Sketch of a New Philosophy
| Spring 1890 | Houghton Library |
DEVELOPMENT OF THE METHOD
1. It is not a historical fact that the best thinking has been done by words, or aural images. It has been performed by means of visual images and muscular imaginations. In reasoning of the best kind, an imaginary experiment is performed. The result is inwardly observed, and is as unexpected as that of a physical experiment. On the other hand, the success of outward experimentation depends on there being a reason in nature. Thus, reasoning and experimentation are essentially analogous.
2. According to what law are fruitful conceptions developed? Their first germs present themselves in concrete and confused forms. The human mind, without being able to draw certain truth from its own depths, has nevertheless a natural bias toward true ideas of force and of human nature. It finds such ideas simple, easy, natural. Natural selection may be supposed to account for this to some extent. Yet the first origins of fruitful ideas can only be referred to chance. They promptly sink into oblivion if the mind is unprepared for them. If they meet allied ideas, a welding process takes place. This is the great law of association, the one law of intellectual development. It is very different from a mechanical law, in that it is only a gentle force. If ideas once together were rigidly associated, intellectual development would be frustrated. Association is external and internal, two grand divisions. These act in two ways, first to carry ideas up and make them broader, second to carry them out in detail.
3. Development of the theory of assurance, mainly as in my previous writings.
4. Philosophy seeks to explain the universe at large, and show what there is of intelligible or reasonable in it. It is thus committed to the notion (a postulate which however may not be completely true) that the process of nature and the process of thought are alike.
The opening sheet (R 928:2) of “Sketch of a New Philosophy,” with penciled markings in the upper-right corner, inscribed by the Collected Papers editors, suggesting that this manuscript was at one point considered for inclusion in Collected Papers. (By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.)
Analysis of the logical process. [Much of this in my previous writings.] The conceptions of First, Second, Third, rule all logic, and are therefore to be looked for in nature. Chance and the law of high numbers. The process of stirring up a bag of beans preparatory to taking out a sample handful analogous to the welding of ideas.
The only thing ever inferrible is a ratio of frequency. This truth compels the introduction of the conception of continuity throughout logic.
Logic teaches that Chance, Law, and Continuity must be the great elements of the explanation of the universe.
5. The philosopher must regard opinions as so many vivisectionsubjects, to be studied for their natural history affinities. He must even take this attitude to his own opinion. Opinion has a regular growth, though it may get stunted or deformed. To take the next step in philosophy vigorously and promptly, we must study our own historical position.
The drama of the last three centuries of struggling thought, in politics and sociology, in science, in mathematics, in philosophy, briefly narrated.
The ruling ideas of today.
6. How large numbers bring about regular statistics in social matters. The peculiar reasoning of political economy; the Ricardian inference.
Analogy between the laws of political economy and those of intellectual development. This teaches the necessity of similar ideas in philosophy. Darwin and Adam Smith.
7. Mathematicians have exploded axioms. Metaphysics was always an ape of mathematics, and the metaphysical axioms are doomed. The regularity of the universe cannot be reasonably supposed to be perfect. Absolute chance was believed by the ancients.
8. The present deadlock in molecular physics. If we are to cast about at random for theories of matter, the number of such theories must be at least ten million, and it must take the race a century to test each one. Hence the chances are that there will be five million centuries before any substantial advance.
Hence, the only hope is to get some notion what laws and forces are naturally to be expected. We must have a natural history of laws of nature. The only way to attain this is to explain these laws, and the only explanation is to show how they came about, how they have grown. But if they are growing, they are not absolutely rigid. Errors of observation and real chance departures from law.
9. The Darwinian hypothesis stated in skeleton form, or a Darwinian skeleton key to philosophy. Its elements are Sporting or accidental variation, heredity not absolute but a gentle force, and adaptation, which means reproductivity. This key opens a theory of evolution applicable to the inorganic world also. The Lamarckian principle is limited, the Darwinian general.
10. The modern psychology and the law of association. Habit and breaking up of habit. Feeling sinks in habit. Application to philosophy.
11. The monism of the modern psychologists is really materialism. The unreasonableness of it. The idea of supposing a particular kind of machine feels is repugnant to good sense and to scientific logic. “Ultimates” cannot be admitted. The only possible way of explaining the connection of body and soul is to make matter effete mind, or mind which has become thoroughly under the dominion of habit, till consciousness and spontaneity are almost extinct.
12. The Absolute in metaphysics fulfills the same function as the absolute in geometry. According as we suppose the infinitely distant beginning and end of the universe are distinct, identical, or nonexistent, we have three kinds of philosophy. What should determine our choice of these? Observed facts. These are all in favor of the first.
13. Résumé of all these principles of the method of philosophy. Method relaxed for this sketch.
APPLICATION OF THIS METHOD
14. The process, the beginning, the end.
15. The law of assimilation. Disturbance and its propagation.
16. Development of Time. How to conceive of time being developed. How its different properties came about.
17. Development of space and of the laws of matter and motion. They could not be otherwise.
18. Gravitation and molecular forces.
19. The chemical elements.
20. Protoplasm.
21. Consciousness. Development of God.
22. The end of things.
5
[On Framing Philosophical Theories]
| late Spring 1890 | Houghton Library |
Three questions, at least, I think it must be admitted, ought to form the subject of studies preliminary to the formation of any philosophical theory; namely, 1st, the purpose of the theory, 2nd, the proper method of discovering it, 3rd, the method of proving it to be true. I think, too, it can hardly be denied that it will be safer to consider these questions concerning the particular theory which is to be sought out, in the light of whatever we can ascertain regarding the functions, the discovery, and the establishment of sound theories in general. But these are questions of logic; and thus, no matter whether we ultimately decide to rest our philosophy upon logical principles as data, or upon psychological laws, or upon physical observations, or upon mystical experiences, or upon intuitions of first principles, or testimony, in any event these logical questions have to be considered first.
But if logic is thus to precede