The fact is, that this demand for an impossible suspense of judgment is based upon a confusion of scientific and philosophic certainty. In science, certainty=great probability, and impossibility=an off chance; and hence in pure (as opposed to abstract or applied) science certainty is neither frequent nor necessaty. But in philosophy, which is the science of life, we require from our theory practical certainty in addition to its theoretic probability, and as we must act, we must act often on very slight probabilities. While science, therefore, must remain conscious of all sorts of improbable and barely possible theories, seeing that they may suggest fruitful experiments and so enlarge the bounds of knowledge, philosophy, when it has once decided on the right solution, must sternly and rigorously put aside all its rivals, even though its choice was origionally arrived at by a very slender preponderance. It must act and act without wavering and without hesitation, as soon as its initial inquiry has been concluded, nor allow itself to be easily dismayed by difficulties or deterred from following its principles to their consistent conclusions. Philosophy, at all events, cannot serve both God and Mannon. Any inconsistency and any hesitation is bound to be false, whatever theory of life is true. Such a thing, therefore, as a provisional theory of life would be absurd. How different is the course of merely theoretic science: upon all disputable points, it may, nay must, keep any number of provitional hypothese before its eyes, and must be slow to decide in favour of one or the other; it must be for ever doubting and testing, and if convenient, may even adopt conflicting explanations in different branches of its inquires, and trust to fresh discovery to resolve the contradictions of its working hypotheses. The patient temper which does not reject the remotest possibility that may throw light upon a subject, which as in Darwin's case, is not ashamed to try absurd experiments which it is ahamed to record, is that which has led to great discovery. The mental attitude in short required in scientific research, is the very opposite to that required in a theory of life; and in philosophy there is no room for the scientific suspense of judgment.
哲学海拔可以和他的身高相媲美
《确定性的终结》热门书评
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