The Metaphysics of Evolution

175 Pages·2009·2.48 MB·English

by  Thomas Whittaker

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Religion
For centuries, scripture and theology were the focus of prodigious amounts
of scholarship and publishing, dominated in the English-speaking world
by the work of Protestant Christians. Enlightenment philosophy and
science, anthropology, ethnology and the colonial experience all brought
new perspectives, lively debates and heated controversies to the study of
religion and its role in the world, many of which continue to this day. This
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and science.
The Metaphysics of Evolution
What conclusions do the facts of cosmic and organic evolution require or
permit on the origin and destiny of the world and the individual? From 1881
to 1925 Thomas Whittaker, an Oxford-trained scientist turned philosopher,
grappled with this question, which he tried to answer by metaphysical
interpretation of the sciences. The majority of the essays in this volume first
appeared in Mind, and a few in other journals, while three had not been
previously published. Whittaker ranges widely over some of the most daring
theories of the past, from the early centuries of the common era (including
Apollonius of Tyana and Origen), to the middle ages (including John
Scotus Erigena and Nicholas of Cusa), the renaissance (Giordano Bruno,
Shakespeare) and the early modern period. Whittaker’s own view is that
hypothesis and imagination are legitimate aids in the search for truth in both
science and philosophy in a new synthesis.
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The Metaphysics
of Evolution
Thomas Whittaker
CAMBriDGE UNivErSiTy PrESS
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New york
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information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108004374
© in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2009
This edition first published 1928
This digitally printed version 2009
iSBN 978-1-108-00437-4
This book reproduces the text of the original edition. The content and language reflect
the beliefs, practices and terminology of their time, and have not been updated.
THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION
WITH OTHER ESSAYS
Cambridge University Press
Fetter Lane, London
Netu York
Bombay, Calcutta, Madras
Toronto
Macmillan
Tokyo
Maruzen-Kabushiki-Kaisha
All rights reserved
THE METAPHYSICS
OF EVOLUTION
WITH OTHER ESSAYS
[NEW AND REPUBLISHED]
BY
THOMAS WHITTAKER
AUTHOR OF THE NEO-PLATONISTS
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1928
PROLOGUE
ALTHOUGH the title given to these two series of Essays may
seem to apply directly only to the last essay of the Second Series,
a little thought will show that it indicates a general direction
already marked in the author's earliest contribution to Mind,
reprinted, with slight revisions, at the beginning of the First Series.
Preoccupation with historical representatives of the same way of
thinking is indicated by the two essays on Giordano Bruno; and
not less by the stimulus received from the great creationist
thinker Charles Renouvier, whose critical or (as he called it
in discipleship of Kant) "criticist" position in relation to all
doctrines of evolutionary pantheism has had a profoundly
modifying influence on both the metaphysical and the ethical
ideas developed later.
The studies in philosophy of history and history of philosophy
spring obviously from a continuation of the same interest; for
of course man, whatever his ultimate essence may be, has his
part in the process of the world. The consideration of man
further leads to a consideration of the nature of his knowledge of
himself and of things; and on this fundamental question there is
a certain development of view from the earlier to the later essays.
A brief statement in personal form will here not be out of place.
My aim was directed from the first towards an ontology on the
double basis of science and idealism. This vaguely dates back
to the early time when I was intensely interested in the divergent
views of Mill, Hamilton and Spencer on the Absolute. My
obligatory studies at Oxford from 1877 to 1881 were scientific,
but my predominant interest always remained philosophical.
I was not, however, much impressed by the Kantian or Hegelian
movement that there prevailed, but had come to regard Berkeley
and Hume as in metaphysics unique and the necessary beginning
of everything hopeful for its future. The subsequent modifica-
tion of the English experientialism with which I began has been
gradual, and was effected more by the direct study of Neo-
Platonism (to which Berkeley was attracted in his second period)
than of the great Germans. Reading the Greeks when prepared
for them, I found them in some respects ultra-modern; free, in
their rationalism, from what even the Kantian Renouvier has
vi PROLOGUE
called the "scholastic bonds" of Kant, and therefore best
fitted to correct what needed correction in the English reform of
philosophy with its watchword of Experience. Some of Hume's
ambiguous results may, in his own opinion, have led to puzzles
insoluble by any further development of experiential method;
and Berkeley, in the hints of Siris, vaguely prefigured a possible
reunion of the exclusively experientialist with the older rationalist
point of view. In any case, I find that for the constitution of
knowledge certain elements of philosophical rationalism, of " the a
priori," must be admitted which the great English experientialists
from Locke to Mill and Spencer failed to resolve into anything
else. As a natural consequence, my ontology has become less
"hylozoic" and more Platonising than it tended to be in the
beginning. For this reason, I can accept what seems to me the
most important and most hopeful position of the New Realists
(slightly adumbrated indeed in the extension I proposed to give
to Clifford's ontology of "mind-stuff"); namely, the coequal
reality of relations and of the things related (whatever these may
be or mean ultimately). And, with some of the modern Realists,
I have no scruple in accepting "Platonic Ideas" as real in a
certain sense. At this point Realism (modern or ancient) becomes
one with Idealism.
At the same time, I must proclaim my continued adhesion to
the form of idealism that issues in the phenomenist theory of
science. Here the antithesis between empirical and rationalist
views on the principles of human knowledge makes little difference.
The Berkeleyan Immaterialism is to be found in express terms
in John Scotus Erigena, who educed it from the Neo-Platonic
philosophy that had come down to him in a rationalist form
which he did not modify; and, apart from a few laxities of
terminology (as when he roughly expresses his view by saying
that the world of phenomena is "in the brain"), it is equally
distinct in Schopenhauer, who, although profoundly influenced
by English thought, was primarily in his theory of knowledge a
Kantian. Essentially it was already present in Plotinus; but
for an ancient thinker the problem of "the external world" was
not yet such a separately interesting question as it became for
British thought, of which John Scotus Erigena (like Berkeley,
born in Ireland) was in this aspect a true precursor.
For a generalised statement of phenomenism as thus understood
the reader may be referred to the Preface to the First Series. This
was written for the collection entitled Essays and Notices,