Page:The Idealistic Reaction Against Science (1914).djvu/25

 criticism, determined by imperious demands of the mind which positivism failed to satisfy, came into contact with the new criticism which the new theories called into being in the realm of science itself, thus shaking dogmatic belief in the old geometry and in traditional mechanical science. This valid co-operation of physicists and mathematicians distinguishes the struggle against intellectualism of the closing years of the nineteenth century from the analogous movement of the beginning of the present century; it is also more intense and more extensive, especially as regards its critical aspect. The scientific method which Kant and the idealists had declared to be inadequate in the domain of the absolute had successfully resisted all attacks, entrenching itself within the citadel of the phenomenon which Kant himself had fortified so strongly with his vigorous criticism, but towards the end of the century the reaction spread to this sphere also, and science was not only divested of its speculative office, but its theoretical value was denied as well.

The prevalence of Darwinism and of the theory of evolution in general contributed not a little to this radical change in the concept of science. From this standpoint consciousness too appeared to be a complex of functions, whose meaning could not differ from that of the other organic functions: it was but an additional weapon in the struggle for existence, a means of adaptation. The theoretical function could not be regarded as an exception to this utilitarian value — a value, that is to say, of an essentially practical order — of psychic fife as a whole, and the forms of thought, like the other types of the biological world, could not therefore be considered as being immutable and eternal, but rather as being subject to a continuous process of formation by means of successive adaptations to new conditions of life. Science is no longer the standard by which every form of knowledge is gauged, as was the case in the days of the old positivism; it is no longer the eternal mould into which human consciousness must be forced