Posted on 12/02/2008 5:07:07 AM PST by Ethan Clive Osgoode
What is Naturalism?
From Principles of Natural Theology (1923), pg. 511--517.
George Hayward Joyce, S.J.
What then is naturalism? It is a system whose salient characteristics is the exclusion of whatever is spiritual, or, indeed, whatever is transcendent of experience from our philosophy of nature and of man. Huxley, for long its most prominent exponent in this country, expressed this in some often-quoted words:
"Any one who is acquainted with the history of science, will admit that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity... And as surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is coextensive with knowledge and with feeling and with action."The system embraces in its range several schools of thought differing more or less from one another--empiricism, positivism, scientific monism, agnosticism. Yet for our present purpose we are justified in grouping these various types of theory together as a single system. They proceed on the same presuppositions, and are characterized by what amounts to a common body of doctrine. This common element may be thus briefly summarized.
( 1 ) Nature is a mechanism governed by invariable and immutable law. The multiple parts of this mechanism possess widely different degrees of organization; but the sufficient explanation of every part, no matter what its organization, lies in its component elements. The whole, in all cases, has its full and final explanation in the parts of which it consists: the complex in its simple constituents. The higher may always be expressed in terms of the lower. Psychology is reducible to physiology: physiology to chemistry. In its extreme form naturalism regards the universe as consisting of atoms in various collocations. Individually separate they have, under the impulse of a natural tendency to movement, come together in groups: and these groups display various modes of action which we term laws of nature, and which arise from the character and arrangement of the component atoms. In the organization of nature there is nothing teleological. Why the vast process should have issued as it has in the existence of man and the development of social life, we cannot tell. Such was the resultant of forces. Eventually the process will run down: and as these things have arisen, so will they end. Many adherents of naturalism, it should be noted, leave the cosmological problem on one side. They are content to deal with ethical and social questions on this basis, seeking an explanation in which the spiritual has no part, but the origin of moral law and of the social order are traced to the animal appetites, and man's aesthetic judgment referred to the sexual instinct. It is, however, with the cosmological question that we are concerned in this chapter. And so far as naturalism deals with this point, it arrives, as its principles demand, at the conclusions which we have indicated.
Since naturalism rejects as fallacious any ultimate distinction between body and mind, it is plain what is its view regarding the psychical order. Life, it holds, has arisen spontaneously from nonliving matter: and the psychical is simply an ulterior development of physical life. In regard to the precise nature of cognition, the defenders of naturalism are, it may be owned, cautious of committing themselves. They recognize that there is something hitherto inexplicable in the relation between reality and knowledge: that psychical energy and physical energy are not similar, nor convertible the one into the other. Hence there is a certain vagueness in their utterances on this subject. Yet it is ever assumed that the material order is primary, and the psychical purely receptive in its regard. Neither intellect nor will can exert any influence upon the order of nature. The great mechanism pursues its course and allows of no interference from without. Moreover, within ourselves there is no principle of spontaneity. Knowledge reflects the real: will determines us preferentially to this or that course. But there is no originative activity in the intelligence, nor any such thing as freedom of the will.
( 2 ) Knowledge is confined exclusively to sensible phenomena. Science consists in the accurate determination of the coexistences and sequences which nature displays. Those who imagine that there is a knowledge beyond this, who theorize regarding such notions as substance and cause are the dupes of fancy. We perceive the relations of antecedence and sequence: and so far as experience goes, we see that every event has an antecedent to which it is related. But those who affirm that every finite thing must have a cause, and that the cause is that which gives it being, and who attribute to these principles a certainty greater than that of the generalizations of experience, are simply hypostatizing the creatures of their imagination. The science of metaphysics is a delusion: and the reasoning by which men have sought to establish the existence of a First Cause, and to shew that finite things must owe their origin to creation, is absolutely futile. There is no philosophy beyond physical science, and science tells us nothing about God or creation: nor does it need any such hypotheses for its validity.
( 3 ) Experience, we are assured, shews us that the law governing the mechanism of nature is evolution. The organic evolution of all living forms must be accepted as established beyond any possibility of question: the old belief in a separate creation of different species, or even of man as distinct from the brutes, is devoid of any vestige of solid foundation. The principle must be given its full scope: and we are thus justified in concluding that the universal order of things arose in this way, and that the world affords no evidence of an initial creation or of the existence of God. In virtue of its continued movement nature is ever evolving--passing from one stage to another. It suffices as its own explanation.
The doctrine, which we have summarized, may justly be described as scientific naturalism. It manifestly has no room for the spiritual in any shape or form. Vet it should be observed that many of its defenders deny that it involves any such consequences. They contend that matter and spirit are merely two aspects of the same reality: that the world may be viewed from both standpoints. They have, they aver, no intention of excluding one in favour of the other: their philosophy transcends the distinction: it is neither materialist nor spiritualist. Further, as regards the existence of God, the system, they assure us, is not atheist but agnostic. They do not deny that there may be a God: they merely assert that we cannot know anything of Him. Religion is admissible: and it may be that for some it fulfils a useful function. But it should be recognized that it is an affair of the emotions, and has no basis in the conclusions of reason. There can be no doubt that by adopting this attitude naturalism disarmed much of the hostility which it would have encountered, had it made open profession of materialism and atheism. But it is perfectly evident that the denial is purely formal. A system which interprets all existence in terms of matter and motion, which allows of no distinction between body and soul, which rejects the proofs for the existence of God, and declares a Creator unnecessary, is, with whatever reserves it may be stated, materialism and nothing else.
There have, of course, been materialists in every period of philosophy. But naturalism, as described above, is a growth of the nineteenth century. Its foundation-stone was the nebular hypothesis of Laplace (1749--1827), according to which the present universe arose mechanically out of the primal chaos. Laplace affirmed that his theory enabled him "to dispense with the hypothesis of a Creator. " The conclusions of Lyell to the effect that the geological transitions which form the history of our planet, and by which it was gradually rendered a fit habitation for man were not a series of transformations inexplicable save in view of the end to be attained, but were due to the natural working of the very same physical agencies with which we are ourselves familiar, seemed to fall into line with the Laplacean ideas. But the wide hold upon popular thought which the system obtained, is undoubtedly due to Darwin's investigations regarding the origin of species. It was believed that science had explained the development of the higher forms of life in terms of mechanical causation, and had shewn that man's beginnings were of precisely the same kind as that of the brute creation. The conclusion thus reached was regarded, as we have said, as a sufficient basis on which to build a thorough-going evolutionary system explaining the origin of all things from matter and force.
Natural Theology Series
Natural Theology, Design, Teleology, and Metaphysics
Selections scavenged from the oblivion of old and forgotten books.
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01 Argyll - Man as the Representative of the Supernatural
02 Gerard - The Voices of Babel
03 The Plain Man's Argument from Design
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I thought it had something to do with getting naked.
I had a premonition yesterday that at least one person would say this.
I had no idea the term was related until I did a search for a hotel in Spain. Thankfully I didn’t book the place.
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That's an interesting way of putting it.
Circular logic.
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