|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
||
|
Adventures in Philosophy |
 |
|
||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Select: John Tyndall - Hermann von Helmholtz - Thomas Henry Huxley Nicolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky - Richard Dedekind - African Spir Henry Sidgwick - Walter Horatio Pater |
|
|
There are scientists who occupy themselves with the facts of their research without ever asking what implications they may be effecting. There are other scientists who keep science and religion separate and remain untroubled by any incongruity between them. John Tyndall (picture) did not belong to either of these groups. Always he was conscious that every scientific inquiry, pursued to the end, must leave him face to face with metaphysics or religion. Always he felt himself obliged to become aware of the consequences of his scientific work, and to express them publicly, all the more so since he liked to combine daring research work in unknown fields and pioneering in many branches of science with the dissemination of knowledge by popular writings and lectures. As a result, he was brilliantly successful in popularizing science. Tyndall made highly important contributions to molecular physics, to the knowledge of magnetism, electricity, theory of heat, optics and acoustics, and he promoted bacteriology by his method of sterilizing liquids. His achievements were greatly respected by Pasteur, Maxwell, Lister, Kelvin and his intimate friend Thomas Henry Huxley; and Herbert Spencer especially praised him because of his "scientific use of imagination." It is the combination of enthusiasm and reason, rightly characterized by Spencer, that is significant of Tyndall's mind. To him, man is not mere intellect; he cannot be satisfied with the products of understanding alone. Tyndall held that the scientist, too, is a man. He protested: "Believing in continuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscope ceases to be of use." But he spoke of himself when he defined the calling of a scientist as a continued exercise of realization and self-correction. His endeavor was to draw a sharp line to mark the boundary where, in his view, science ends and speculation beings. Although he refuted the claims of theologians, Tyndall was not at war with religion. But hew was devoted to humanitarian ideals, and strongly opposed to any kind of injustice and oppression. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) When Helmholtz (picture), in 1847, delivered his lecture on the conservation of energy, he was prepared to be reproached by the authorities of his time for talking about old stuff. Instead he was hailed by some as a discoverer, and blamed by others as a fanciful speculative philosopher. Most of the physicists had ignored the principle of persistence of energy. Helmholtz knew better. He did not claim to have discovered it. His intention was rather to demonstrate what it means to physical phenomena and to what numerical consequences it leads everywhere. The universality of Helmholtz' mind is proved by the mere fact that he was successively appointed full professor of physiology, anatomy and physics at the greatest universities in Germany. He promoted optics and acoustics, mechanics, the general theory of electricity, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, electrodynamics, geometry and the theory of numbers. In 1850 he invented the ophthalmoscope, and received no other material profit from his invention than about fifteen dollars as honorarium for the treatise in which he communicated it. Helmholtz was also interested in philosophy which, according to him, is concerned with the inquiry into the cognitive faculties and performances of man. He characterized sensation as a symbol, not an image of the external world, and the world of these symbols as the mirror of the real world. If man learns to read the symbols correctly, he becomes able to arrange his actions in a way that the effects correspond to the aims. Helmholtz conceded the theoretical possibility of interpreting the facts in terms of subjective idealism but held that the realist interpretation is the simpler one. Helmholtz, one of whose maternal ancestors was William Penn, was respected internationally not only because of his scientific performances but as the very incarnation of the dignity and probity of science. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) Thomas Henry Huxley (picture), the son of a poor schoolmaster, attended a regular school for only two years. He described that education as "a pandemonium." Thereafter, from his tenth year on, he had to pursue his studies by himself, which he did with such energy and clear-sightedness that he easily passed the examination for admission to the University. As a surgeon in the British Navy, Huxley was able to study tropical fauna and flora, and he became a pioneer in biology. His contributions to the anatomy of vertebrate and invertebrate animals are regarded as of lasting value. As a professor at London University, Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen, president of the Royal Society and member of the Privy Council, Huxley used his authority and influence for the promotion of all sciences and the defense of science against detractors of any kind. Not the least of his accomplishments, Huxley was successful in popularizing science and making the working classes acquainted with its principal results. Full of energy and initiative, daring and circumspect in his way of thinking, Huxley was a pugnacious but always courteous critic who was fond of disputing with great authorities in science, in State and Church. Although Huxley, in his early years, was convinced of the immutability of species, he became, immediately after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, a brilliant champion of evolutionism. He did not share Darwin's faith in the absolute rule of small variations, and insisted on cases of sudden change observed by himself. But this and other objections did not prevent him from defending and continuously explaining Darwin's theory. As a philosophical thinker, Huxley, a great admirer of David Hume, defined his standpoint as agnosticism, a strict insistence on the impossibility of knowing anything beyond observation of the senses, indifferent to any theory of reality. Huxley's attitude was not a negative skepticism but rather a plea for skeptical caution in the matter of belief. He was a radically opposed to materialism as to the faith of the Church. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On The Internet
Nicolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) After the assassination of Czar Alexander II of Russia, the secret police, in order to avoid a similar recurrence on the occasion of the coronation of the new Czar, affected a compromise with the revolutionary groups. The latter demanded the liberation of Chernyshevsky as the principal condition for their refraining from an attempt on the Czar's life. Chernyshevsky (picture) did not belong to any revolutionary organization or party. He had been sentenced, after two years of imprisonment in a fortress, to seven years hard labor and lifelong banishment to Siberia. The son of an orthodox priest, educated in the spirit of Russian orthodoxy, he adopted the views of Feuerbach, Fourier, Proudhon, and John Stuart Mill, whose Principles of Political Economy he had translated into Russian. His interpretation and critical notes on Mill's work not only proved Chernyshevsky's independent mind, but also pointed up the social problems of Russia. As a member of the staff of the influential periodical, Sovremennik (Contemporary), he introduced the spirit of Western civilization into Russia and defended the interests of the peasants against the great landowners before and after the emancipation of the serfs. He believed that philosophical materialism was the basis for social progress, but that ethics of self-discipline and altruism were also needed. As prisoner in the Peter and Paul fortress, he wrote the novel, What Is To Be Done (1883), which was a source of inspiration to Russian youth until the First World War. Chernyshevsky returned to St. Petersburg in 1881, his health undermined, forced to live in isolation, and dependent upon translating as a means of livelihood. Until the 1905 Russian revolution, censorship did not permit any mention of his name. His works were printed anonymously, but the Russian people recognized him as the author, and revered him as the martyr of free thought. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
When Dedekind (picture) was seventy-three years old, he read in a mathematical annual, an obituary that stated he had died on September 4, 1899. As a cautious mathematician, he wrote to the editor of the annual, pointing out that as far as he could see, September 4 might be proved to be correct in the future, but that the year, 1899, as the year of his death was certainly not correct. The incident was characteristic of Dedekind's modesty and aversion to publicity, which resulted in his remaining unknown even to mathematical experts, who daily utilized his findings and studies. Dedekind's principal works, Continuity and Irrational Numbers (1871) and The Nature and Meaning of Numbers (1888) are highly important contributions to the theory of numbers. Dedekind's "cut," in the first book, is considered to be the foundation of irrational numbers. In the second, the concept and the fundamental qualities of natural numbers are developed by the pure theory of quantity, beginning with the idea of imaged systems. A system (totality or quantity) is called infinite if it cannot be imaged homologously. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
During the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War, two young Russian officers distinguished themselves while defending the same bastion. Both of them were decorated with the high order of St. George's Cross. But, although they fought next to each other, they never became acquainted one with another. The one was Count Leo Tolstoy, then an artillery officer, who soon thereafter became world-famous as a great novelist and religious thinker. The other was African Spir (picture), a lieutenant in the Russian navy who, in 1856, renounced his military career and emigrated from Russia in 1867, and whose philosophical writings remained relatively unknown. One of the few who were vitally interested in Spir's philosophy was Friedrich Nietzsche. With his friend, the theologian Franz Overbeck, he discussed Spir's ideas and adopted some of Spir's views. Only six years after Spir's death, Tolstoy read the books written by his former companion in arms, whose existence he had ignored until then. He was deeply and sympathetically impressed, and succeeded in gaining permission from the Russian censorship for the publication of a Russian version of Spir's works, which had been written in German. Spir's intention, especially in his principal work Thought and Reality (1873), was to establish philosophy as the science of first principles, and he held that its task was to investigate immediate knowledge, to demonstrate the delusion of the empirical world and the true nature of things by strict statements of facts and logically controlled inference. This method led him to proclaim the principle of identity as the fundamental law of knowledge which is opposed to the changing appearance of the empirical world, and the superiority of the moral over the physical elements. Spir was a profoundly religious thinker, but he regarded God as not responsible for the crimes committed by mankind because God has nothing to do with external causality. Spir therefore felt that the old religions are of merely historical importance. He demanded just distribution of material goods but disapproved collectivism. In The Radical Academy
Henry Sidgwick (picture), one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research and the Ethical Society in Cambridge, England, where he was a professor, gave a number of suggestions which have been of consequence for the latest development of philosophical thinking in England and America. A follower John Stuart Mill in ethics, politics and economics, Sidgwick endeavored, especially in his Methods of Ethics (1874) to found utilitarianism anew by resorting to Thomas Reid's "natural realism" and sweeping away all hedonistic theories. His efforts to combine utilitarian ethics with intuitionist theory of knowledge did not entirely satisfy Sidgwick, who was aware of the difficulty of his task and constantly tried to improve or correct his arguments without abandoning his fundamental position. He recognized that philosophical empiricism was based upon conceptions that cannot be traced back to experience but declined Kant's theory of experience. Sidgwick has studied "with reverent care and patience" what is called the morality of common sense. For he was convinced that, despite all historical changes and diversities of thoughts and actions, there is a large region of broad agreement in the details of morality, without any attempt to penetrate into the ultimate grounds upon which principles of moral action may be constructed. Sidgwick did not only regard this common-sense morality as the proper starting point for philosophical inquiries into ethical problems, but he thought that the work of the philosopher has to be aided, and, in a way, controlled by the moral judgment of "persons with less philosophy but more special experience." In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894) Most of Walter Horatio Pater's (picture) disciples who pursued his doctrine of thrice-refined hedonism to its extreme consequences finally took refuge in the Church of Rome, and many of those who revolted against Pater's philosophy of life or against his way of criticizing art, after becoming sure of their victory, admitted their personal love of the man whose thoughts and views they had attacked. Pater's belief that nothing which ever has interested mankind can wholly lose its vitality, may be confirmed by the vicissitudes of his literary fame. Oscar Wilde called Pater's Renaissance (1873) his "golden book" and said in De Profundis that it had "such a strange influence over my life." George Moore took Pater's Marius the Epicurean (1885), which he called his "Bible," as model for his own book Confessions of a Young Man. William Butler Yeats and others who later became noted poets and critics founded The Rhymers' Club whose program was the cult of Pater's ideas. Great scholars have praised Pater's principal work Plato and Platonism (1893) because of its author's congeniality with the great Greek thinker. But Pater was no Platonist. He called himself an Epicurean, and was perhaps even more influenced by Heraclitus. The essence of what he called his humanism is the conviction that only the sharp apex of the present moment between two hypothetical eternities is secure, and that the art of living consists in the ability of making such passing moments yield the utmost of enjoyment. He tried to show that devotion to enjoyment of beauty gives the soul a strength and austerity which cannot be surpassed even by moral asceticism, and that delicacy of feeling does not exclude purity of thinking. Pater's way or regarding all things and principles as inconsistent did not allow him to acquiesce in any orthodoxy and maintained his curiosity in testing new opinions. But his instincts, which were opposed to academic dullness, let him also recoil from revolutionary excesses. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book...
|
|
|
Introduction & Directory |
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
[Homepage] [Newsletter] [Search] [Support the Academy] [Link to Us] [Contact the Academy] [Citing Articles from Our Website] [Privacy Policy & Disclaimer]
Copyright 1998-99, 2000-01, 2002-03, & 2004 by The Radical Academy. All Rights Reserved.
This Page Was Updated On