Philosophers From England

"There are two forms or aspects of science. First, science is a body of useful and practical knowledge and a method of obtaining it. It is science of this form which played so large a part in the destruction of war and, it is claimed, should play an equally large part in the beneficent restoration of peace. It can work for good or for evil. If practical science made possible gas warfare, it was also the means of countering its horrors. If it was largely responsible for the evils of the industrial revolution, it has already cured many of them by decreasing the expenditure of labour and time that are necessary for the satisfaction of our material needs. In its second form or aspect, science has nothing to do with practical life and cannot affects it, except in the most indirect manner, either for good or for ill. Science of this form is a pure intellectual study. It is akin to painting, sculpture, or literature rather than to the technical arts. Its aim is to satisfy the needs of the mind and not those of the body ; it appeals to nothing but the disinterested curiosity of mankind."

"Science is the noblest of the arts and men of science the most artistic of all artists."

"It is notorious that men of science differ among themselves, that they accuse each other of being wrong, and that their discussions are quite as acrimonious as those of their philosophical or linguistic colleagues."

"Science is the study of those judgements concerning which universal agreement can be obtained."

"Space and time are the conceptions of theory, not of laws. They are neither necessary nor useful in the statement of the results of any experiment."

"Science would not be what it is if there had not been a Galileo, a Newton or a Lavoisier, any more than music would be what it is if Bach, Beethoven and Wagner had never lived. The world as we know it is the product of its geniuses—and there may be evil as well as beneficent genius—and to deny that fact, is to stultify all history, whether it be that of the intellectual or the economic world."

"“From small beginnings unto greater ends” is an old, it may be, an honoured adage. Hereof is the Mystery of the Rosy Cross in origin, history and development. At the last close of all, there is something that remains to be intimated, and it is of two kinds: (1) There is that which is left over for want of available materials, and here it is an open question whether there is any way in which our knowledge is likely to be extended, unless it be in respect of accidents and minima, in days to come; (2) There is something which belongs to the Holy Assembly, is reserved thereto and can be found only by those who are without when he who is now a Stranger at the Gate receives that call which takes him across the threshold. But this is of the spirit, is indeed the inward life, and not matter of history. Benedict Dominus Deus noster qui dedit nobis signum . For those who know or can discover the authorised battery of the Rite, it may happen that the door will open and that he — Ostiarius Magnus — by whom they are admitted will be Christian Rosy Cross, who after witnessing the Hermetic Marriage left the Palace of the King, expecting that next day he should be Door Keeper. Introilus Apertus est ad Occlusum Regis Palatium. The ways indeed are many, but the Gate is one. V ale te, Fratres. Ch XXIV"

"As regards the teaching of the Order it has been inherited through a valid and unbroken succession; it is the custodian of things hitherto regarded as lost; its vocation is to bring errant wanderers to the light of virtuous and true knowledge; it has never designed that all men should accept its teaching"

"As after the zeal of research and the satisfaction of learning displayed in a memorable pageant, Cornelius Agrippa became convinced that the sciences of his period were vain, including his own, so was he disillusionised in matters of official religion. But he did not become a protestant. His position is comparable to that of Paracelsus, who wished Luther and the chaos of reformers well, believing doubtless that something would evolve therefrom, but he did not join the reformers."

"The Turba Philosophorum is indisputably the most ancient extant treatise on Alchemy in the Latin tongue, but it was not, so far as can be ascertained, originally written in Latin; the compiler or editor, for in many respects it can scarcely be regarded as an original composition, wrote either in Hebrew or Arabic; however, the work, not only at the present day, but seemingly during the six or seven centuries when it was quoted as an authority by all the alchemical adepts, has been familiar only in its Latin garb. (preface)"

"A tract entitled Clypeum Veritatis, otherwise The Shield of Truth, which appeared early in 1618, is a typical deliberation on the pro et contra side, and I am taking it out of due order as it connects with the next tract. It claims (i) to deal with everything which “hereunto has been set forth openly, either for or against the Most Honourable and Blessed Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross,” and (2) to exhibit once and for all that which zealous disciples may expect confidently therefrom. The author in this case also was Irenaeus Agnostus, who subscribes himself (1) as writing from Tunis on February 21 of the year mentioned, (2) by special command of the glorious Brotherhood, he being (3) its “unworthy notary” through- out Germany. It affirms (1) that our highest good and way to the blessed life lies in the knowledge of God; (2) that the man who is devoted to the word of God is ever proceeding further in the quest of wisdom; and (3) that learning must be maintained for the propagation of celestial doctrine. (Development of Rosicrucian Literature)"

"The Golden and Rosy Cross, understood in the secret circles ns the Cosmic Cross of the Order, symbolizing universal manifestation, with the manifested Christ in the centre as the power and the grace of all things. The motto is: Ego sum flos campi et lilium convallium. This emblem appears on the title-page of Geheime Figures, issued at Altona in 1785, and is characteristic of the theosophical spirit which permeates the whole work. It was attached evidently to a ribbon or collar, and is probably the reverse side of a Cross shewn in another plate, described as of fine gold and said to have been worn by each Brother on his breast. The inscription on the reverse is the well-known salutation of the Order which was repeated on exposing the symbol: Benedictus Dominus Deus noster qui dedit nobis signum. Beneath this inscription the signs of Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are written about a six-pointed star, having the Sun in its centre. (preface)"

"It seems to follow that we know as much and as little about the passing of Thomas Vaughan as might be expected from his literary importance and repute at that period... His little books could have appealed to a few only, though it may be granted that occult philosophy was a minor fashion of the time."

"Not only are great subjects encircled, for the most part by an external penumbra which, in comparison with them- selves, is a region of trifles, but the subjects themselves, when approached, not so much in an unserious spirit as in the mood of the light mind, seem, under such auspices, to abdicate their proper office and to manifest on their fantastic side. They enter to this extent the region of comedy, and as he must be a cross-grained poet who cannot be diverted by the skilful parody of his own work, so it is in no sense outside the law that the true mystic-— who is saved by many things, including a sense of humour — should be the first perhaps to appreciate the motley appear- ance of his own interests, when seen under the reflections of travesty. (Chapter XXII, A Kabalistic Order of the Rose-Croix)"

"But thou, admired Eugenius, whose great arts Shine above envy and the common arts ... Shake off the eclipse, this dark, intruding veil Which would force night upon us and entail The same gross ignorance — in whose shades he Hath lost himself — on our posterity. Down, all you stale impostures, castles rear'd In th' air and guarded by thy reverend beard, Brat of Nichomachus. I will no more Bow to thy hoary handful nor adore Thy tyrant text; but by this dawning light, Which streams upon me through thy three-piled night, Pass to the East of truth, till I may see Man's first fair state, when sage simplicity, The dove and serpent, innocent and wise, Dwelt in his breast and he in Paradise. There from the Tree of Knowledge his best boughs I'll pluck a garland for Eugenius' brows, Which to succeeding times fame shall bequeathe, With this most just applause — Great Vaughan's wreath."

"The starting points of cosmological arguments are evident facets of experience. There is no doubt about the truth of statements that report that they hold. It seems to me equally evident that no argument from any of such starting points to the existence of God is deductively valid. For, if an argument from, for example, the existence of a complex physical universe to the existence of God were deductively valid, then it would be incoherent to assert that a complex physical universe exists and God does not exist. There would be a hidden contradiction buried in such co-assertions. Now, the only way to prove a proposition to be incoherent is to deduce from it an obviously incoherent proposition (for example, a self-contradictory proposition),but, notoriously, attempts to derive obviously incoherent propositions from such co-assertions have failed through the commission of some elementary logical error. Furthermore, it seems easy enough to spell out in an obviously coherent way one way in which such a co-assertion would be true. There would be a complex physical universe and no God, if there had always been matter rearranging itself in various combinations, and the only persons had been embodied persons; if there never was a person who knew everything, or could do everything, etc. Atheism does seem to be a supposition consistent with the existence of a complex physical universe, such as our universe. Of course things may not be as they seem, but, in the absence of any worthwhile argument to the contrary known to me, I shall assume that the non-existence of God is logically compatible with the existence of the universe, and so that the cosmological argument is not a valid, and so not a good, deductive argument. Our primary concern is however to investigate whether it is a good C-inductive or P-inductive argument, and just how much force it has."

"A cosmological argument is an argument to the existence of God from the existence of some finite object or, more specifically, a complex physical universe. There have been many versions of the cosmological argument given over the past two-and-a-half millennia; the most quoted are the second and third of Aquinas’s five ways to show the existence of God. However, Aquinas’s ‘five ways’, or rather the first four of his five ways, seem to me to be one of his least successful pieces of philosophy. In my view the two most persuasive and interesting versions of the cosmological argument are that given by Leibniz in his paper On the Ultimate Origination of Things, and that given by his contemporary Samuel Clarke in his Boyle Lectures for 1704 and published under the title A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes to God. The former seems to be the argument criticized by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason and the latter the argument criticized by Hume in the Dialogues."

"I thus understand by a «theodicy» not an account of God’s actual reasons for allowing a bad state to occur, but an account of his possible reasons"

"he [Hare] was never afraid to ask the most controversial questions, such as What is Wrong with Slavery? and his answers were always enlightening. (Indeed, that particular paper is one that he was able to write with an authority that few others could possess, since, as he notes, he had in a manner of speaking been a slave, when as a prisoner of the Japanese he worked on the Burma railway.)"

"What makes Hare arguably unique, though at the same time closer in approach to Kant than to the utilitarians whose ally he became, was that he combined this insistence upon the ineluctability of individual choice with an optimistic view of the possibilities of making choices rationally...What reconciles these two features of moral thinking, in his view, is nothing other than the logic of the practical “ought”."

"I had a strange dream, or half-waking vision, not long ago. I found myself at the top of a mountain in the mist, feeling very pleased with myself, not just for having climbed the mountain, but for having achieved my life’s ambition, to find a way of answering moral questions rationally. But as I was preening myself on this achievement, the mist began to clear, and I saw that I was surrounded on the mountain top by the graves of all those other philosophers, great and small, who had had the same ambition, and thought they had achieved it. And I have come to see, reflecting on my dream, that, ever since, the hard-working philosophical worms had been nibbling away at their systems and showing that the achievement was an illusion."

"It is said that the prescription to keep all black people in subjection is formally universal, and internally consistent, and so is not ruled out by the Categorical Imperative. But the point is: can somebody who has fully represented to himself the situation of black people who are kept in subjection go on willing that they should be so treated? For if he has fully represented this to himself, he will have formed a preference that he should not be so treated if he is a black person; and this is inconsistent with the universal form of the proposed maxim. There is of course the problem of the fanatical black-hater who is prepared to prescribe that the maxim should be followed even if he himself were a black person. I have discussed the case of this fanatic at length in my books...and I think I have shown that my theory can deal with him. At any rate the Kantian move can be used in arguments with ordinary non‐fanatical people."

"I have mentioned three of Hare's achievements in moral philosophy: restoring reason to moral argument, distinguishing intuitive and critical levels of moral thinking, and pioneering the development of practical or applied ethics."

"He [Hare] was thus, however exacting his standards, a most positive figure as a mentor, giving of himself in discussion in a manner that could be opinionated but was also self-forgetful...He was concerned about the case against eating meat; but his eventual virtual vegetarianism was rather caused, he said, by gardening than by argument. Some of his dislikes were distinctive: the music of Beethoven (which he came to find superficial), wearing socks (which he ascribed to commercialism), drinking coffee (which he said affected his temper), travelling by train (which caused him anxiety), giving and receiving presents (when the recipient best knows what he wants)...He had the courage, though not the extravagance, to be an eccentric."

"The rules of moral reasoning are, basically, two, corresponding to the two features of moral judgment...When we are trying, in a concrete case, to decide what we ought to do, what we are looking for...is an action to which we can commit ourselves (prescriptively) but which we are at the same time prepared to accept as exemplifying a principle of action to be prescribed for others in like circumstances (universalizability)...[I]f we cannot universalize the principle, it cannot become an ‘ought’."

"...what the principle of utility requires of me is to do for each man affected by my actions what I wish were done for me in the hypothetical circumstances that I were in precisely his situation; and, if my actions affect more than one man...to do what I wish, all in all, to be done for me in the hypothetical circumstances that I occupied all their situations..."

"[In the bilateral case]...if I have full knowledge of the other person's preferences, I shall myself have acquired preferences equal to his regarding what should be done to me were I in his situation; and these are the preferences which are now conflicting with my original prescription. So we have in effect not an interpersonal conflict of preferences or prescriptions, but an intrapersonal one; both of the conflicting preferences are mine...Multilateral cases now present less difficulty than at first appeared. For in them too the interpersonal conflicts...will reduce themselves, given full knowledge of the preferences of others, to intrapersonal ones."

"God is in command of history. Each crisis has something to teach us; each crisis is overcome by particular virtues and by reference to particular truths. The way out of a crisis is often unexpected, and often combines a decisive historical intervention by God, and a new spirit in the Church, animating new movements and new thinking. With hindsight we can even see in some cases how the crisis itself solved intractable problems which could not be solved in any other way"

"One of the main functions of an analogy or model is to suggest extensions of the theory by considering extensions of the analogy, since more is known about the analogy than is known about the subject matter of the theory itself... A collection of observable concepts in a purely formal hypothesis suggesting no analogy with anything would consequently not suggest either any directions for its own development."

"This of course has always been the method of empirical science, which has been suspicious of deductive argumentation unchecked by reference to experiment; but in a more general sense, and outside the practice of science itself, scientists have sometimes been the greatest offenders in adhering to dogmatic ideas against all the evidence, especially when they have tended to limit 'experience' to laboratory experiment."

"These three assumptions between them constitute a picture of science and the world somewhat as follows : there is an external world which can in principle be exhaustively described in scientific language. The scientist, as both observer and language-user, can capture the external facts of the world in prepositions that are true if they correspond to the facts and false if they do not. Science is ideally a linguistic system in which true propositions are in one-to-one relation to facts, including facts that are not directly observed because they involve hidden entities or properties, or past events or far distant events. These hidden events are described in theories, and theories can be inferred from observation, that is the hidden explanatory mechanism of the world can be discovered from what is open to observation. Man as scientist is regarded as standing apart from the world and able to experiment and theorize about it objectively and dispassionately."

"A theory in its scientific context is not a static museum piece, but is always being extended and modified to account for new phenomena."

"It could plausibly be argued that far from Christian theology having hampered the study of nature for fifteen hundred years , it was Greek corruptions of biblical Christianity which had hampered it , and the attitude to nature."

"This Indian doctrine declares human cognition of the entire manifold universe to be illusionary in character. The vast multitude of tangible objects and tangible creatures, which we so plainly witness around us were said to be the product of the constructive imagination of the One Hidden Self. Man and his material environments were but finite dreams passing through the mind of the Infinite Dreamer. Consequently all that we know of the world is nothing more or less than a series of idea held in our consciousness. Thus we arrive at a completely idealistic metaphysics, which because of its very nature, must apparently remain forever purely speculative and beyond the scope of the finest instruments, which can be devised to prove or disprove. Nevertheless the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the doctrine fascinated the Indian mind to an amazing extent. That this early foreshadowing of modem idealistic philosophy was not merely a worthless superstition is evidenced by the fact that some brilliant minds of the West have been equally fascinated and perplexed.""

"The wisest men of the ancient East and the modem West. .. are beginning to arrive at precisely the same conclusions."

"The Bhagavad Gita contains the mental quintessence and successful synthesis of the various systems of religion and philosophy it offers a unique epitome of the high culture of prehistoric India."

"The work of physicists like Currie, Rutherford, Fermi, Cockcroft, Chadwick, Anderson and Millikan has brought us to the practical and proven Scientific principle that the inner structure of matter is reducible to a single fundamental substance, an essential and Immortal energy which is the "life" of the myriad forms that make up the universe. Modem development in the laboratory will vindicate the theory of a single element underlying all the Visible and different manifestations of material Nature, we shall have to grant that the assertions of the Hindu philosophers, made thousands of years ago .... are but results of the insight practiced by keenly perceptive and concentrated minds."

"The ancient Hindus took their philosophic statements in the nature of a revelation from on high, as issuing forth from their seers as a result of a personal self-experience in the spiritual domain."

"We are witnessing in the West the appearance of an at present thin but slowly deepening current of interest in those very thoughts and ideas which the young men of India are today doing their best to reject as inadequate to their needs and which constitute the faith and religious traditions of their forefathers."

"For Indian culture is fruitful in the domain of psychology, philosophy, and religion, so fruitful that there are few doctrines which appeared out of original Western sources that have not already been anticipated and developed .. .in India."

"When man, in the exercise of his mechanical function, puts together a structure, he does it by adding one part to another, so that they lie side-by-side in space, and the whole is made up of all the parts added together. But when nature constructs, she follows a different principle – one which man also, when he is functioning not as mechanic but as artist or poet, must strive to follow. In an organic structure it will be found that the parts interpenetrate and, as it were, express each other in a characteristic way, and that often a single part will seem at the same time to be the whole, or to be potentially the whole. And this is the structural principle which, at all levels from the highest to the lowest, Anthroposophy reveals to us as present in the universe itself."

"Creationist strategy is often to run entirely different issues together, to concoct a muddy paste out of distinct allegations about the evils of evolution and the glories of Creationism."

"Even if Creationists continue to lose in the courts, they may still succeed in wreaking havoc upon science education (and, ultimately, upon American science). By lobbying local school administrators, the Creationist minions can affect the books that are chosen and the curriculum that is designed. Because textbooks are published to make a profit, the special-interest pressure will change the character of the books that are produced. While Creationist laws fail, the cause may triumph, as science education relapses into its post-Scopes, pre-Sputnik condition."

"The book that follows is a chase. The Creationist is allowed to choose one battleground after another. Given each choice of battleground, I insist that the battle be fight on that ground. In every case, “scientific” Creationism is defeated. When all the distortions have been removed, all the attempts to flaunt credentials examined, all the misleading quotations returned to their contexts, all the fallacies laid bare, we shall see Creation “science” for what it is—an abuse of science."

"Creationists are actually criticizing methods that are used throughout science. As I shall argue extensively, there is no basis for separating the procedures and practices of evolutionary biology from those that are fundamental to all sciences. If we let the creationists have their way, we may as well go whole hog. Let us reintroduce the flat-earth theory, the chemistry of the four elements, and mediaeval astrology. For these outworn doctrines have just as much claim to rival current scientific views as Creationism does to challenge evolutionary biology."

"Ironically, philosophers of science owe the Creationists a debt. For the “scientific” Creationists have constructed a glorious fake, which we can use to illustrate the differences between science and pseudoscience. By examining their scientific pretensions, I have tried to convey a sense of the nature and methods of science."

"In almost any natural population of organisms, more offspring will be produced than are able to survive. The offspring will vary—in particular, they will vary with respect to characteristics that affect their abilities to survive and reproduce. Some organisms will survive longer and reproduce more frequently. If the advantageous characteristics are inheritable, then they will be transferred to descendants. As a result, they will become more prevalent in later generations. Over a large number of generations the common features of the population may be radically changed."

"Creation “science” is spurious science. To treat it as science we would have to overlook its intolerable vagueness. We would have to abandon large parts of well-established sciences (physics, chemistry, and geology, as well as evolutionary biology, are all candidates for revision). We would have to trade careful technical procedures for blind guesses, unified theories for motley collections of special techniques. Exceptional cases, whose careful pursuit has so often led to important turnings in the history of science, would be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Nor would there be any gains. There is not a single scientific question to which Creationism provides its own detailed problem solution. In short, Creationism could take a place among the sciences only if the substance and methods of contemporary science were mutilated to make room for a scientifically worthless doctrine. What price Creationism?"

"Barnes and Morris both choose processes that we know to operate at different rates at different times, and then use the observed rates to estimate the time at which the process began. Dating the past is a complicated and technical business, and one cannot ignore the technical details simply to generate the ages one wants. Without a thorough understanding of which rates are constant overtime and which rates fluctuate wildly, Creationist dates are bound to be stabs in the dark. However, Creationists know what they want the age of the earth to be. So just as in the case of the second law of thermodynamics, important parts of science are abused. By carefully picking a process on the basis of its ability to give the desired result, without attending to the question whether it is reasonable to think that it happened at a constant rate, Creationists attempt to convince the uninitiated that their blind dates have scientific references. Nobody should be taken in."

"Respect for the truth does not require one to take seriously ideas simply because they are popular or backed by influential people. Once it has become clear that a proposal makes no contribution to our understanding, we are not compelled by tolerance to give it further attention."