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Now this, I venture to say, is a new method of pursuing the philosophy of human knowledge. Those who have hitherto endeavoured to explain the nature of knowledge, and the process of discovery, have, it is true, often illustrated their views by adducing special examples of truths which they conceived to be established, and by referring to the mode of their establishment. But these examples have, for the most part, been taken at random, not selected according to any principle or system. Often they have involved doctrines so precarious or so vague that they confused rather than elucidated the subject; and instead of a single difficulty,What is the nature of Knowledge? these attempts at illustration introduced two,-What was the true analysis of the Doctrines thus adduced? and,-Whether they might safely be taken as types of real Knowledge?

This has usually been the case when there have been adduced, as standard examples of the formation of human knowledge, doctrines belonging to supposed sciences other than the material sciences; doctrines, for example, of Political Economy, or Philology, or Morals, or the Philosophy of the Fine Arts. I am very far from thinking that, in regard to such subjects, there are no important truths hitherto established: but it would seem that those truths which have been obtained in these provinces of knowledge, have not yet been fixed by means of distinct and permanent phraseology, and sanctioned by universal reception, and formed into a connected system, and traced through the steps of their gradual discovery and establishment, so as to make them instructive examples of the nature and progress of truth in general. Hereafter we trust to be able to show that the progress of moral, and political, and philological, and other knowledge, is governed by the same laws as that of physical science. But since, at present, the

former class of subjects are full of controversy, doubt, and obscurity, while the latter consist of undisputed truths clearly understood and expressed, it may be considered a wise procedure to make the latter class of doctrines the basis of our speculations. And on the having taken this course, is, in a great measure, my hope founded, of obtaining valuable truths which have escaped preceding inquirers.

But it may be said that many preceding writers on the nature and progress of knowledge have taken their examples abundantly from the Physical Sciences. It would be easy to point out admirable works, which have appeared during the present and former generations, in which instances of discovery, borrowed from the Physical Sciences, are introduced in a manner most happily instructive. And to the works in which this has been done, I gladly give my most cordial admiration. But at the same time I may venture to remark that there still remains a difference between my design and theirs and that I use the Physical Sciences as exemplifications of the general progress of knowledge in a manner very materially different from the course which is followed in works such as are now referred to. For the conclusions stated in the present work, respecting knowledge and discovery, are drawn from a connected and systematic survey of the whole range of Physical Science and its History; whereas, hitherto, philosophers have contented themselves with adducing detached examples of scientific doctrines, drawn from one or two departments of science. So long as we select our examples in this arbitrary and limited manner, we lose the best part of that philosophical instruction, which the sciences are fitted to afford when we consider them as all members of one series, and as governed by rules which are the same for all. Mathematical and chemical truths, physical and physio

logical doctrines, the sciences of classification and of causation, must alike be taken into our account, in order that we may learn what are the general characters of real knowledge. When our conclusions assume so comprehensive a shape that they apply to a range of subjects so vast and varied as these, we may feel some confidence that they represent the genuine form of universal and permanent truth. But if our exemplification is of a narrower kind, it may easily cramp and disturb our philosophy. We may, for instance, render our views of truth and its evidence so rigid and confined as to be quite worthless, by founding them too much on the contemplation of mathematical truth. We may overlook some of the most important steps in the general course of discovery, by fixing our attention too exclusively upon some one conspicuous group of discoveries, as, for instance, those of Newton. We may misunderstand the nature of physiological discoveries, by attempting to force an analogy between them and discoveries of mechanical laws, and by not attending to the intermediate sciences which fill up the vast interval between these extreme terms in the series of material sciences. In these and in many other ways, a partial and arbitrary reference to the material sciences in our inquiry into human knowledge may mislead us; or at least may fail to give us those wider views, and that deeper insight, which should result from a systematic study of the whole range of sciences with this particular object.

The design of the following work, then, is to form a Philosophy of Science, by analyzing the substance and examining the progress of the existing body of the sciences. As a preliminary to this undertaking, a survey of the history of the sciences was necessary. This, accordingly, I have already performed; and the result of the labour thus undertaken has been laid before the public as a History of the Inductive Sciences.

In that work I have endeavoured to trace the steps by which men acquired each main portion of that knowledge on which they now look with so much confidence and satisfaction. The events which that History relates, the speculations and controversies which are there described, and discussions of the same kind, far more extensive, which are there omitted, must all be taken into our account at present, as the prominent and standard examples of the circumstances which attend the progress of knowledge. With so much of real historical fact before us, we may hope to avoid such views of the processes of the human mind as are too partial and limited, or too vague and loose, or too abstract and unsubstantial, to represent fitly the real forms of discovery and of truth.

Of former attempts, made with the same view of tracing the conditions of the progress of knowledge, that of Bacon is perhaps the most conspicuous: and his labours on this subject were opened by his book on the Advancement of Learning, which contains, among other matter, a survey of the then existing state of knowledge. But this review was undertaken rather with the object of ascertaining in what quarters future advances were to be hoped for, than of learning by what means they were to be made. His examination of the domain of human knowledge was conducted rather with the view of discovering what remained undone, than of finding out how so much had been done. Bacon's survey was made for the purpose of tracing the boundaries, rather than of detecting the principles of knowledge. "I will now attempt," he says", "to make a general and faithful perambulation of learning, with an inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of man; to the end that such a plot made and recorded to memory, may both minister

Advancement of Learning, b. i. p. 74.

light to any public designation, and also serve to excite voluntary endeavours." Nor will it be foreign to our scheme also hereafter to examine with a like purpose the frontier-line of man's intellectual estate. But the object of our perambulation in the first place, is not so much to determine the extent of the field, as the sources of its fertility. We would learn by what plan and rules of culture, conspiring with the native forces of the bounteous soil, those rich harvests have been produced which fill our garners. Bacon's maxims, on the other hand, respecting the mode in which he conceived that knowledge was thenceforth to be cultivated, have little reference to the failures, still less to the successes, which are recorded in his Review of the learning of his time. His precepts are connected with his historical views in a slight and unessential manner. His Philosophy of the Sciences is not collected from the Sciences which are noticed in his survey. Nor, in truth, could this, at the time when he wrote, have easily been otherwise. At that period, scarce any branch of physics existed as a science, except Astronomy. The rules which Bacon gives for the conduct of scientific researches are obtained, as it were, by divination, from the contemplation of subjects with regard to which no sciences as yet were. His instances of steps rightly or wrongly made in this path, are in a great measure cases of his own devising. He could not have exemplified his Aphorisms by references to treatises then extant, on the laws of nature; for the constant burden of his exhortation is, that men up to his time had almost universally followed an erroneous course. And however we may admire the sagacity with which he pointed the way along a better path, we have this great advantage over him;—that we can interrogate the many travellers who since his time have journeyed on this road. At the present day, when we have under

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