English Psychology: Hartley, James Mill, Herbert Spencer, a Bain, G. H, Lewes, Samuel Bailey

Excerpt from English Psychology: Hartley, James Mill, Herbert Spencer, a Bain, G. H, Lewes, Samuel Bailey

The nature of mathematics explains this. Among all the sciences, not one has less need to disquiet itself concerning facts and experience. If, at their origin, mathematics were empirical, as they probably were, they speedily elevated themselves to the abstract notions which form their bases, and found their true method. In the third century B.C. there existed in Greece an order of precise, rigorous sciences, recognised as such, and perfectly distinct from philosophical researches. We are about to trace the continuation of the first example of this emancipation of the particular sciences.

Many ages had to elapse before a new science was to achieve its autonomy. The ancient philosophy, which reached its greatest height in Plato and Aristotle, still remains the universal science, or nearly so; in it metaphysics follow physics, politics follow morals, studies in physiology were weighed with studies in psychology (Timaus, De Anima); it is still the science of all that is; it studies man, nature, and God. Thus it remains in the Middle Ages; outside of philosophy, there is nothing but mathematics and that which relates to them, and the Arts, such as medicine and alchemy. Put now we find a new science growing up, aided by calculation and experience, which accumulates facts and seeks out laws, which observes instead of reasoning, and which speedily finds itself strong enough to assert its independence. This science is called physics. It was a slow and progressive emanation, whose facts are nearer to us, and better known, so that we can follow them. Galileo, though breaking away from Aristotle, is still a 'philosopher.' He boasted of having devoted 'more years to philosophy than months to mathematics,' and his doctrine is declared 'absurd in philosophy' in the judgment of the Inquisition. Descartes held that philosophy is a tree whose root is metaphysics, and whose trunk is physics.' His system of physics, like that of Newton, is explained under the title Principia Philosophia. Philosophical instruction, which from its nature can only follow workers and inventors from afar, comprised physics until the end of the eighteenth century. The disruption was not rude; it took place because it was inevitable.

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