Response to Leith
May I venture a remark in connection with Thomas A. Leith's most instructive paper on Philosophy of Science in Volume 17, Number I of J. A. S. A.
On studying nature,
analytical-constructive reason (or reasoning) finally arrives at empty, abstract
concepts of magnitudes, relations and forms. Mathematics is a product of pure
reason. Thus at the end of the road down at the atom and sub-atom level reason
sees itself in a mirror as it were. It seems that to "geometrical"
(Pascal) reasoning the respective equations are what the empirical outer world
"is." Not so to the mind as a whole. Logic is just its tool.
Philosophy of Science investigates and explains the scientific method of
gathering, measuring, counting, weighing, integrating, dematerializing
observational data. Philosophy of Nature incorporates analytical reasons' last
word in gnoseology. Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature have little
to offer Philosophy of Religion in its quest for meaning.
Thank you.
Gerhard Fedders, M.D., Staff
Physician
Faribault State School & Hospital, Faribault, Minnesota