Ancient Science and Modern Science

Horses can be studied for varying purposes.  For example, as part of a Zoological comparative study, e. g.  involving quadripeds, they would likely be observed in a natural habitat.  In contrast, in preparation for use as a mode of transportation, how to feed a horse, how to shelter it, how to ride it, etc., would all likely be objects of examination.  Now, while human interference could be detrimental to the objectivity of the first project, it would not be to the second.  Rather, the criteria for any judgment involved in the second might include effectiveness of a procedure, e. g. whether or not a specific diet conduces to a horse's being ridden, morality of any treatment, e. g. whether or not medication that promotes speed constitutes abuse, etc.  Indeed, even the riding of a horse itself might be open to challenge.  But if so, it would be on Moral, not Epistemological grounds.  Likewise, some opposition to Experimentalism on grounds of principles of Philosophy of Science, e. g. Whitehead's, may be either misplaced or disingenuous.  That is, because of the alliance between Ancient Science and Medieval Theology, the exact source of a criticism of Modern Science, e. g. that it tampers with its object, might be difficult to determine, even by the one voicing it.

Grasp and Causality

When being grasped by a human, an object conforms to the contours of a hand.  Likewise, when being harnessed, an environmental process, e. g. a force, conforms to a human interest.  In other words, conformation-to is a novel modification that can be attributed immediately to only Formal Causality.  Now, in Whitehead's system, the 'Prehension' of an external object is a Feeling, i. e. a Sensation, and, hence, is fundamentally no more than an effect of Efficient Causality, i. e. a rudimentary passive reaction to an external influence, subject to subsequent Teleological mental modification.  Thus, his judgment that manipulation, e. g. controlled experiment, can be only a contrivance that is part of a mechanical sequence, is rooted in either an unawareness of the synonymity of 'grasp' and 'prehension', or an abstraction of Prehension from its fundamental physiological shaping operation.

Experimentalism and Causality

Whitehead recognizes two types of Causality--Efficient and Teleological.  Accordingly, his concept of Organism is defined in terms of the two, as is Kant's.  Now, in his system, Teleological Causality is the source of Novelty, i. e. an Impulse that initiates a novel Concrescence is a reaction to the insufficiency of the given.  Consequently, Skill and Method, as opposed to Novelty, can only be modes of Efficient Causality, i. e. mechanical procedures.  So, he cannot consider the possible roles of either Formal or Material Causality, e. g. that Organism is a Hylomorphic concept.  Likewise, he cannot consider that Skill and Method are modes of Formal Causality, the Matter of which are various motions, e. g. rolling a ball down an incline, blowing into a saxophone, etc.  So, another false dichotomy that leads to his criticism of Experimentalism is that of Teleological Causality vs. Efficient Causality.

Impulse and Novelty

Whitehead's observation that "imaginative zest is tinged with impulse" is perhaps an illusion to Dewey's concept of Impulse as the origin of Novelty.  But, regardless, there is a significant difference between the two concepts of Impulse.  Now, according to Dewey, Impulse initiates Action, whereas, in Whitehead's system, Impulse initiates a Teleological Mental event.  In other words, for Dewey, Novelty consists in changing the world, while for Whitehead, Novelty consists in re-interpreting the world.  Whitehead thus seems committed to the position that one can read a new book, but one cannot write a new book, or improvise musically.

Experimentation and Improvisation

Whitehead opposes "skill" and "imaginative zest".  So, it is perhaps because he conceives that the former can "stifle" the latter that he accuses Bacon of a lack of imagination, and experimenters as "cooking the facts for the sake of exemplifying the law". He also calls the attempt to combine the two a "paradox".  But, if so, then Jazz is 'paradoxical', which does not seem to inhibit it from existing, or skill of players from being imaginative, i. e. improvisational.  Rather, it evinces that Experimentation is essentially Improvisation, which, in some contexts,  can be a means to a worthy deliberate exemplification of a law, e. g. curing diseases.  So, Whitehead's judgements about Experimentalism may be based on a false dichotomy.

Philosophy and Thought Experiment

At least some Philosophy can conceived as a thought experiment, an attempt, beginning with a set of assumptions, to produce certain results.  For example, Foundational Empiricism attempts to derive all Knowledge from Sense-Data.  However, it fails to do so in two important cases--imaginable though never actually perceived colors and tones, and the time-ordering of Cause and Effect.  Now, since the latter is first recognized decades later, by Kant, Hume is unaware of it.  However, he directly addresses the former, recognizing that his 'missing shade of blue' does indeed constitute a failure for his enterprise, but judges it to be too insignificant a failure to warrant jettisoning the project.  In contrast, Whitehead disagrees, using the failure to introduce into the original set of assumptions the theses of the existence of what he calls 'Eternal Objects', e. g. all the musical tones, all the colors of the spectrum, that influence actual specific Sense-Experience implicitly.  The result, as it is for Kant, is a new thought experiment, incorporating a more comprehensive set of assumptions, an ironic development given Whitehead's opposition to Experimentalism, as has been previously discussed.

Experimentalism, Truth, Efficacy

In the following assertion, the otherwise usually insightful Whitehead expresses a misunderstanding of Experimentalism: "Experiment is nothing else than a mode of cooking the facts for the sake of exemplifying the law."  The root of the misunderstanding is expressed in the "cooking the facts" image, which implies a falsification.  But, the measure of the Experimental method is not Truth qua correspondence between representation and fact, but Truth qua efficacy.  Accordingly, for the Experimentalist, "exemplifying the law" means "confirmation that effects can be reliably produced", the primary concern of Technology, regardless of Whitehead's Leibnizian orientation, which does not recognize the reality of such efficacy.

Experimentalism and Empiricism

Given that 'Empiricism' is widely applied to the Foundationalism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, while the Baconian Method incorporates instruments and the production of effects, the latter might be more accurately termed 'Experimentalism'.  Likewise, while the aim of that Empiricist tradition is the establishment of Knowledge that is certain, either immediately or mediately, Experimentalism is a method that aims at the repeatable production of effects.  Consequently, its values are not Certainty and Necessity, but, as Peirce later introduces and Dewey refines, Fallibility and Probability.  Hence, Experimentalism is inherently non-Foundationalist, and the topic that absorbs Hume--whether or not Causality entails Necessity--is irrelevant to it.

Method and Logic

Deductive Logic and Inductive Logic are two methods of extending Knowledge.  The arc of the former is from Universal to Particular, while that of the latter is the inverse.  Thus, insofar as Rationalism begins with a Universal, and Empiricism with a Particular, Deductive Logic is a method usually associated with Rationalism, and Inductive Logic with Empiricism.  However, Hegel employs neither in the Phenomenology.  Its arc from Particular to Universal might seem to be effected by Inductive Logic.  But, while in Inductive Logic, a Particular subsists after it is extended from, in Hegel's method, a Particular is unstable because insufficient, eventually giving way to a more comprehensive Particular, etc., until a stable Universal is reached.  This method is, of course, Dialectical Logic, derived from the methods of Plato and Kant, and classified as Rational.  But, Hegel's Rationalism departs from both the Rationalism and the Empiricism of the preceding era.  For, his Universal-Particular contrast is that of Whole-Part, whereas the Universal-Particular contrast of each of those traditions is that of Class-Member.  In other words, traditional Deductive and Inductive Logics are each Categorial, while Hegel's Dialectical Logic is Holistic.  Hence, the aim of his method is not extending Knowledge, but completing it.

Empiricism and Causality

Hume's concept of Causality is often rendered as Constant Conjunction.  However, that formulation is imprecise in two respects: that it is an observed pattern of association, but, more important, a previously observed pattern of association that, by habit, is expected to continue in the future.  But, a habit itself is a past pattern that is expected to continue in the future.  Thus, as Kant eventually discerns, the concept is rooted in a cognitive mechanism, that, if not innate, is prior to any experience.  Furthermore, there is no consideration in Hume's analysis of the type of Causality that is of especial interest to Bacon: the deliberate attempt to produce effects, which when repeatedly successful, can be formulated, via Induction, as a scientific law.  In that context, Causality is Production; the Conjunction is that of Attempt and Success;  the sequence is actively generated, not merely passively observed; and any expectation of repetition is based on confidence, not habit.  So, significant differences between Baconian Empiricism and Foundational Empiricism are epitomized by their respective concepts of Causality.

Method, Baconian Empiricism, Foundational Empiricism

Three features of Baconian Empiricism absent from the Foundational Empiricism of Locke, etc. are 1. the equation of Knowledge and Power; 2. the deliberate production of effects to be observed; and 3. the employment of instruments in observation, e. g. telescope and microscope.  In other words, his is an active Empiricism, while theirs is passive.  The distinction between the two accounts for that between the two editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, as the references to Bacon in the second signify.  In particular, Kant's update takes into account the experience that he calls Self-Affection, in which one observes what one is doing, e. g. drawing a line.  He thus seems to appreciate the innovations of Baconian Empiricism better than do the British 'Empiricists', as they are often characterized, though not to the extent that he would classify it as a Method, to be subjected to Transcendental analysis, i. e. his own Method.

Method, Empiricism, Power

Aristotle's method is Empiricist, but not in the Foundationalist sense of Locke et al., i. e. he seeks Knowledge via observation, not extends it from immediate Sense Knowledge.  Now, though Bacon pioneers Modern Empiricism, the title of his major work, Novum Organum, signifies a divergence not from Aristotelian Epistemology, but from his Logic, which is presented in the Organon i. e. the primary contrast is that of Inductive vs. Deductive reasoning.  Nevertheless, there is another decisive break that could be classified as Epistemological.  For, Bacon's formulation Knowledge is Power constitutes a supplanting of Contemplation by Techne as the highest Knowledge.  In that respect, the true continuation of Bacon's innovation is to be found in the works of not Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, but of Spinoza, for whom Will and Understanding are one and the same, or of Nietzsche, who explains Aristotle's proposition that humans by nature desire to know as Will to Power.

Method, Reflection, Praxis

The Socratic compound reflection 'I know only myself' is the basis of Modern Epistemology, i. e. elaborated as entailing knowledge of the existence of a deity, of Secondary Qualities, of the Forms of Knowledge, etc.  But, as such, in each case, it continues as it is for Socrates--a method for distinguishing what to believe from what to not believe.  It is thus as much the basis of detachment from external information as it is of detachment from external attraction or repulsion.  In other words, even as the foundation of Modern Epistemology, Reflection functions as a Practical Method.

Method, Socrates, Reflection

The Dialogic method usually called "Socratic" is, more accurately, Platonic, ascribed by Plato to his character Socrates in fictional dialogues.  Instead, if there is a Method that can be attributed to the actual Socrates, it is Reflection, formulated by the Delphic principle Know Thyself.  Another product of the confusion between a fictional and actual Socrates is the meaning of the proposition 'I know only that I do not know anything', which, taken at face value, expresses Agnosticism, but interpreted as ironic, in a contrived scenario, expresses methodical Skepticism with the ulterior purpose of establishing some other Knowledge, much like the pattern of Cartesian meditation.  Now, each of the prominent Methods of Modern Philosophy originates in Reflection, but is extended in a direction not necessarily entailed in the possible Agnostic modesty of its founder.

Method, Phenomenology, Attention

Hegel's Phenomenology is not to be confused with Husserl's, which is based on a different concept of Consciousness, entailing a different concept of Intention.  Nevertheless, they share a disregard for one mode of Consciousness--Attention.  The significance of this disregard is that Attention is a fundamental factor in Method--it is the Consciousness of what one is doing, without which a Method cannot be executed.  Underlying this disregard is adherence to the traditional concept of the immediate object of Consciousness being either some external object or itself, rather than one's Motility, which includes writing, looking, listening, etc.  But the execution of neither method of Phenomenology is possible without attentive Consciousness guiding it.

Method and Phenomenology

Hegel presents Phenomenology as a hybrid of Rationalist and Empiricist methods, a Logical path from immediate Sensation, to Absolute Knowledge.  But, what is actually there in the text is a written account of an anti-Atomist thought experiment, which demonstrates, via a Dialectical method, that any This, Empirical or otherwise, is necessarily a Part of a Whole.  In other words, regardless of his intentions, he continues the Modern tradition of Philosophy as an Experiment, i. e. an attempt that may or may not succeed, which would be discovered in a reflection on Method, a concept that, like his predecessors, he presupposes without examination.

Method and Transcendentalism

Kant's attempt to combine Rationalist and Empiricist methods results in an innovative method--Transcendentalism.  Transcendentalism is traditionally Rationalist, because since its contents are ideas, concepts, etc., and it is traditionally Empricist, since it limits the scope of those formations to Sense-Experience.  This Transcendentalism also inherits the inattention to Method of its progenitors.  Now, Kant does devote a section of the Critique of Pure Reason to Method.  But, not merely is the topic an afterthought in the volume, its title exposes its misdirectedness.  For, "Transcendental Doctrine of Method", which he attributes to Pure Reason, misses that Transcendentalism is itself a Method, just as Descartes, Locke, etc. miss that their Rationalism and Empiricism are Methods.

Method and Temporality

A Method is a Means to an End.  It therefore consists in at least two stages; but these stages are not simultaneous.  In other words, Method is inherently Temporal, and, as has been previously discussed, ordinally so, i. e. a Means precedes an End, but not vice versa.  Now, even though Time is of only marginal interest to the pioneering Rationalists and Empiricists, it is implicit in the Foundationalism that they share--they each begin with some certain element, and then derive others, e. g. more complex elements, copies, etc.  But that inattention to Time is more than incidental in both traditions--the privileging of Eternity by the Rationalists relegates Time to a subordinate status at best, and the Associationism of the Empiricists is symmetrical, and, hence, atemporal.  It is not until Kant recognizes the inadequacy of that Associationism to Causality that the fundamentality of Temporality to Experience gets recognized, though he still misses its role in Practice.  Nevertheless, to whatever extent Philosophy is Methodical, it is Temporal.

Method, Volition, Self

A Method is a plan of Action that may or may not be successful in particular instances.  But, regardless of the outcome, an attempt at executing it has been made.  In other words, Method entails Volition.  Thus, entailed in the Epistemological methods Rationalism and Empiricism, and typically abstracted from their execution, is Volition, and its immediate expression--I Will.  Now, Volition might be neutralized, but not contradicted.  Thus, not only can I Will not be the object of Skepticism, it is, in fact, its subject.  So, the various notable Rationalist and Empiricist attempts to conceive the Self, e. g. Cogito, Bundle of Perceptions, etc., are misdirected from their textual outsets.

Method and Mathematics

A Method is a plan of action in pursuit of some goal.  It is thus designed to be executed, with respect to which a Theoretical operation such as examining it or contemplating it is derivative and inessential.   A Method has an inherent sequential structure, or, in other words, it is inherently Ordinal.  Thus, it is inherently Mathematical, i. e. it entails First, Second, etc.  Accordingly, the Mathematical concepts of the predominant Modern Methods, Rationalism and Empiricism, e. g. that Mathematical knowledge requires the existence of a deity, that it is constituted by static associations of representations of Sense-Data, etc., are all derivative.

Method, Certainty, Infallibility

Certainty can be either Theoretical or Practical--the former is Necessity of Truth, while the latter is Infallibility.  Thus, for example, a Proposition that is certain is necessarily true, while a Method that is certain is one in which success is guaranteed.  Likewise, to doubt a Proposition is to consider that it might be false, while to doubt a Method is to consider that it might be unsuccessful.  Now, a notable confusion of the two varieties is in a traditional argument against Skepticism--that applied to itself it cancels itself--the pioneering version of which is Descartes'.  But Skepticism is in this case a Method for determining Theoretical Certainty.  Hence, it is inapplicable to itself, which is why Descartes cannot doubt that he is doubting, and, thus the presumed contradiction--that he is both doubting and doubting that he is doubting--does not obtain.  Likewise, because the negation of Practical Uncertainty is not Theoretical Certainty, as a Method of determining Theoretical Certainty, his Skepticism about Skepticism fails.

Metamethodology and Modern Philosophy

The study of Method per se could be called Methodology, but since that term is commonly used for more specialized purposes, an alternative is Metamethodology.  So, insofar as each of the main doctrines of Modern Philosophy, Rationalism and Empiricism, begins, as has been previously discussed, as a Method, the study of Modern Philosophy, if not the foundation of any Philosophy, is Metamethodology.  Now, a Method is an organized way of proceeding.  Hence, Method connotes both How-to and Can-do.  In other words, it is an expression of Techne, and evinces the equivalence of Knowledge and Power, in the most general sense of the latter concept.  Thus, for example, Descartes' I Think, arrived at via a Method, is preceded by both I Know How and I Can Do.  Likewise, whether or not Locke is correct to assert that there are no innate Ideas, his Empiricism is a Rational procedure.

Interpreting the World, Changing the World, Escaping the World

To Marx' contrast of Philosophy as interpreting the World and Philosophy as changing the World can be added a third option: Philosophy as escaping the World.  For example, Modern Philosophy begins with Bacon as Method, one aspect of which is the attempt to "produce effects".  From that origin, on the one hand, Descartes extracts the Cogito, attached to the World only by the pineal gland.  Leibniz then severs his Monad from any such connection, and speculates that it might inhabit other Worlds, leading eventually to the denial of any Actual World by some contemporary Modal Logicians.  On the other hand, Locke reduces Empiricist Method to sensory Ideas, which Berkeley further reduces to private phenomena that are the medium of divine communication.  Subsequently, Hegel also spiritualizes Phenomena, and Heidegger, via Husserl, ontologizes them as Being, differentiated from Beings inhabitating the World.  In other words, to add to another of Marx' famous sayings, Philosophy is the opiate of some Philosophers.

Knowledge, Power, Mathematics

Bacon's fundamental principle--Knowledge is Power--means that Knowledge is fundamentally Techne, i. e. Know-How, a formulation usually falsified by its fragmentation into Knowing-That and Having-Power-Over.  Likewise, the foundation of Modern Epistemology is Method, from which, in accordance with that fragmentation, competing concepts of Knowing-That emerge--Rationalism and Empiricism.  Thus, still remaining disavowed by mainstream Philosophers, is the rogue insight two centuries later that Descartes' Discourse on Method is an expression of a Will to Power.  Also overshadowed in the Meditations, the usual attention to which is on a Jesuit's wrestling with orthodox Theology, is its more radical heterodoxy--the introduction of Mathematics as Techne, i. e. founding it on the Cogito, thereby supplanting the tradition, beginning with Pythagoras, of it as a Knowing-That.  So, Descartes can be conceived as advancing Baconism with a principle that is formulated as: Mathematics is Power, the consequences of which have been much of subsequent history.

Rationalism, Empiricism, Incorporealism

If the standard American academic Philosophy curriclum is any indication, the Modern era begins when Descartes breaks from Medieval dogmatism, and establishes the Cogito as the foundation of Philosophical endeavor.  Then, in response, Locke insists on the irreducibility of Sense-Experience, thereby setting in motion the Rationalism vs. Empiricism dynamic, typified by the exchanges between Locke and Leibniz.  But, this narrative is deficient in two main respects, with a common root.  First, it abstracts the Meditations from Discourse on Method, thereby suppressing that antedating the latter is Bacon's formulation of Method, which as an autonomous, corporeal activity, constitutes a more profound break from Medievalism than does the incorporeal Cogito.  In other words, the original Rationalism of the era is Experimental Reason, i. e. constituted by instrument-aided methodical procedures of producing and measuring effects. So, too, is the original Empiricism Experimentalist, from which Locke et al. abstract the mere observation of an object falling, from the deliberate dropping of it for the purpose of measuring it.  As a result, Modern Philosophy reverts to Medieval Incorporealism.

Political Philosophy and the United States

The arrival of the United States, as expressed in the Constitution, presents a counter-example to much of the preceding Political Philosophy.  It is a product of collective construction, a response to specific historical circumstances, dubbed an "experiment" because of its uncertain future.  In that context, ideas such as Freedom have value not as absolute truths, but as sound building materials.  Likewise, that it might be a response to biological need does not guarantee modal Necessity of success as a viable social organization.  And, it demonstrates what gets suppressed in Plato's leap from a vision of the Idea of Good to the effecting of social harmony--Reason that is both Techne and Experimental.

Experimentalism and Political Philosophy

In Process and Reality, Whitehead mentions Bacon only twice, and very briefly.  In both cases, it is to criticize Bacon for ignoring the value of Speculation in the pursuit of Knowledge, though absent in these passages is any reference to Bacon's novel, New Atlantis, arguably the first work of Modern Political Philosophy.  On the other hand, he elsewhere brands as "cooking the books" Dewey's Experimentalism, the pioneer of which is--Bacon.  Now, Whitehead is far from alone in under-appreciating Bacon--it is perhaps the only thing contemporary Philosophy and Political Science academic departments have in common.  Accordingly, little consideration, at least prior to Dewey, has been given to the characterization of the formation of the United States as an "experiment", to which mainstream Political Philosophy, neither Ancient nor Modern, seems adequate.

Organism, Ecologism, Supernaturalism

Heliocentrism entails the end of Geocentrism, which entails the end of Anthropocentrism.  Arising out of Heliocentrism has been Ecologism, the first significant systematic recognition of which has been Darwinism, which imbeds Human History in Natural History.  Plato's World-Soul is potentially Ecologic, but he does not pursue the consequences of a Philosopher-King, on the basis of a vision of the Idea of the Good, including Human-Environment relations in his project of harmonization.  Now, the formidable resistance to Ecology has been varieties of Supernaturalism, according to which Humans are fundamentally separable from any Ecosystem.  One example of that resistance is Leibniz' Monadology, according to which a Monad is essentially unaffected by its environment.  In contrast, Whitehead does allow that an Organism is a product of its Environment.  But, by excluding from Actuality any process of modification by an Organism of its Environment, he, implicitly, even if not completely, continues the Supernaturalist resistance to Ecologism.

Organism and Prehension

Whitehead's Actuality is constituted by processes of intake from its environment by an Organism, which is itself at any moment the culmination of prior intakes.  But, lacking in this scheme is Motility, as if only certain plants were Organisms.  Now, a general term that he uses to characterize these events is Prehension.  However, he does not seem to recognize that Prehension means Grasp, which entails Motility, i. e. a hand enfolding some object.  To so recognize it is to also recognize that in the Organisms with capacity for Grasp, it is not a termination of a process but a preparation for further Motility, e. g. wielding a tool.  He is thus precluded from considering that a fundamental moment in the experience of an Organism is that it modifies its environment, not merely takes from it.

Organism, Process, Political Philosophy

Whitehead conceives a Leibnizian Monad as both a Process and an Organism.  However, he does not explain the application of a dynamic concept of Organism to the traditional one, to which, as a living Whole of Parts, duration seems inessential.  One possible exception, though, is Aristotle's, according to which it is in the pursuit of an End that the parts of a body are both animated and unified.  So, writ large, a Polity that is both an Organism and a Process is one that harmonizes its citizen by the pursuit of a common Good.  Now, typically throughout history, such a unifier of a society has been a potential enemy, if not an actual conflict.  But, a Leader who is acting on the basis of a vision of the Idea of the Good is one who would transcend the particularity of an End that is contingent on animosity.  So, an extension of Whitehead's concept of dynamic Organism to Political Philosophy yields a criticism of the particularity of most prior models of the best Polity.  But, insofar as Leibniz does not recognize Monads as collectively constituting an Organism, Whitehead might not approve of such an extension.

Leadership, History, Cosmopolity

If the Idea of the Good in the Republic is identical to the World-Soul of the Timaeus, then the Polis harmonized by the Philosopher-King, in accordance with a vision of the Idea of the Good, can be either only a Cosmopolity, or a more localized Polity in transition to be incorporated in an eventual more comprehensive entity.  But, it is not until Kant, Hegel, and Marx that the historicization of Political Philosophy begins to be considered.  Accordingly, all prior Political Philosophy, Ancient and Modern, has become obsolete in many of its details, e. g. that self-preservation is the sole motivation for an individual human entering into association with others.  Likewise, not taking into consideration that an effective Sovereign must have, as has previously discussed, diachronic Leadership qualities, i. e. by means of which a local Polity might constitute an episode in the historical progression towards a Cosmopolity, is a deficiency in those models.