The History of Materialism: and a Critique of Its Current Significance by Friedrich Lange

Author:Friedrich Lange [Lange, Friedrich]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2017-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

Second part: The Modern Sciences

3. Materialism and the Exact Sciences

Baron von Liebig dismisses the materialists as dilettantes. (Chemische Briefe, 4th ed., Letter 23) This is certainly a harsh word for men who take such pride in the precision of their scientific research, and who for the most part view their metaphysical illusions as empirically proven facts. But they can take comfort in the fact that what Liebig likes to call dilettantism is characteristic of modern scientific research in the broadest sense. Lack of clarity about the historical development of their own science, confusion of facts, hypotheses and subjective insights, swearing by theoretical dogmas of the most dubious nature, passionate impatience in the construction of theories: these are all evils which, especially in Germany, hang upon science like a lead weight, and which constrain and cripple the powerful force of the eagle’s flight. It is, in a word, the lack of philosophical education for which the materialists are unjustly reproached, although with few exceptions this failing deserves to be applied to our German scientists generally.

Here some will insist that everyone knows it is philosophy itself which has corrupted science in Germany. Others will point out that in England and France they have come so far without philosophy. As living proof of our opinion, many – specifically young medical students – will feel themselves tempted by this passage to throw away the book. But wait! Not so fast!

I was not speaking of delving into abstruse systems, but of philosophical education. It can hardly be seriously maintained that this could be lacking in the land of required courses in logic and final exams in philosophy. Education protects from enthusiasm. In France, it is above all mathematics which replaces philosophical education. The genius of this nation has breathed life into the mathematical formulas and from the essence of the definition and the conclusion has produced that rigorous relativism which alone constitutes a secure foundation for all precision. The awareness of the premises does not easily escape the French scientist, and he utters his conclusion not in an absolute sense, but in consideration of the assumption that his propositions are not dogmas, but rather links in the endless chain of scientific advancement. And yet it is the Frenchman who is inclined to fall into the opposite extreme, as we have seen recently with the controversy over spontaneous generation. But even this natural inclination for passionate defense of a dogma just speaks to the power of mathematical education, which as a rule prevents such outbreaks. This education, separate from meaningless academic philosophy, has become in France the philosophy of the exact sciences, whose nature is self-limitation and that academic doubt which for the natural sciences has somewhat the character of a sound guidepost.

But in England, the land of John Stuart Mill, William Whewell, and William Herschel, one can only miss philosophical education by starting from the axiom that it is only to be found in Germany. Certainly there is no talk here of any general diffusion of a philosophical ordination as the study of mathematics confers in France.

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