There are two methods of philosophising, one starts with ideas which
are supposed not to need any explanation, the other starts from facts
and uses facts as data. The former is the method of the constructionist
or ontologist, the latter that of the positivist. The constructionist
attempts to beget a world-theory in the same way that God was supposed
to have created the world; he attempts to bring it into being either
out of a real nothing or out of something like nothing. He constructs a
world-theory out of the self-evident, out of the absolute, out of the
indubitable, or out of that the contrary of which is inconceivable. The
positivist, however, employs facts as the given material, which he works
out into a consistent and systematic whole. The former view is synthetic
and constructive, the latter is analytic and descriptive. The former view
is the method of Hegel, Oken, and also of Mr. Spencer, the latter is the
method of all scientists and the ideal of the positive philosophy.
Mr. Peirce although very positivistic in his logic of science, must in
philosophy still be counted among the constructionists.
Chance is to Mr. Peirce as much absolute as was to Hegel the idea
of “abstract being,” which as such, Hegel said, is equivalent to
“non-being.” Non-being need not be accounted for. So Hegel starts with
this idea, and finding that “becoming” is the oscillation between being
and non-being launches his abstract thought upon the terra firma of
reality.
In the same way and with similar ingenious ingenuity Oken starts
the world with zero. Zero or non-being need not be accounted for.
Its existence calls for no particular reasons. What is zero? We can
conceive it as “0 = 1 - 1.” Thus we have “+1” and “-1,” two units. The
whole world, according to Oken, is only a disintegration of Nothing,
an equation of enormous complexity but always equal to zero. And that
explains the world!
Mr. Spencer, adopts “the principle of setting out with propositions of
which the negations are unconceivable,” without being aware that any
inveterate belief or prejudice can be defended from that standpoint.
The principle is purely subjective. It does not admit of any objective
verification and limits knowledge to individual conception. If Mr.
Spencer’s principle were admissible, we could not refute the adversaries
of the Copernican system, when they declare that the rotation of the
earth up on which we stand is inconceivable. The maxim that that
proposition is most certain the negation of which is inconceivable might
after all, and it actually did very often, come into conflict with facts.
Many propositions are now confidently accepted which were formerly
declared to be positively inconceivable.
Mr. Peirce, I say, starts the world with an abstract idea of a something
of which he assumes we need not give any account, as did the great
ontologists of former times. He constructs, agreeably to his reason, a
theory of the way in which the world might have originated, and thus he
falls into the mistake criticised by himself as the _a priori_ method.
Yet the weakest point of Mr. Peirce’s system is that his “absolute
chance” begets order; irregularity becomes law by practice, as if by a
sufficiently prolonged shaking the dice would by and by acquire the habit
of turning up the same faces each time.
The present world-conception of the scientist regards natural laws as
eternal. The order that prevails in these laws constitutes the principle
of evolution and changes the chaos of a nebula into a well-arranged
planetary system. Thus the original chaos is properly speaking no chaos.
It is in all its parts regulated by law and only appears chaotic in
comparison with more advanced stages of evolution.
Desirous to account for the regularities of nature Mr. Peirce proposes
the idea that nature in the beginning was a real, true chaos, without
order, without laws, the single actions of reality taking place
irregularly and in a sportive manner. Absolute chance prevailed.
Everything was undetermined, exactly as much so as a man is undetermined
in his action before his belief is settled. Yet a man, by and by, forms
a belief and acts accordingly, not once or twice, but often, until a
habit is formed. Thus Mr. Peirce assumes, Nature’s actions are first
undetermined, they may be of this kind or of another kind. The same
particle of reality may under the same conditions act in different ways,
yet it acts somehow; it acts again, and repeats a certain kind of action
more frequently than others, thus forming habits. Laws according to Mr.
Peirce are the habits acquired by nature.
The proposition of Mr. Peirce’s logic of science points out another
method of constructing a world-conception. The recognition of reality in
the sense as he conceives it, admonishes us that our world-conception
should be a picturing, a mirroring, an imitation of the objective world
of facts. It should not be the architecture of a theory, but first
an analysis and then a reconstruction of experience; it should be a
description of facts, methodically arranged.