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CLASSICAL ESSAY |
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by Richard Avenarius
It is perhaps not unsuitable to advance two assumptions which I should like to call empirio-critical axioms: The first is the axiom of the contents of knowledge, the second the axiom of the forms of knowledge. One could formulate these two axioms in the following manner. (1) Each human individual originally supposes an environment with multiple elements; other human individuals with multiple assertions as well as a certain dependence of that which is asserted in the environment. All the contents of knowledge of the philosophical concept of the world (whether it be critical or uncritical) are alterations of this original supposition. That means whatever the conclusions of a Plato, Spinoza or Kant might be ... these philosophers came to their results by positive or negative additions to the particular supposition which they too made at the beginning of their development. (2) The scientific cognition has essentially no other forms or means than the nonscientific cognition. All the special forms or means of knowledge are transformations of prescientific ones. That means that whatever methods mathematics or mechanics may have developed they must be reducible to simple and general human functions. One who accepts the first proposition will most likely admit that it is also advisable in our research, to proceed from this original assumption and not from later transformations. ... To proceed from "consciousness" or "reasoning" in order to develop one's own opinion on cognition or even to judge other people's opinion on it would mean, in order not to use a more drastic comparison, to start with the end. If one admits, however, that one has to proceed from the original supposition as we have mentioned ... one should also admit that it would be inadvisable to proceed from the environment and the asserting individual, in his relationship to the environment. When the influences of irritation on the nervous center are noticed, one cannot immediately proceed from the changes of this organ to "consciousness," "reasoning," and the "images" of the individual. The changes, and their various ramifications, which the irritation has produced in the organ must be followed up. After that, one may go on to the phenomena dependent upon these changes. Whoever admits the second proposition will be inclined to admit that it is advisable not to reflect immediately or exclusively on complicated and special forms and means of a highly developed scientific knowledge. One must keep in mind the ordinary life, the natural, unprejudiced cognition which draws upon its own resources; scientific cognition is developed from this. Thus is shown the relationship of the scientific form of knowledge to its prescientific form.
Excerpted from Critique of Pure Experience, by Richard Avenarius |
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