45. Eduard Grimm - On the history of the problem of knowledge

Leipzig 1890

A few weeks ago, German philosophy was enriched by a valuable book written in Weimar. The fact that the author of the work is the archdeacon Dr. Eduard Grimm, and the scholarly importance attached to it, justify it sufficiently if we express at this point the deep satisfaction that reading it has given us. We found one of the most interesting epochs in the development of science discussed in a truly exemplary manner. The book sets itself the task of explaining the teachings of the five English philosophers: Francis Bacon (1561 to 1626), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1709), George Berkeley (1685-1753), David Hume (1711-1776) for epistemology, that is for that science which is concerned with answering the question: to what extent is man capable of solving the riddles of the world and investigating the laws of nature and life through his thinking?

The scientific period to which these five thinkers belong is so extraordinarily significant because it marks one of the most important turning points in scientific life. The wisdom of the Middle Ages had contented itself with continuing along the paths trodden by Aristotle, the great teacher of Alexander the Great. The way in which he approached the tasks of the sciences, the goals he set, were still considered incontestable even when new observations and experiences could no longer be properly reconciled with them. This, however, hindered all progress and made the free development of the free and independent thinking demanded by discoveries in the field of science impossible. Then Francis Bacon appeared on the scene. His aim was to purify science of all traditional prejudices and to completely rebuild it on the basis of the new achievements of the time. Grimm is a master at capturing Bacon precisely at the point where his great significance for the development of European thought is most evident. By clinging to principles that belonged to a time long past and could only have validity and value for the life of that time, science had become alienated from the life of the immediate present, indeed had become completely useless for it. But "all science has emerged from life and takes from it the right and the basis of its existence. If it departs too far from its origin, life itself cannot fail to oppose it with its own direct force and urge a new formation of science. Francis Bacon of Verulam confronts the science of his time in this way. He reproaches it with resembling a plant which, torn from its stem, no longer has any connection with the body of nature and therefore no longer receives any nourishment from it." (Cf. Grimm, Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems, pp. 5-6.) Grimm explains with as much thoroughness as truly philosophical superiority how Bacon, by establishing an infallible method of observation and experimentation, wants to put science on the right track, how he, by ruthlessly combating all prejudices and errors among scholars as well as all other educated people, wants to provide access only to absolutely certain knowledge. To this, as to the whole book in general, we must praise the only historically correct method, which does full justice to the thinkers under consideration by letting them speak for themselves wherever it seems necessary. The beneficial effect produced by the book is due in no small part to the fact that the author does not, as so many recent historians of science do, emphasize his own scientific views in assessing the thought of others, but places his personal ability, which is visible to the discerning reader everywhere, at the service of an all-round objective development of the systems of thought dealt with.

The Baconian school of thought, for all its great importance, was guilty of a one-sided overestimation of the mere observation of things at the expense of independent thinking that draws from man's own breast. This deficiency became even greater with Thomas Hobbes, who saw thinking as nothing more than a faculty mediated by language. "Understanding is the understanding of words." (Grimm, p.87.) Hobbes denies that thinking can come to knowledge by itself and through itself. "Sensual perception, imagination, and the succession of our ideas, which we call experience, is what is given to us by nature." (Grimm,.85-86.) "Hobbes calls reason that activity by which we compose ideas and words." (Grimm, p. 87.) Thus, according to Hobbes, science is not based on a thinking comprehension of the world, but merely on the rational use and correct understanding of words. The fact that words convey ideas and that our knowledge is based on them is a proposition that does not exist for Hobbes. It is understandable that under such circumstances knowledge can no longer have an independent purpose. Therefore Hobbes finds: "Knowledge is there for the sake of skill, mathematics for the sake of mechanics, all speculation for the sake of some work, some action." (Grimm,. 99.) Certainly, knowledge that consists only of words can have no independent value. However, Hobbes believed that he could only achieve what he wanted by giving science this twist. What we observe and experience in individual cases has only a limited truth. We can never know whether it is true in all the cases we have not observed. Words, on the other hand, we determine arbitrarily, so we know exactly how far what they claim is valid. This view proved fatal to Hobbes in his foundation of the doctrine of morals and the state. For if everything that has objective validity is based only on the arbitrariness of words, then any real distinction between "good" and "evil" ceases to exist. These concepts, too, become arbitrary creations of man. "There is no general rule about good and evil taken from the nature of things themselves." (Grimm,. 135-136.) And in the state, order cannot be maintained by people controlling their instincts through reason, through free insight, but only by a despotic ruler enforcing the observation of arbitrarily established moral laws.

John Locke is at the center of Grimm's work. After all, he is "the first philosopher to place the question of knowledge at the center of research as a completely independent and independent task". (Grimm, 5.173.) On the continent, Ren& Descartes (Cartesius 1596-1650) is the founder of a new philosophy that frees itself from the bonds of Aristotle. He sees the reason why we can arrive at unconditional and unquestionable knowledge in the fact that certain ideas are innate to us. We need only raise them from the hidden depths of our soul and place them in the full light of consciousness. Locke now opposed this view with the proposition that we have no innate, but only acquired knowledge. According to Locke, we do not bring any knowledge into the world with us, but only the ability to acquire it. Starting from this insight, he seeks to investigate the sources and validity of our knowledge. In doing so, he arrives at a proposition that is now a part of modern consciousness, namely that only mass, shape, number and motion are properties that really exist in bodies, while color, sound, heat, taste and so on are only effects of the bodies on our senses, but not something in the bodies themselves.

George Berkeley now claims that the first-mentioned qualities also have no existence independent of our imagination, but that they only exist insofar as we imagine them. There are no things at all that correspond to our ideas. Berkeley denies the existence of a corporeal world and allows only spirits to exist in which the divine being, through its all-dominant power, evokes the ideas. "What I perceive, I must also imagine; something of which I have no conception at all cannot be the object of my perception or experience, it does not exist for me at all." "Therefore, there is no perception, no existence, no experience beyond the limit of imagination." (Grimm, p. 385.)

Finally, David Hume takes up Locke's view that we can only gain all our knowledge through observation. But as we can only ever obtain information about individual cases by observation, we have only such knowledge as relates to particulars and no generally valid knowledge. When I see that one thing always follows another, I call the latter cause, the former effect. I expect that in similar cases the same cause will produce the same effect. That this must be so, I can never know. All our conviction rests on the habit of always presupposing what we have often found to be true. Thus Hume arrives at a complete doubt of all actual knowledge.

This doubt, by his own admission, roused Kant from his scientific slumber and inspired him to write his great work, the Critique of Pure Reason, which stirred the scientific world in all its depths. As a result, Hume, and insofar as he was based on his predecessors, also exerted a decisive influence on German science.

Knowing the development of thought and the significance of the scholars treated by Grimm is an absolute necessity for understanding modern philosophy. The author has therefore earned a lasting merit through his book. With penetrating clarity, he shows us the threads that link the five men together, and with admirable acuity he always points to the aspect in which each of them has developed one and the same basic idea. It is actually a question that they all deal with, but the different light they shed on it always leads to different conclusions. They are all inspired by the striving for satisfactory knowledge, and they are likewise imbued with the conviction that only observation and experience provide us with true knowledge. No less excellent than the presentation of the interdependence of the individual explanations is Grimm's illumination of the course of development they have undergone. This is particularly characteristic of Berkeley and Hume. In clarifying these relationships, Grimm also proves himself to be a master of psychological analysis.

We do not think we are saying too much when we culminate our judgment of Grimm's book in these words: For the specialist, it is a work that he must not pass by if he wants to approach the epoch in question; for the educated, it is an interesting lectern that will orient him on countless questions.