at every corner, thank God!
  12. The development of my ideas has been the industry of
thirty years. I did not know as I ever should get to publish
them, their ripening seemed so slow. But the harvest time has
come, at last, and to me that harvest seems a wild one, but of
course it is not I who have to pass judgment. It is not quite
you, either, individual reader; it is experience and history.
  13. For years in the course of this ripening process, I used
for myself to collect my ideas under the designation fallibilism;
and indeed the first step toward finding out is to acknowledge
you do not satisfactorily know already; so that no blight can
so surely arrest all intellectual growth as the blight of
cocksureness; and ninety-nine out of every hundred good heads are
reduced to impotence by that malady -- of whose inroads they
are most strangely unaware!
  14. Indeed, out of a contrite fallibilism, combined with a
high faith in the reality of knowledge, and an intense desire to
find things out, all my philosophy has always seemed to me
to grow....