The Physics of Idealism

Download or read book The Physics of Idealism written by Edgar Lenderson Hinman and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-10-09 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Introduction. In discussing the attitude of idealism towards the metaphysics of natural science one is embarrassed at the outset by the indeflniteness of the term idealism. Systems which are called idealistic differ radically in character, as do those of Leibniz and Berkeley. Many, of them exhibit features which are supposed to be characteristic of realism. Yet the distinction between realism and idealism is a time-honored one, and cannot be without significance. It is therefore important to determine with some precision in what this distinction consists. Two criteria often used to make the distinction appear to the writer to be of very inferior value. According to one, an idealist is a thinker who denies that the external world and the objects of knowledge possess a reality independent of the perception or thought by which they form a part of his consciousness. Their esse is percipi, and in addition to their reality as perception no sort of existence can be ascribed to them. The realist, on the other hand, urges that things exist by themselves, and that afterwards a knowing mind may happen to perceive them-or it may not, the incident being of no great significance. There is no doubt much excuse for resting the distinction upon the denial of an objective world independent of consciousness. The general contention of idealism, both in England and Germany, has been that the reality of the object consists in nothing else than being perceived. Except as related to consciousness, it is urged, no meaning can be ascribed to objectivity. With Berkeley insisting that the esse of things is nothing but their percipi, and with Fichte striving to show how the Ego constructs the world by its own spontaneity, the foregoing characterization has seemed just and has won wide acceptance. The extreme subjectivism which this statement of the idealistic position entails is a matter of regret. Wherever it is dominant idealism fights at a marked disadvantage. The suppression of subjectivism has been the perennial struggle of the idealist. The idealist does not actually mean that the mind of the individual constructs for itself a field of consciousness which is its universe, and that the universe so known carries with it no implication or evidence of an existent reality external to the consciousness of the individual mind. He can no more dispense with such a reality than his opponent can dispense with the material world. It is the principle which makes the world a system, and causes the universe constructed by one mind to harmonize with that constructed by another. From the standpoint of the individual, this may be called an external world. It is not exter.nal to the mind, if by external we understand something opposed to the mind and distinct from it. On the contrary, for most forms of idealism this universal principle must be immanent in the mind, and may in this sense be called internal. It is external, however, in the sense that it involves immensely more than the consciousness of the single individual. Its sphere of activity lies largely outside the consciousness of the finite subject, and it is in this extra-mental sphere that we must find the ground and explanation of the cosmic order.