2If it is true that Philosophy proposes above all that we
take consciousness of our deepest inclinations, if it is true that by
applying itself to the diverse workings and operations of the intellect it
is able to go back to their origin and appreciate their value, the task of
the scientist himself comes back in some way to the domain of philosophy.
It cannot be a question here of the results of scientific research into
the subject of such knowledge, since in the eyes of a philosophy of the
intellect metaphysics has nothing to expect from science as it has nothing
to do with it and because knowledge of the laws of relationship cannot in
any way modify a speculation that has as its object the absolute. But the
very principles of science, the laws that the intellect obeys unknowingly
through scientific research, the internal necessity which governs its
course in scientific testing, the nature of its reasonings and the value
of its conclusions, here we have the true domain of philosophy, here we
have scientific formalism the critique of which will be truly
philosophical because in a certain measure it will be the same critique of
the laws of the intellect.
"The laws of our rational faculty", as Stuart Mill said, "like those of
every other natural agency, are only learned by seeing the agent at work.
The earlier achievements of science were made without the conscious
observance of any scientific Method; and we should never have known by
what process truth is to be ascertained, if we had not previously
ascertained many truths. But it was only the easier problems which could
be thus resolved: natural sagacity, when it tried its strength against the
more difficult ones, failed altogether. ... We learn to do a thing in
difficult circumstances, by attending to the manner in which we have
spontaneously done the same thing in easier ones." But it is only onto the
outside, the framework of their reasoning, that scientists bring this
reflective intellect of which Stuart Mill speaks here. The essence, the
law, the value escapes them. Also do we not see them multiply experiences,
bring precision to the conditions for the production of a phenomenon with
care and infinite meticulousness? But once the cause is isolated, once the
connection is affirmed, immediately and without hesitation, with all his
might, never doubting the enormous leap that he has made the idea perform,
without examination, without placing in doubt for a moment the firm
foundation of his conclusion, the scientist endows with inevitability,
with universality the connection thus established, which he passes from
fact to law. The connection that he has taken so much trouble to state
exactly, he conceives it as if he has not taken one step further and had
not consequently any precautions to be taken into account nor to proceed
with caution, by connecting together the two phenomena inevitably,
indissolubly, upon all points in space, in every minute in time,
throughout every human intelligence, and outside of themselves. Because
this universal and inevitable connection is not for him a law of his
intellect. It is a law of nature. The philosopher coming upon such
reasoning might be astonished that the mind of the scientist applies so
much authority, so much value, so much inevitability to the simple
statement of an isolated connection between two facts. But the scientist
does not relate the universal and inevitable character of the law that he
has extracted to himself. For him it is of the same character as the laws
of nature. What drives on his reasoning at that moment, is the idea at the
back of the mind that has directed him without his knowing, the idea that
there are in fact laws in nature, that the course of these laws is
uniform, that the relationships between cause and effect remain identical
because they are universal and inevitable. Likewise does the scientist
believe not that he is establishing laws between phenomena but that he is
discovering them? Hardly has he stated a relationship between two
phenomena than he thinks he has simply rediscovered it. He thinks that he
has diminished by the same proportion his ignorance of the laws of nature,
an ignorance that furnishes him with the same idea by the certainty that
he has of the objective existence of these unknown laws. It is this
certainty that philosophies can never explain which, under various names
deny the identity or accordance of laws of nature with the laws of
Thought. By assimilating to the laws of association the principle of
scientific inference they disregard that crucial observation that instead
of being certain as he always is at the first decisive experience, the
scientist must, by virtue of their theory, believe in the probabilities
that are multiplied mechanically by the number of experiences. By relaxing
the strictness of this doctrine in order to adapt it more exactly to the
reality of things, evolutionism merely demonstrates a stronger sense of
the difficulties of phenomenism without removing them or doing anything
other than recede into a very ancient past. But they do not seem to vanish
into that past other than through a mirage of perspective and to subsist
there entirely. That we add to the experience of the scientist the
experience of the whole line of his predecessors, added upon through
heredity, the difference between the probability of the experience and the
certainty of the conclusion remain irreducible. A billion probabilities do
not make a certainty. On the billion and first occasion when the effect
might not follow the cause or occur without being preceded by it, such an
association being totally subjective and unable to connect phenomena in
nature, after a certain period of time it connects them in our minds. It
must therefore be concluded that the inference of the scientist which goes
beyond experience, may not be derived from it and is not a transformation
of it. We must look at the Principle of Causality and the Principle of
Laws that is derived from it and affirms only the permanence and the
identity of causal relationships of the first Principle of the Intellect,
not in the sense that they explain the most profound aspect of things, but
in this other sense, that they form part of the intellect, are anterior to
experience, and are certainly empty if it does not come to fill them,
giving to it alone by applying to it its form, its value and its meaning.
"One theory alone", argues M. Rabier, "is able to confer perfect certainty
upon the principles of Reason, namely: absolute idealism... but it is
non-demonstrable... who can deduce from any sort of category of reason the
flavour of the truffle, which in any case man, the animal of reason, is
not alone in appreciating... How to explain that the idea becomes the
phenomenon, category the sensation. " Without attempting here the defense
of absolute idealism, it might be said that scientific certainty is in no
way dependent upon the identity of the phenomenon and the idea, but upon
the identity of laws that govern phenomena and the laws of the intellect.
"Besides", Monsieur Rabier adds, "where can we find the proof of this
absolute certainty that is claimed for the principle of inference? Is it
in Kant's theory? it postulates agreement between reason and phenomena. A
singular exigency in truth that disdains proof drawn from the teachings of
clearly understood experience and which, in order to confer greater
certainty to principles of alleged reason, what? a postulate! - We should
not however let go of the prey for the shadow." For us who need Science to
have all the certainty that the intellect of the scientist attributes to
it, we should not be surprised that it remains, in the final analysis,
dependent upon a postulate. Which comes back quite simply to saying that
all philosophy is one and that Kant could not have created his logic of
Understanding without attaching it, which is to say making it dependent
upon, his Metaphysics.
1. From Bulletin de la société des amis de Marcel Proust, no 32, 1982., p. 484, Une dissertation philosophique de l'élève Marcel Proust, by Éduard Morot-Sir.
2. Probably written in the first months of 1889 for his philosophy
class. The teacher Alphonse Darlu (professor of philosophy at the Lycée
Condorcet) has written on the paper: "4/20 Extremely vague and
superficial. Hardly one idea expressed in a very complex subject! - Some
progress in composition."
Created 12.03.18