Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T23:27:21.793Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Theism and Recent Philosophical Speculation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

The recent speculation which I have in view is that which finds its inspiration in the great development of scientific discovery and scientific thought in our day. It would be impossible to range over the whole field. Moreover, the efforts which have been made to frame a comprehensive scheme of thought on the foundation supplied by science are those which are truly characteristic of our time. In recent years, science has been passing beyond the experimental stage, and also beyond the limits which, in former times, made it departmental. The great conception of Evolution, and the intimate linking up of astronomy with chemistry and physics, and of chemistry and physics with physiology and biology, have quite altered our outlook on the universe. The mind of to-day passes from space-time to the electron, and from the electron to the structure of the cell, and from the cell to the living organism, with hardly a jolt. Not that the problems which mark the passage from stage to stage in this series have been solved, far from it; but that the different tages have so much the appearance of closing up into one continuous process that we seem to be approaching a view which will regard the whole as one unbroken development. No wonder that philosophic minds, among students and dreamers speculating on the mystery of the Universe, begin to think that some account of it, based on assured results of science, is becoming possible.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1932

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 256 note 1 The Scientific World-Picture of To-day, p. 10.

page 256 note 2 Op. cit., p. 13.

page 256 note 3 Holism and Evolution, p. 272.

page 259 note 1 Op. cit., p. 134.

page 259 note 2 Pp. 135, 136.

page 259 note 3 Pp. 148, 149.

page 260 note 1 Op. cil., p. 350.

page 263 note 1 Jeans, , The Stars in their Courses, p. 117.Google Scholar

page 263 note 2 The Scientific Approach to Philosophy, p. 78.