The Interpretation Of Nature | by C. Lloyd Morgan
The Interpretation of Nature formed the subject of a course of Lowell Lectures which I had the honour of delivering in Boston last year, and of an article in the May number of the Contemporary Review. Of that article this little book is an expansion. I have introduced a few passages from a series of papers which appeared in the Monist in 1897 and succeeding years, and have utilised, in Section X., parts of an Address given at the International Congress of Arts and Science during the St. Louis Exposition. Were so small a volume worthy of such an inscription I would dedicate it to my many American friends, to whose kindness and courtesy I owe so much.
| Title | The Interpretation Of Nature |
| Author | C. Lloyd Morgan |
| Publisher | G. P. Putnam's Sons |
| Year | 1906 |
| Copyright | 1906, C. Lloyd Morgan |
| Amazon | The Interpretation Of Nature |
I. Diverse Interpretations- An interpreter, I take it, is one whose business it is to disclose or unfold meaning. In the commonest use of the word he is one who translates for us what is expressed in a language which we do not u...
- I. Diverse Interpretations. Continued
- There is a class of book, at present much in vogue, so much so as to afford a fair indication of what most strongly appeals to the average man, wherein are to be found pleasing descriptions of nature ...
- II. Purpose And Naturalism
- HERE can be little doubt that among primitive folk the conception of purpose would be freely employed in all matters of social life and intercourse, and in this connection would stand in no need of ex...
- II. Purpose And Naturalism. Continued
- But while naturalism thus finds its principle of unification in the universality and interconnection of world-events, while it works inwards from external nature to the life and mind of man which it i...
- III. The Realities Of Experience
- HOW do we become acquainted with the world in which we live? and what are the realities in and for experience? It might seem at first sight that these are questions which we could well afford to pa...
- III. The Realities Of Experience. Continued
- For the practical purposes of daily life, guidance is afforded by the correlation of the several fields of sensory reference the visual field, the auditory field, the fields of touch, of smell, taste,...
- IV. An Historical Controversy
- MR. BALFOUR, in his Foundations of Belief, contends that naturalism is deeply committed to the distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities of matter; the former (extension, solidity, ...
- IV. An Historical Controversy. Continued
- Instead of speaking of different orders of reality, we should rather speak of the co-ordinate realities on different planes of the analysis and synthesis of objective experience. Instead of saying tha...
- V. The Ideal Construction Of Naturalism
- The doctrine that the interpretation of nature is the interpretation of human experience seems to carry with it the implication that it is built upon purely subjective foundations. Thus Herbert Spence...
- V. The Ideal Construction Of Naturalism. Part 2
- It has been shown [says Professor Darwin in his Presidential Address at the South African meeting of the British Association (1905)] that the atom, previously supposed to be indivisible, really consis...
- V. The Ideal Construction Of Naturalism. Part 3
- That it is an ideal must not be forgotten. And that our most securely established generalisations are reached by carrying in thought to their conceptual limits the legitimate inferences from observati...
- V. The Ideal Construction Of Naturalism. Part 4
- It may be said, however, that, quite apart from any belief in Divine agency, the existence of force as a cause of motion is commonly accepted by physicists. If we ask what is the cause of the attracti...
- VI. The Web Of Causation
- We live in a world in which effect follows cause in an orderly and, we are apt to suppose, invariable rhythm. According to modern modes of thought, it matters not where we tap the fount of scientific ...
- VI. The Web Of Causation. Continued
- The first question we may ask concerning the views which are thus so clearly and forcibly expressed is this: Does Hume disclose anything beyond observable or frequently observed succession? Obviously ...
- VII. The Problem Of Life
- From whatever point of view we regard the problem of life we are in the presence of a group of of related phenomena which are peculiar to and characteristic of protoplasm. In the simplest living organ...
- VII. The Problem Of Life. Part 2
- It may be asked, however, Why is a sense of mystery especially evoked in some minds by the contemplation of life? Partly, I think, because the scientific interpretation of organic processes is so rece...
- VII. The Problem Of Life. Part 3
- Interesting and important as are these phenomena, they do but disclose one of the many properties characteristic of living matter. The existence of these properties the man of science accepts on the b...
- VIII. Mind And Mechanism
- The hypothesis of mental development in the individual and mental evolution in the race is now generally accepted; widely accepted, too, in the close and intimate connection of brain and mind. We have...
- VIII. Mind And Mechanism. Continued
- The difficulty of conceiving how mind can act on matter and matter can act on mind seems to be empirically insuperable. The physiological series and the psychological series are incommensurate. Empiri...
- IX. The Science Of Metaphysics Of Will
- A complete and satisfactory interpretation of nature, is so far as it is attainable by man, partly scientific and partly metaphysical. It has been my object to distinguish these factors. The departmen...
- IX. The Science Of Metaphysics Of Will. Part 2
- Take now a simple case of voluntary action. I see a picture hanging awry and set it straight. All that I am conscious of at the moment is perhaps a sense of dissatisfaction at its position, followed b...
- IX. The Science Of Metaphysics Of Will. Part 3
- In the doctrine of the ego. as formulated by naturalistic psychology, the soul or mind is simply the name which we apply to a sequence of such configurations. I can best indicate the nature of the ...
- X. Genetic Psychology
- Professor SULLY tells a story of a little girl who stole softly into the dining-room after dessert, not noticing that her elder sister was standing at the bookshelf in a dark corner of the room. The l...
- X. Genetic Psychology. Part 2
- Now if there is one feature which is essentially characteristic of the popular conception of the influence of mind in the conduct of affairs it is that consciousness, as controlling, stands in some wa...
- X. Genetic Psychology. Part 3
- This word meaning, used in a somewhat specialised sense, is a comparatively new importation into psychology. Let me illustrate what it implies by a simple concrete case. A chick, in virtue of its in...
- X. Genetic Psychology. Part 4
- I would restrict the term intelligence to the guiding factor in behaviour, as the result of experience, when it falls within what Dr. Stout has termed the perceptual sphere. Here any given situation...
- X. Genetic Psychology. Part 5
- Now it appears to me that recent researches all point to the fact that the mental processes of animals are mainly—I do not say entirely, though I myself still incline to that opinion—but at all events...
- X. Genetic Psychology. Part 6
- Intelligence, then, in the perceptual sphere, embodying the coalescent re-presention of concrete situations, exercises a guiding influence over the automatic responses of instinctive origin; and this ...
- X. Genetic Psychology. Part 7
- The conditions of the evolution of intelligence as influential on behaviour are. on the physiological side, the increased differentiation, size, and complexity of the secondary centres, and on the psy...
- XI. The Metaphysical Postulate
- To the riddles which nature propounds to us, said Lord Salisbury in his Oxford address to the British Association, the confession of ignorance must constantly be our only reasonable answer. And th...
- XI. The Metaphysical Postulate. Continued
- I then urged that the method of science is to frame ideal constructions; that in its departmental studies it extracts from the manifold of phenomena just those essentials which are necessary for its s...
- XII. Determinism And Purpose
- The world around us [said Kant] opens before our view so magnificent a spectacle of order, variety, beauty, and conformity to ends that, whether we pursue our observations into the infinity of space i...
- XII. Determinism And Purpose. Part 2
- It will perhaps be said that prevision or foresight is that which is essential to volition; and that human conduct is determined rather by the future than the past. And it will be urged that purpose i...
- XII. Determinism And Purpose. Part 3
- For why does the reflex act appear to us to be purposive? Why does it seem to us as if it were guided by foresight? Precisely because it is determinate; precisely because, as in human volition, the en...
