The requirement of coherence is the great preservative of Re SRE sanity. But the validity of its criticism 1s not always admitted. If we consider philosophical con- troversies, we shall find that disputants tend to require coherence from their adversaries, and to grant dispensa- tions to themselves. It has been remarked that a system of philosophy is never refuted; it is only abandoned. The reason is that logical contradictions, except as temporary slips of the mind—plentiful, though temporary—are the most gratuitous of errors; and usually they are trivial. Thus, after criticism, systems do not exhibit mere illogi- calities. They suffer from inadequacy and incoherence. Failure to include some obvious elements of experience in the scope of the system is met by boldly denying the facts. Also while a philosophical system retains any charm of novelty, it enjoys a plenary indulgence for its failures in coherence. But after a system has acquired orthodoxy, and is taught with authority, it receives a sharper criticism. Its denials. and its incoherences are found intolerable, and a reaction sets in.
Incoherence i is the arbitrary disconnection of first prin-
ciples, In modern philosophy Descartes’ two kinds of
substance, corporeal and mental, illustrate incoherence.
There is, in Descartes’ philosophy, no reason why there
should not be a one-substance world, only corporeal, or
10 Process and Reality
a one-substance world, only mental. According to Des- cartes, a substantial individual ‘requires nothing but itself in order to exist.’ Thus this system makes a virtue of its incoherence. But on the other hand, the facts seem connected, while Descartes’ system does not; for example, in the treatment of the body-mind problem. The Car- tesian system obviously says something that is true. But its notions are too abstract to penetrate into the nature of things.
The attraction of Spinoza’s philosophy lies in its modi- fication of Descartes’ position into greater coherence. He starts with one substance, causa sui, and considers its es- sential attributes and its individualized modes, i.e. the ‘affectiones substantiae.’ The gap in the system is the arbitrary introduction of the ‘modes.’ And yet, a mul- tiplicity of modes is a fixed requisite, if the scheme is to retain any direct relevance to the many occasions in the experienced world.
The philosophy of organism is closely allied to Spinoza’s scheme of thought. But it differs by the aban- donment of the subject- redicate forms of thought, So direct embodiment, of th t ultimate characterization of fact, The result is that the ‘substance-quality’ concept is avoided; and that morphological description is replaced by description of dynamic process. a 1n0za S ‘modes’ now become the sheer actualities: so that thou
lead us to the discovery of any higher grade of reality,
he coherence, which the system seeks to preserve, is the
dis hat. rocess, or_concrescence, of any one
actual entity involves the other actual entities among its
components, In this way the obvious solidari y_ot the
world receives its explanation.
In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which
is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then
capable of characterization through its accidental em-
bodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of
Speculative? Philosophy 11
actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate
is termed ‘creativity’; and God is its primordial, non-
temporal accident. In monistic philosophies, Spinoza’s
or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also
equivalently termed ‘The Absolute.’ In such monistic
schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final,
‘eminent’ reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its acci-
dents. In this general position the philosophy of organ-
ism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian,
or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or Euro-
pean, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the
other side makes fact ultimate.
In its turn every philosophy will suffer a deposition. But the bundle of philosophic systems expresses a variety of general truths about the universe, awaiting co-ordina- tion and assignment of their various spheres of validity. Such progress in co-ordination is provided by the advance of philosophy; and in this sense philosophy has advanced
from Plato onwards. According to this account of the achievement of rationalism, the chief error in philosoph is overstatement, The aim at generalization is sound but the estimate of success is exaggerated. There are two main forms of such overstatement. One form is what 1 have termed elsewhere,’ the ‘fallacy of misplaced con- creteness.’ This fallacy consists n_negecting tne Ceerce. lecting the degree of abstraction involved when an actual entity 1s consid- ered merely so far as it exemplifies certain categories of thought, There are aspects of actualities which are simply ignored so long as we restrict thought to these categories. Thus the success of a philosophy is to be measured by its comparative avoidance of this fallacy, when thought is restricted within its categories.
The other form of overstatement consists in a false esti- mate of logical procedure in respect_to certainty, and in
respect to premises, Philosophy has been haunted by the
unfortunate notion that its method is dogmatically to in-
dicate premises which are severally clear, distinct, and ? Cf. Science and the Modern World, Ch. III.
12 Process and Reality
certain; and to erect upon those premises a deductive system of thought.
But the accurate expression of the final generalities 1s the goal of discussion and not its origin. Philosophy has been misled by the example of mathematics; and even in mathematics the statement of the ultimate logical prin- ciples is beset with difficulties, as yet insuperable.” The verification of a rationalistic scheme is to be sought in its general success, and not in the peculiar certainty, or initial clarity, of its first principles. In this connection the misuse of the ex absurdo argument has to be noted; much philosophical reasoning is vitiated by it. The only logical conclusion to be drawn, when a contradiction issues from a train of reasoning, is that at least one of the premises involved in the inference is false. It is rashly assumed without further question that the peccant premise can at once be located. In mathematics this assumption is often justified, and philosophers have been thereby mis- led. But in the absence of a well-defined categoreal scheme of entities, issuing in a satisfactory metaphysical system, every premise in a philosophical argument is under suspicion.
Philosophy will not regain its proper status until the gradual elaboration of categoreal schemes, definitely stated_at each stage of progress, is recognized as its proper objective. There may be rival schemes, inconsistent among themselves; each with its own merits and its own failures. It will then be the purpose of research to con- ciliate the differences. Metaphysical categories are not dogmatic statements of the obvious; they are tentatiye formulations of the ultimate generalities.
we consider any scheme of philosophic categories as one complex assertion, and apply to it the logician’s alter- native, true or false, the answer must be that the scheme
is false. The same answer must be given to a like ques-
* Cf. Principia Mathematica, by Bertrand Russell and A. N. White- head, Vol. I, Introduction and Introduction to the Second Edition.
These introductory discussions are practically due to Russell, and in the second edition wholly so.
Seu LAME Vie PrLLOsS OP HY 13
tion respecting the existing formulated principles of any science.
The scheme is true with unformulated qualifications, exceptions, limitations, and new interpretations in terms of more general notions. We do not yet know how to recast the scheme into a logical truth. But the scheme is a matrix from which true propositions applicable to particular circumstances can be derived. We can at present only trust our trained instincts as to the discrimi- nation of the circumstances in respect to which the scheme is valid.
The use of such a matrix is to argue from it boldly
and with rigid logic. The scheme should therefore be
stated with the utmost precision and definiteness, to allow
of such argumentation. The conclusion of the argument
should then be confronted with circumstances to which
it should apply.
The primary advantage thus gained is that experience
is not interrogated with the benumbing repression of
common sense. The observation acquires an enhanced
penetration by reason of the expectation evoked by the
conclusion of the argument. The outcome from this pro-
cedure takes one of three forms: (i) the conclusion may
agree with the observed facts; (ii) the conclusion may
exhibit general agreement, with disagreement in detail;
(iii) the conclusion may be in complete disagreement in
the facts.
In the first case, the facts are known with more ade- quacy and the applicability of the system to the world has been elucidated. In the second case, criticisms of the observation of the facts and of the details of the scheme are both required. The history of thought shows that false interpretations of observed facts enter into the records of their observation. Thus both theory, and received notions as to fact, arein doubt. In the third case a fundamental reorganization of theory is required either by way of limiting it to some special province, or by way of entire abandonment of its main categories of thought.
14 Process and Reality
After the initial basis of a rational life, with a civilized language, has been laid, all productive thought has pro- ceeded either by the poetic insight of artists, or by the imaginative elaboration of schemes of thought capable of utilization as logical premises. In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious.
Rationalism never shakes off its status of an experi- mental adventure. The combined influences of mathe- matics and religion, which have so greatly contributed to the rise of philosophy, have also had the unfortunate effect of yoking it with static dogmatism. Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought, progressive and never final. But it is an adventure in which even partial success has importance.
The field of a special science is confined to one genus of facts, in the sense that no statements are made respecting facts which lie outside that genus. The very circumstance that a science has naturally arisen concerning a set of facts secures that facts of that type have definite relations among themselves which are very obvious to all mankind. The common obviousness of things arises when their explicit apprehension carries immediate importance for purposes of survival, or of enjoyment—that is to say, for purposes of ‘being’ and of ‘well-being.’ Elements in human experience, singled out in this way, are those ele- ments concerning which language is copious and, within its limits, precise. The special sciences, therefore, deal with topics which lie open to easy inspection and are readily expressed by words.
The study of philosophy is a voyage towards the larger
generalities. For this reason in the infancy of science,
when the main stress lay in the discovery of the most
general ideas usefully applicable to the subject-matter in
question, philosophy was not sharply distinguished from
science. To this day, a new science with any substantial
novelty in its notions is considered to be in some way
Speculative Philosophy 15
peculiarly philosophical. In their later stages, apart from occasional disturbances, most sciences accept without question the general notions in terms of which they develop. The main stress is laid on the adjustment and the direct verification of more special statements. In such periods scientists repudiate philosophy; Newton, justly satisfied with his physical principles, disclaimed meta- physics.
The fate of Newtonian physics warns us that there is a development in scientific first principles, and that their original forms can only be saved by interpretations of meaning and limitations of their field of application— interpretations and limitations unsuspected during the first period of successful employment. One chapter in the history of culture is concerned with the growth of generalities. In such a chapter it is seen that the older generalities, like the older hills, are worn down and diminished in height, surpassed by younger rivals.
Thus one aim of philosophy is to challenge the half-
truths constituting the scientific first principles, The
systematization of knowledge cannot be conducted in
watertight compartments. All general truths _conditi
wider generalities. The iced of principles met chiefly
take the form of determining the proper meanings to be
assigned to the fundamental notions of the various
sciences, when these notions are considered in respect. to
their status relatively to each other. The determination
of this status requires a generality transcending any
special subject-matter.
If we may trust the Pythagorean tradition, the rise of
European philosophy was largely promoted by the devel-
opment of mathematics into a science of abstract gener-
ality. But in its subsequent development the method of
philosophy has also been vitiated by the example of
mathematics. The primary method of mathematics is
deduction; the primary method of philosophy is descrip-