Modern Science and the Illusions of Professor Bergson (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 Excerpt: ...that Ptolemy could be of use to Christopher Columbus, that Galen could lay the foundations of medicine. The theory of the independence of mind and body was first shaken when Galen cured nervous complaints by physical methods. While science went forward, philosophy languished. The Stoicism of Zeno and his followers was the philosophy most in harmony with the austerity of Roman manners; it unconditionally posited virtue as the object of existence--virtue of so harsh a character as soon to produce the natural reaction. In the poem of Lucretius, De rerum Naturae, we find, perhaps, the highest as well as the latest effort of ancient philosophy. Not only did Lucretius accept the universality of law, but he even included the phenomena of life as explicable on purely natural and physical principles. Lucretius did much to spread the doctrines of the Epikureans among the Romans. But when the moral degeneration of Rome took place, Epikureanism was less useful than Stoicism in the attempt to stem the tide, and both finally were overwhelmed. In Alexandria, Plotinus announced that the 'One' was the origin of all things. Proclus identified science with theology. The old rule of metaphysics is still maintained: to save itself from the dissolving contact of positive knowledge, by making its 'causes' and 'explanations' ever more abstract and intangible. Mysticism and ecstasy reigned supreme: while men of science were laying the foundations of a materialistic physiology, philosophers were preaching the complete dissociation of soul from body. The intellectual degradation of the Middle Ages is foreshadowed by the unnatural mysticism of Plotinus, who blushed to think he had a body. Finally reason gave way to faith, and philosophy flickered out altogether. For more than a thousa...