http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1699639

Science and idealism

"The author discusses the relationship between idealism and the sciences. All the sciences tell us about the material system of causally connected things in space. Nature, material and mental, knows no values. Yet it is evident that this alone does not mean that there are no values in reality. The new sophists who today call themselves empiriocriticists and humanists and pragmatists want to teach us, and yet warn us against the belief in truth; they want to convince us, and yet assure us that they have no convictions. By a complete misunderstanding of transcendental philosophy, they are frightened by curious caricatures of idealism. Whatever the individual personality is trying to examine and to discover, does it not always refer to a world whose ultimate structure is determined beforehand by the possibilities of subjective experience? Every one of us lives in a chaos of experience. But by a fundamental act of our over-individual personalities, we transcend the chaos: we become intelligent subjects by creating the idea of a world which is common to us. The objective world to which all our possible knowledge and interest refer must have four large groups of absolute values: the logical, the aesthetical, the ethical, and the metaphysical values. The author examines these four groups of values and sketches the complete system of ideals. The author concludes that science falls asunder if we disbelieve in absolute ideals." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

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