Exploratio Philosophica, Rough Notes on Modern Intellectual Science

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII. THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. On the famous metaphor of knowledge being the interpretation of nature, of which Dr Whewell speaks--and warms in the speaking of it to the consideration of it as something more than a metaphor1--I will say a few words: for this reason, that I think the metaphor rightly employed is a most instructive means of illustrating the wrong psychology, and wrongly used it is a very great support of relativism. Let us suppose that I, ignorant of Sanscrit, purchase a Sanscrit book, without the slightest knowledge of its title or subject. It has been the property of other people before me, and they, or some of them, know that it is an account of the campaign of Alexander in India: but this knowledge of theirs is nothing to me. The reason why the consideration of this is important in respect of the wrong psychology, is the following: (1) that it gives us a good illustration of what is the meaning of the matter, or inform (unformed) matter, of knowledge, out of which we, by activity of the mind (superinducing form, if we like so to speak), make knowledge in perception: (which matter of knowledge Dr Whewell erroneously supposes to be things known already to a certain extent by a kind of inferior knowledge or sensation): and (2) that it is likely to show us the wrongness of the mis-psychological supposition of the independence, first, of the things perceived, and of our then, as such, perceiving them. A stone lies before me: I see it. This is very well to de 1 Hist. Scient. Ideas, Vol. I. p. 42. scribe what we each of us do now: we know our Sanscrit: but if this manner of expression be used, as we shall find it continually used, in speaking of the manner of our coming to see things, or in giving a history of...