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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: NAN-NEW |
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NATURALISM . " Nature " is a term of very uncertain extent, and the " natural " has accordingly several antitheses, often more or less conflicting, and only to be learnt from the context in which they occur. Thus, though Man and the World are often opposed as respectively subject and object, yet the word nature is applied to both: hence Naturalism is used in both a subjective and an objective sense. In the subjective sense the natural, as the original
Cynics
In psychology and epistemology
work
work
chief
Cambridge Platonists, from Locke and Clarke, we hear much of rational1 Quoted by Eisler, Worterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe (1899), s.o. " Naturalismus." 2 T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics (1883), 20.principles of conduct, comparable in respect of intelligibility with the truths of mathematics; but already we find that in Shaftesbury the centre of ethical interest
critical method in metaphysics, styles Reid and his followers " naturalists of pure reason," satirically comparing them to people who think they can settle the size and distance of the moon by direct eyesight better than by the roundabout calculations of mathematics.So far we have seen the natural approximating to the non-rational. But when used in a subjective sense in opposition to the supernatural, it means the rational as opposed to what is above reason, or even contrary to reason. It is in this sense that the term Naturalism most frequently occurs; and it was so applied specially to the doctrines of the English Deists and the German Illuminati of the 17th and 18th centuries: those of them who held that human reason alone was capable of attaining to the knowledge of God were called theological naturalists or rationalists, while those who denied the possibility of revelation altogether were called philosophical naturalists or naturalists simply s In these controversies the term Naturalist was also sometimes used in an objective sense for those who identified God and Nature, but they were more frequently styled Spinozists, Pantheists or even Atheists. But it is at once obvious that dispute as to what is natural and what supernatural is vain and hopeless till the meanings of reason and nature are clearly defined. " The only distinct meaning of the word " [natural], said Butler, " is stated, fixed or settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e. to effect it continually, or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once. And from hence it must follow that persons' notion of what is natural will be enlarged in proportion to tl}eir greater knowledge. . . . Nor is there any absurdity in supposing that there may be beings in the universe, whose capacities . . . may be so extensive, as that the whole Christian dispensation may to them appear natural, i.e. analogous or conformable to God's dealings with other parts of His creation; as natural as the visible known course of things appears to us." 7 The antithesis of natural to spiritual (or ideal) has mainly determined the use of the term Naturalism in the present day.$ But current naturalism is not to be called materialism, though these terms are often used synonymously, as by Hegel , Ueberweg and other historians of philosophy; nor yet pan-theism, if by that is meant the immanence of all things in one God. We know only material phenomena, it is said; matter is an abstract conception simply, not a substantial reality. It is therefore meaningless to describe mind as its effect. Moreover, mind also is but an abstract conception; and here again all our knowledge is confined to the phenomenal. To identify the two classes of phenomena is, however, impossible, and indeed absurd; nevertheless we find a constant concomitance of psychosis and neurosis; and the more sensationalist and associationist our psychology, the easier it becomes to correlate the3 Cf. Sidgwick, History of Ethics (1886), p. 181. ' Cf. W. R. Sorley, The Ethics of Naturalism (1885), pp. 16 sqq. 'Cf. W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson; his Life, Teaching and Position in Philosophy (1900), pp. 121, 265 seq. 2 See RATIONALISM; Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Hartenstein's edition, vi. 253; and Lechler, Geschichte des Englischen Deismus (1841), pp. 454 sqq. ' Analogy, part i. chap. i. end. Cf. also J. S. Mill, Logic, book iii. chap. xxv. 2, and Essays on Religion. 2In aesthetics we find Naturalism used in a cognate sense: the Flemish painters, such writers as Flaubert or Zola, for example, being called naturalistic or realistic, in contrast to the Italian painters or writers like George Sand or the Brontes. psychical and the physical as but " two aspects " of one and the same fact. It is therefore simplest and sufficient to assume an underlying, albeit unknown, unity connecting the two. A monismso far neutral, neither materialistic nor spiritualisticis thus a characteristic of the prevailing naturalism. But when the question arises, how best to systematize experience as a whole, it is contended that we must begin from the physical side. Here we have precise conceptions, quantitative exactness and thoroughgoing continuity; every thought that has ever stirred the hearts of men, not less than every breeze that has ever rippled the face of the deep, has meant a perfectly definite re-distribution of matter and motion. To the mechanical principles of this redistribution an ultimate analysis brings us down; andbeginning from thesethe nebular hypothesis and the theory of natural selection will enable us to explain all subsequent synthesis.' Life and mind now clearly take a secondary place; the cosmical mechanism determines them, while they are powerless to modify it. The spiritual becomes the " epiphenomenal," a merely incidental phosphorescence, so to say, that regularly accompanies physical processes of a certain type and complexity. (See also PSYCHOLOGY.) This absolute naturalism, as we may call
epistemology
The naturalistic work of chief
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