Philosophy as Comparative Cosmology

Abstract

Three decades have elapsed since Whitehead’s attempt to set philosophy to this “sustained effort”, and the philosophic scene is more crowded than ever with empiricist, existentialist, and positivist partisans of the “detached question”. Where philosophy has not become anti-philosophical it has become ancillary to science. “Constructive thought”, for many today, has no other meaning than the activity of the theoreticians of the exact sciences. Should we then accept as fact that Whitehead was wrong? To answer either way is to state the nature of the philosophic enterprise.

“In putting out these results, four strong impressions dominate my mind: First, that the movement of historical, and philosophical, criticism of detached questions, which on the whole has dominated the last two centuries, has done its work, and requires to be supplemented by a more sustained effort of constructive thought. Secondly, that the true method of philosophical construction is to frame a scheme of ideas, the best that one can, and unflinchingly to explore the interpretation of experience in terms of that scheme. Thirdly, that all constructive thought, on the various special topics of scientific interest, is dominated by some such scheme, unacknowledged, but no less influential in guiding the imagination. The importance of philosophy lies in its sustained effort to make such schemes explicit, and thereby capable of criticism and improvement.”