The New Naturalism

There is no comprehensive statement for the non-professional reader of the central affirmations of a type of philosophic naturalism that is at present quietly under elaboration in the schools. Indeed, even among the older generation of professional philosophers themselves there does not seem to be a very clear realization of what the movement presages. And yet a body of doctrine is beginning to emerge pointed toward two major and closely related objectives. It seeks, by means of deeper technical analysis, to further the liberation of naturalism from the narrowness and spiritual myopia from which it suffered when it was identified with materialism; and it also seeks to enlarge its range beyond the boundaries set for it by the older generation of philosophers who freed it from materialism. These objectives are set by what the naturalist takes to be the philosophic need of contemporary man: a dynamic integration of faith and fact, poetry and science, congruous with the orientation of our culture. We, the heirs of Plato and Thomas, must finally make our peace with the irresistible tools of knowledge forged by Galileo and Newton.

These objectives are not incongruous with the essential truth of materialism, which our new naturalism seeks to save: the belief in the self-sufficiency of nature—a belief that in one way or another idealistic philosophy since Plato has sought to deny. But for the materialist’s gratuitous mechanism, for his determinism, and especially for his attitude towards human values and ideals, it has no sympathy. The justification for the belief in nature’s self-sufficiency is to be found in the historical development of the last four hundred years, and is dearly the by-product of the development of science. We are frequently reminded that Copernicus pushed man from the preeminent place which medieval thought assigned to him, and this is as true as it is trite. But it has not always been seen with enough clarity that all areas of human experience have been opened up irresistibly though slowly to investigation by the same techniques of inquiry used by the Pole. Nor is the significance of this historical movement fully grasped unless we see that its basic factor is the development of a method of investigation, thanks to which the great intellectual achievements of our modern age have come about. But note that, properly understood, the scientific method does not only operate within the laboratory and with the aid of precision instruments. There is still much misunderstanding on this score. The knowledge of the exact scientist is the best knowledge we have, but only qua knowledge, as T. S. Eliot would say. Its presence does not exclude the existence of other knowledge less perfect than itself. Nor is exact knowledge the most important because the best. Its perfection is determined by inward methodological criteria, while its importance is a moral question decided by its effects on man’s needs. With these qualifications in mind we can define scientific method for our purpose: It is inquiry into problems open to public investigation, and resulting in empirically verifiable hypotheses, which express the relations found between the events inquired into.