Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/241

No. 3] type of advance is analogous to that of the Hegelian dialectic. In emerging into antithesis after each successive synthesis, Rationalism ever tends to include more empirical data in the material with which it works, while Empiricism is inclined to stray ever further from the surface of things by building up its data into abstract intellectual constructions, and by framing more or less abstract hypotheses to account for these data.

Pluralism, with its genetic method, is the modern outcome of Empiricism. The position of Rationalism is not, at first sight, so clear. One's thoughts turn naturally to the idealism of the Absolutist school; but although the beliefs of this school are upheld by some of the foremost philosophers of the day, they represent an influence which is rapidly on the wane. The true progressive product of Rationalism, despite the fact that its data are mainly empirical, is the New Realism, for its scientific method purports to deal with the form and structure of existence as opposed to its concrete content.

The final synthesis of the two points of view consists not in an amalgamation, but in a recognition of the fact that each is necessary to the complete fulfilment of philosophic purpose, and in a determination of the particular function, domain, and limitations, of each associated method.

II. Outline of Scientific Method.— The scientific method attacks the problem of the Universe piecemeal. A problem is selected, isolated as far as possible, and an attempt made to clarify our conceptions relating to it, and to determine by continued analysis, the true source of the perplexities underlying the question. The final step, and the most difficult, is to formulate an hypothesis which will resolve these perplexities. The difficulty of this last process lies in the fact that the necessary hypothesis is inevitably of a peculiarly abstract nature, for at each successive stage of the analysis the matter under consideration becomes more abstract.

In any particular investigation, the initial data consist in the generally accepted body of knowledge on the subject. This knowledge will almost invariably be vague and confused, and