An introduction to philosophy / by J.L. Stocks.

  • John Leofric Stocks
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An introduction to philosophy / by J.L. Stocks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    validity within the science which framed them or for its investigations, but in order to discover how wide their further scope was, and how far popular opinion was right in detecting an implicit challenge to certain articles in the working faith of humanity. The essence of Herbert Spencer’s venture was the attempt to define precisely the principle of evolution and to apply it in fields far beyond the scope of its original intention. It is evident that in the modern world philosophy is receptive of ideas from science, and common sense would hardly be satisfied if it were not. In the sciences we have a determined and sustained attack on the dark background of perceptual experience, which does much to clear up the conditions of that experience itself, and has progressively succeeded in widening the circle of illumination as well as, incidentally, in extending the range of man’s practical competence. By this work, surely, if anywhere, something of the general structure of the universe should be revealed. But the philosophical problem is not correctly grasped until it is perceived that the philosopher is also under the obligation of accepting ideas from other sources. The striking discoveries of the scientists and their cumulative achievements have made such an impres- sion on the modern world that men have often been tempted to think that there is no truth but science; and if this were so, there would be no room for philo- sophy. It is just because science represents but one of many contacts with reality that philosophy is needed; and for the same reason philosophy is neither a synthesis of the sciences nor itself a science. How- ever important science may be to human life, it is only one element among others, and the philosopher must have the whole before him. Man is not merely a scientist. He has to live and earn his daily bread; and though these activities are not, as such, like those of the scientist, directed to the discovery of truth, yet they imply doubts and cer-