The problem of the relation between mechanism and purpose is of profound theoretical interest. It is the most fundamental of the great perennially disputed problems. And, unlike some other of the great unsolved problems, it is also of far-reaching and profound practical importance. The kind of answer we give to the question affects in a multitude of ways the conduct of our lives, the form and working of all our institutions, our science, our law, our politics, our economics, our morals, our religion.

When I agreed to lecture to-night I stipulated that I might be allowed to interpret the subject announced so as to let my treatment relate less to the subject in general than to some particular aspects which happen to have been interesting me lately. Professor Whitehead, Sir Arthur Eddington, and Sir James Jeans have given to the world brilliant accounts of the present position of physics in relation to mathematics and philosophy. What I have to say bears to their writings, the humble relation of an example to a piece of book-work, or of an application of a theorem to the theorem itself.

Sir arthur edington's brilliantly phrased article, “Physics and Philosophy,” which appeared in the January 1933 issue of Philosophy, seems to me to contain a number of things which are calculated to be provocative to the mere philosopher. And I propose in this article to discuss what appears to be one of the most important of these provocative things, namely, Sir Arthur's view of the status of the physical world.

1. Those having a detailed and first-hand knowledge of Descartes’s work seem agreed that it was highly original, genuinely critical and of permanent importance in the history of thought. And though they would differ in opinion on what are the reasons best advanced in support of their estimate, a majority would seem to regard the “Cartesian revolution” as summing up what is most meritorious in Descartes’s philosophy and most lasting in his influence. They would find Professor E. Gilson speaking their mind when he declares, “Sur ce qu’il y a de nouveau et de strictement original dans sa pensée, aucun doute ne saurait subsister. Descartes est la revendication personnifiée du mathématisme universel.

Nothing makes the occupation with the great minds of the past more attractive than the fact that with the change in the whole situation of the present time, with the maturing of one’s own personality, they appear in a new light and present themselves in rejuvenated shape. I had a curious experience of this kind, when it occurred to me during the investigation of some phenomenological problems, that Goethe, though ignorant of the name, had employed a definitely phenomenological method. In occupying myself now with the revealing of this fact, it will be my leading principle to understand Goethe through himself, and I shall try not to adapt his meanings to my own theories.

No trait is more characteristic of contemporary philosophy in France than its continued fecundation by the physical and biological sciences. The divorce between philosophy and science that existed in the first half of last century is now regarded, by almost common consent, as an error of the great pre-war Unenlightenment. The ménage is rémonté; the vieilles traditions of Descartes and Pascal live again, though very transfigured. How long the alliance may endure, how and how much it may benefit both parties, it would be idle to prophesy. But it is significant that Boutroux and Bergson were compelled to devote much energy to acquiring a scientific competence, the one in mechanics, the other in biology. It is still more significant that a number of professional scientists (such as Milhaud, Duhem, Hannequin, Paul Tannery, Poincare, and Meyerson) should, with the passing of years, have contributed less to their sciences and increasingly to philosophy. This mutual invasion of territories has, indeed, become so considerable and enduring that philosophy in France is at present, for good or ill, almost wholly ‘philosophy of the sciences.’ It is now within this ‘internationalized’ neutral zone that the distinction between the epistemological and the ontological has to be drawn. Thus, Meyerson fairly represents the former emphasis, Bergson and Le Roy the latter. And if it is rare for one man to hold successively a chair in mathematics and a chair in philosophy, like Milhaud and Whitehead, rarer still is it for one man to hold both concurrently. But M. Edouard Le Roy has for many years lectured on mathematics and mechanics at the Faculte des Sciences in Paris; he has extended and modified Bergsonism from Bergson's former chair at the College de France.

In the Critique of So-called Practical Knowledge Alf Ross wishes to show that ethical judgments are nonsensical. He begins by asserting that when people speak about practical knowledge they mean knowledge which contains an unconditional command to the will, and this, he points out, involves a confusion between knowledge and volition. Thus, since all ethical theories are forms of practical knowledge, they are doomed to failure. All ethical theories can be classified into two types: they all belong to the ethics of value or the ethics of duty. These differ very radically, since the one takes value and the other duty as its fundamental concept; but they are inadequate for the same reasons. Both value and duty are self-contradictory concepts, and both awareness of value and awareness of duty are quite different from what ethical theories suppose.