On the Philosophy of Discovery, Chapters Historical and Critical

24. We are thus led to see that in our knowledge of mechanics, chemistry, and the like, there are involved certain necessary principles, derived from our ideas, and not from experience. But to this it may be objected, that the parts of our knowledge in which these principles are involved has, in historical fact, all been acquired by experience. The laws of motion, the doctrine of definite proportions, and the like, have all become known by experiment and observation; and so far from being seen as necessary truths, have been discovered by long-continued labours and trials, and through innumerable vicissitudes of confusion, error, and imperfect truth. This is perfectly true: but does not at all disprove what has been said. Perception of external objects and experience, experiment and observation are needed, not only, as we have said, to supply the objective element of all knowledge—to embody, limit, define, and modify our ideas; but this intercourse with objects is also requisite to unfold and fix our ideas themselves. As we have already said, ideas and facts can never be separated. Our ideas cannot be exercised and developed in any other form than in their combination with facts, and therefore the trials, corrections, controversies, by which the matter of our knowledge is collected, is also the only way in which the form of it can be rightly fashioned. Experience is requisite to the clearness and distinctness of our ideas, not because they are derived from experience, but because they can only be exercised upon experience. And this consideration sufficiently explains how it is that experiment and observation have been the means, and the only means, by which men have been led to a knowledge of the laws of nature. In reality, however, the necessary principles which flow from our ideas, and which are the basis of such knowledge, have not only been inevitably assumed in the course of such investigations, but have been often expressly promulgated in words by clear-minded philosophers, long before their true interpretation was assigned by experiment. This has happened with regard to such principles as those above mentioned; That every event must have a cause; That reaction is equal and opposite to action; That the quantity of matter in the world cannot be increased or diminished: and there would be no difficulty in finding similar enunciations of the other principles above mentioned;—That the kinds of things have definite differences, and that these differences depend upon their elementary composition. In general, however, it may be allowed, that the necessary principles which are involved in those laws of nature of which we have a knowledge become then only clearly known, when the laws of nature are discovered which thus involve the necessary ideal element.

25. But since this is allowed, it may be further asked, how we are to distinguish between the necessary principle which is derived from our ideas, and the law of nature which is learnt by experience. And to this we reply, that the necessary principle may be known by the condition which we have already mentioned as belonging to such principles: … that it is impossible distinctly to conceive the contrary. We cannot conceive an event without a cause, except we abandon all distinct idea of cause; we cannot distinctly conceive two straight lines inclosing space; and if we seem to conceive this, it is only because we conceive indistinctly. We cannot conceive 5 and 3 making 7 or 9; if a person were to say that he could conceive this, we should know that he was a person of immature or rude or bewildered ideas, whose conceptions had no distinctness. And thus we may take it as the mark of a necessary truth, that we cannot conceive the contrary distinctly.

26. If it be asked what is the test of distinct conception (since it is upon the distinctness of conception that the matter depends), we may consider what answer we should give to this question if it were asked with regard to the truths of geometry. If we doubted whether anyone had these distinct conceptions which enable him to see the necessary nature of geometrical truth, we should inquire if he could understand the axioms as axioms, and could follow, as demonstrative, the reasonings which are founded upon them. If this were so, we should be ready to pronounce that he had distinct ideas of space, in the sense now supposed. And the same answer may be given in any other case. That reasoner has distinct conceptions of mechanical causes who can see the axioms of mechanics as axioms, and can follow the demonstrations derived from them as demonstrations. If it be said that the science, as presented to him, may be erroneously constructed; that the axioms may not be axioms, and therefore the demonstrations may be futile, we still reply, that the same might be said with regard to geometry: and yet that the possibility of this does not lead us to doubt either of the truth or of the necessary nature of the propositions contained in Euclid's Elements. We may add further, that although, no doubt, the authors of elementary books maybe persons of confused minds, who present as axioms what are not axiomatic truths; yet that in general, what is presented as an axiom by a thoughtful man, though it may include some false interpretation or application of our ideas, will also generally include some principle which really is necessarily true, and which would still be involved in the axiom, if it were corrected so as to be true instead of false. And thus we still say, that if in any department of science a man can conceive distinctly at all, there are principles the contrary of which he cannot distinctly conceive, and which are therefore necessary truths.

27. But on this it may be asked, whether truth can thus depend upon the particular state of mind of the person who contemplates it; and whether that can be a necessary truth which is not so to all men. And to this we again reply, by referring to geometry and arithmetic. It is plain that truths may be necessary truths which are not so to all men, when we include men of confused and perplexed intellects; for to such men it is not a necessary truth that two straight lines cannot inclose a space, or that 14 and 17 are 31. It need not be wondered at, therefore, if to such men it does not appear a necessary truth that reaction is equal and opposite to action, or that the quantity of matter in the world cannot be increased or diminished. And this view of knowledge and truth does not make it depend upon the state of mind of the student, any more than geometrical knowledge and geometrical truth, by the confession of all, depend upon that state. We know that a man cannot have any knowledge of geometry without so much of attention to the matter of the science, and so much of care in the management of his own thoughts, as is requisite to keep his ideas distinct and clear. But we do not, on that account, think of maintaining that geometrical truth depends merely upon the state of the student's mind. We conceive that he knows it because it is true, not that it is true because he knows it. We are not surprised that attention and care and repeated thought should be requisite to the clear apprehension of truth. For such care and such repetition are requisite to the distinctness and clearness of our ideas: and yet the relations of these ideas, and their consequences, are not produced by the efforts of attention or repetition which we exert. They are in themselves something which we may discover, but cannot make or change. The idea of space, for instance, which is the basis of geometry, cannot give rise to any doubtful propositions. What is inconsistent with the idea of space cannot be truly obtained from our ideas by any efforts of thought or curiosity; if we blunder into any conclusion inconsistent with the idea of space, our knowledge, so far as this goes, is no knowledge: any more than our observation of the external world would be knowledge, if, from haste or inattention, or imperfection of sense, we were to mistake the object which we see before us.

28. But further: not only has truth this reality, which makes it independent of our mistakes, that it must be what is really consistent with our ideas; but also, a further reality, to which the term is more obviously applicable, arising from the principle already explained, that ideas and perceptions are inseparable. For since, when we contemplate our ideas, they have been frequently embodied and exemplified in objects, and thus have been fixed and modified; and since this compound aspect is that under which we constantly have them before us, and free from which they cannot be exhibited; our attempts to make our ideas clear and distinct will constantly lead us to contemplate them as they are manifested in those external forms in which they are involved. Thus in studying geometrical truth, we shall be led to contemplate it as exhibited in visible and tangible figures;—not as if these could be sources of truth, but as enabling us more readily to compare the aspects which our ideas, applied to the world of objects, may assume. And thus we have an additional indication of the reality of geometrical truth, in the necessary possibility of its being capable of being exhibited in a visible or tangible form. And yet even this test by no means supersedes the necessity of distinct ideas, in order to a knowledge of geometrical truth. For in the case of the duplication of the cube by Hobbes, mentioned above, the diagram which he drew made two points appear to coincide, which did not really, and by the nature of our idea of space, coincide; and thus confirmed him in his error.

Thus the inseparable nature of the Fundamental Antithesis of Ideas and Things gives reality to our knowledge, and makes objective reality a corrective of our subjective imperfections in the pursuit of knowledge. But this objective exhibition of knowledge can by no means supersede a complete development of the subjective condition, namely, distinctness of ideas. And that there is a subjective condition, by no means makes knowledge altogether subjective, and thus deprives it of reality; because, as we have said, the subjective and the objective elements are inseparably bound together in the fundamental antithesis.

29. It would be easy to apply these remarks to other cases, for instance, to the case of the principle we have just mentioned, that the differences of elementary composition of different kinds of bodies must be definite. We have stated that this principle is necessarily true;—that the contrary proposition cannot be distinctly conceived. But by whom? Evidently, according to the preceding reasoning, by a person who distinctly conceives Kinds, as marked by intelligible names, and Composition, as determining the kinds of bodies. Persons new to chemical and classificatory science may not possess these ideas distinctly; or rather, cannot possess them distinctly; and therefore cannot apprehend the impossibility of conceiving the opposite of the above principle; just as the schoolboy cannot apprehend the impossibility of the numbers in his multiplication table being other than they are. But this inaptitude to conceive, in either case, does not alter the necessary character of the truth: although, in one case, the truth is obvious to all except schoolboys and the like, and the other is probably not clear to any except those who have attentively studied the philosophy of elementary compositions. At the same time, this difference of apprehension of the truth in different persons does not make the truth doubtful or dependent upon personal qualifications; for in proportion as persons attain to distinct ideas, they will see the truth; and cannot, with such ideas, see anything as truth which is not truth. When the relations of elements in a compound become as familiar to a person as the relations of factors in a multiplication table, he will then see what are the necessary axioms of chemistry, as he now sees the necessary axioms of arithmetic.

30. There is also one other remark which I will here make. In the progress of science, both the elements of our knowledge are constantly expanded and augmented. By the exercise of observation and experiment, we have a perpetual accumulation of facts, the materials of knowledge, the objective element. By thought and discussion, we have a perpetual development of man's ideas going on: theories are framed, the materials of knowledge are shaped into form; the subjective element is evolved; and by the necessary coincidence of the objective and subjective elements, the matter and the form, the theory and the facts, each of these processes furthers and corrects the other: each element moulds and unfolds the other. Now it follows, from this constant development of the ideal portion of our knowledge, that we shall constantly be brought in view of new Necessary Principles, the expression of the conditions belonging to the Ideas which enter into our expanding knowledge. These principles, at first dimly seen and hesitatingly asserted, at last become clearly and plainly self-evident. Such is the case with the principles which are the basis of the laws of motion. Such may soon be the case with the principles which are the basis of the philosophy of chemistry. Such may hereafter be the case with the principles which are to be the basis of the philosophy of the connected and related polarities of chemistry, electricity, galvanism, magnetism. That knowledge is possible in these cases, we know; that our knowledge may be reduced to principles, gradually more simple, we also know; that we have reached the last stage of simplicity of our principles, few cultivators of the subject will be disposed to maintain; and that the additional steps which lead towards very simple and general principles will also lead to principles which recommend themselves by a kind of axiomatic character, those who judge from the analogy of the past history of science will hardly doubt. That the principles thus axiomatic in their form, do also express some relation of our ideas, of which experiment and observation have given a true and real interpretation, is the doctrine which I have here attempted to establish and illustrate in the most clear and undoubted of the existing sciences; and the evidence of this doctrine in those cases seems to be unexceptionable, and to leave no room to doubt that such is the universal type of the progress of science. Such a doctrine, as we have now seen, is closely connected with the views here presented of the nature of the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy, which I have endeavoured to illustrate.

Appendix FREMARKS ON A REVIEW OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCESTrinity Lodge, April 11th, 1844.

My Dear Herschel,

Being about to send you a copy of a paper on a philosophical question just printed in the Transactions of our Cambridge Society, I am tempted to add, as a private communication, a few Remarks on another aspect of the same question. These Remarks I think I may properly address to you. They will refer to an Article in the Quarterly Review for June, 1841, respecting my History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences; and without assigning any other reason, I may say that the interest I know you to take in speculations on such subjects makes me confident that you will give a reasonable attention to what I may have to say on the subject of that Article. With the Reviewal itself, I am so far from having any quarrel, that when it appeared I received it as affording all that I hoped from Public Criticism. The degree and the kind of admiration bestowed upon my works by a writer so familiar with science, so comprehensive in his views, and so equitable in his decisions, as the Reviewer manifestly was, I accepted as giving my work a stamp of acknowledged value which few other hands could have bestowed.

You may perhaps recollect, however, that the Reviewer dissented altogether from some of the general views which I had maintained, and especially from a general view which is also, in the main, that presented in the accompanying Memoir, namely, that, besides Facts, Ideas are an indispensable source of our knowledge; that Ideas are the ground of necessary truth; that the Idea of Space, in particular, is the ground of the necessary truths of geometry. This question, and especially as limited to the last form, will be the subject of my Remarks in the first place; and I wish to consider the Reviewer's objections with the respect which their subtlety and depth of thought well deserve.

The Reviewer makes objections to the account which I have given of the source whence geometrical truth derives its characters of being necessary and universal; but he is not one of those metaphysicians who deny those characters to the truths of geometry. He allows in the most ample manner that the truths of geometry are necessary. The question between us therefore is from what this character is derived. The Reviewer prefers, indeed, to have it considered that the question is not concerning the necessity, but, as he says, the universality of these truths; or rather, the nature and grounds of our conviction of their universality. He might have said, with equal justice, the nature and grounds of our conviction of their necessity. For his objection to the term necessity in this case—"that all the propositions about realities are necessarily true, since every reality must be consistent with itself," (p. 206)—does not apply to our conviction of necessity, since we may not be able to see what are the properties of real things; and therefore may have no conviction of their necessity. It may be a necessary property of salt to be soluble, but we see no such necessity; and therefore the assertion of such a property is not one of the necessary truths with which we are here concerned. But to turn back to the necessary or universal truths of geometry, and the ground of those attributes: The main difference between the Author and the Reviewer is brought into view, when the Reviewer discusses the general argument which I had used, in order to show that truths which we see to be necessary and universal cannot be derived from experience. The argument is this,—

"Experience must always consist of a limited number of observations; and however numerous these may be, they can show nothing with regard to the infinite number of cases in which the experiment has not been made.... Truths can only be known to be general, not universal, if they depend upon experience alone. Experience cannot bestow that universality which she herself cannot have; nor that necessity of which she has no comprehension." (Phil. i. pp. 60, 61.)

Here is that which must be considered as the cardinal argument on this subject. It is therefore important to attend to the answer which the Reviewer makes to it. He says,—

"We conceive that a full answer to this argument is afforded by the nature of the inductive propensity,—by the irresistible impulse of the mind to generalize ad infinitum, when nothing in the nature of limitation or opposition offers itself to the imagination; and by our involuntary application of the law of continuity to fill up, by the same ideal substance of truth, every interval which uncontradicted experience may have left blank in our inductive conclusion." (p. 207.)

Now here we have two rival explanations of the same thing,—the conviction of the universality of geometrical truths. The one explanation is, that this universality is imposed upon such truths by their involving a certain element, derived from the universal mode of activity of the mind when apprehending such truths, which element I have termed an Idea. The other explanation is, that this universality arises from the inductive propensity—from the irresistible impulse to generalize ad infinitum—from the involuntary application of the law of continuity—from the filling up all intervals with the same ideal substance of truth.

With regard to these two explanations, I may observe, that so far as they are thus stated they do not necessarily differ. They both agree in expressing this; that the ground of the universality of geometrical truths is a certain law of the mind's activity, which determines its procedure when it is concerned in apprehending the external world. One explanation says, that we impress upon the external world the relations of our ideas, and thus believe more than we see,—the other says, that we have an irresistible impulse to introduce into our conviction a relation between what we do observe and what we do not, namely, to generalize ad infinitum from what we do see. One explanation says, that we perceive all external objects as included in absolute ideal space,—the other, that we fill up the intervals of the objects which we perceive with the same ideal substance of truth. Both sets of expressions may perhaps be admissible; and if admitted, may be understood as expressing the same opinions, or opinions which have much in common. The Author's expressions have the advantage, which ought to belong to them, as the expressions employed in a systematic work, of being fixed expressions, technical phrases, intentionally selected, uniformly and steadily employed whenever the occasion recurs. The Reviewer's expressions are more lively and figurative, and such as well become an occasional composition; but hardly such as could be systematically applied to the subject in a regular treatise. We could not, as a standard and technical phrase, talk of filling up the intervals of observation with the same ideal substance of truth; and the inevitable impulse to generalize would hardly sufficiently express that we generalize according to a certain idea, namely, the idea of space. Perhaps that which is suggested to us as the common import of the two sets of expressions may be conveyed by some other phrase, in a manner free from the objections which lie against both the Author's and the Critic's terms. Perhaps the mental idea governing our experience, and the irresistible impulse to generalize our observation, may both be superseded by our speaking of a law of the mind's activity, which is really implied in both. There operates, in observing the external world, a law of the mind's activity, by which it connects its observations; and this law of the mind's activity may be spoken of either as the idea of space, or as the irresistible impulse to generalize the relations of space which it observes. And this expression—the laws of the mind's activity—thus opposed to that merely passive function by which the mind receives the impressions of sense, may be applied to other ideas as well as to the idea of space, and to the impulse to generalize in other truths as well as those of geometry.

So far, it would seem, that the Author and the Critic may be brought into much nearer agreement than at first seemed likely, with regard to the grounds of the necessity and universality in our knowledge. But even if we adopt this conciliatory suggestion, and speak of the necessity and universality of certain truths as arising from the laws of the mind's activity, we cannot, without producing great confusion, allow ourselves to say, as the Critic says, that these truths are thus derived from experience, or from observation. It will, I say, be found fatal to all philosophical precision of thought and language, to say that the fundamental truths of geometry, the axioms, with the conviction of their necessary truth, are derived from experience. Let us take any axiomatic truth of geometry, and ask ourselves if this is not so.

It is, for example, an axiom in geometry that if a straight line cut one of two parallel straight lines, it must cut the other also. Is this truth derived or derivable from observation of actual parallel lines, and a line cutting them, exhibited to our senses? Let those who say that we do acquire this truth by observation, imagine to themselves the mode in which the observation must be made. We have before us two parallel straight lines, and we see that a straight line which cuts the one cuts the other also. We see this again in another case, it may be the angles and the distances being different, and in a third, and in a fourth; and so on; and generalizing, we are irresistibly led to believe the assertion to be universally true. But can any one really imagine this to be the mode in which we arrive at this truth? "We see," says this explanation, "two parallel straight lines, cut by a third." But how do we know that the observed lines are parallel? If we apply any test of parallelism, we must assume some property of parallels, and thus involve some axiom on the subject, which we have no more right to assume than the one now under consideration. We should thus destroy our explanation as an account of the mode of arriving at independent geometrical axioms. But probably those who would give such an explanation would not do this. They would not suppose that in observing this property of parallels we try by measurement whether the lines are parallel. They would say, I conceive, that we suppose lines to be parallel, and that then we see that the straight line which cuts the one must cut the other. That when we make this supposition, we are persuaded of the truth of the conclusion, is certain. But what I have to remark is, that this being so, the conclusion is the result, not of observation, but of the hypothesis. The geometrical truth here spoken of, after this admission, no longer flows from experience, but from supposition. It is not that we ascertain the lines to be parallel, and then find that they have this property: but we suppose the lines to be parallel, and therefore they have this property. This is not a truth of experience.