English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth.

  • James Seth
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of nature’s 4 fundamental and universal laws which con¬ stitute Forms,’ or says that 4 though in nature nothing really exists beside individual bodies, performing pure individual acts according to a fixed law, yet in philosophy this very law, and the investigation, discovery, and ex¬ planation of it, is the foundation as well of knowledge as of operation. And it is this law, with its clauses, that I mean when I speak of Forms.’1 4 Law ’ is clearly used, in these passages, not in the modern scientific sense of a uniformity of causal sequence between phenomena or occurrences, but in the sense of a permanent and iden¬ tical essence which is to be found beneath the apparent variety, a real simplicity beneath the apparent complexity of nature ; the 4 law ’ of the thing is the dictation of its 4 form ’ or essence to its properties and accidents. Bacon comes nearer to the point of view of modern science in his doctrines of ‘latent schematism ’ and ‘latent process,’ in which he recognises the continuity of all phenomena and the molecular constitution of matter. By the 4 latent schematism ’ he means the subtle and supra- sensible structure or configuration of the material particles ; by the 4 latent process,’ the no less subtle steps by which the movement of those particles, or 4 natures,’ takes place. The chief interest of these conceptions lies in the re¬ cognition which they imply of the dynamical aspect of nature, so far as concrete things are concerned. They appear, however, almost like an interlude in the exposition of Bacon’s serious doctrine ; his real interest, it is clear, is in the abstract and formal aspect of reality, in the problem of substance rather than in that of cause. It is in his elaboration of the methods of reducing the apparent complexity of nature to the simplicity of its fundamental Forms that Bacon makes his great contri¬ bution to the logic of induction. As Fowler says, 4 Inductive Logic, that is, the systematic analysis and arrangement of inductive evidence, as distinct from the