Science and Sentiment in America: Philosophical Thought from Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey by Morton White (review)

Leotiardo. Vol. 9, pp. 72-85. Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in Great Britain BOOKS Readers are invited to recommend books to be reviewed. In general only books in English and in French can be reviewed at this stage. Those who would like to be added to Leonardo’s panel of reviewers should write to the Founder-Editor, indicating their particular interests. Science and Sentiment in America: Philosophical Thought from Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey. Morton White. Oxford Univ. Press, London, 1972. 358 pp. f4.00. Reviewed by James A. Goldman* White, Professor of Philosophy at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, examines several different views of science developed by major philosophers in the U S A . in the 18th and 19th centuries. Naturally, these views affected their attitudes toward other aspects of civilization, for example, democracy. In retrospect, their response to the emergence of modern science and of scientific methods was part of a broader tendency in that period to acknowledge the responsibility of philosophy to deal not merely with those technical problems of interest only to philosophers , but rather with the more general problems of life, e.g. ethics, politics, religion and law. Recognizing that this early American philosophy was strongly influenced by European philosophy, White discusses the ‘legacy of Locke’, which was the celebration of ‘intuition’ or ‘insight’. For Locke, mathematics provided a model of the ideal system of science, viz. knowledge recordable in a deductive system of propositions that begins with self-evident principles that are certain and known by intuition. From these propositions, theorems are deduced that are certain but not self-evident. The intuitive reason used to arrive at truths (e.g., formulation of the self-evident principles) is distinguished from revelation and from enthusiasm (i.e., unauthenticated revelation). Although Locke is usually termed an empiricist, White suggests that he was in many respects as much a rationalist as Descartes or Leibniz. In Jonathan Edwards, White finds a combination of both logical thinking and mysticism. Although accepting Newtonian causality, Edwards believed that a religious saint, in moments of passion, could perceive truths beyond the reach of Newtonian science. Thomas Reid and John Wilson argued that morality can never become a demonstrative science and maintained that the self-evident principles of morality are not derivable from reason alone, but from the sentiments and affections of mankind. Thus, along with Edwards’ emphasis on nonscientific insight, these views supported the democratic impulse in religious, moral and legal thought in the 18th century. It was Emerson and his fellow-transcendentalists who emotionalized reason, that is, viewed reason as a faculty that might be exercised in feeling. From this developed the attitude that ordinary people of sentiment and passion can perceive truths that the merely learned or logical cannot. Concomitant with this arose a Romantic antiintellectualism and anti-urbanism. White notes a dualistic philosophical tendency, viz., there are methods of establishing knowledge that are substantially differentfrom those of the sciences. Santayana argued that, for example, religion should be interpreted as *New York City Community College, 300 Jay St., Brooklyn , NY11201, U S A . a poetic way of expressing moral truths rather than as a ‘fake physics’. On the other hand, for Dewey, all knowledge was to be acquired by the methods used in the sciences. Both Santayana and Dewey were concerned, however, with the broader aspects of philosophy as applied to society, whereas after that time philosophers narrowed their vision and became more theoretically oriented, i.e., towards epistemology, logic and semantics. Understandably , there was then a decline of its influence on society. These currents result in the contemporary widespread anti-intellectualism that White sees in the U.S.A. There is philosophical anti-intellectualism, that is, the anti-intellectualism of intellectuals who claim that passion and sentiment can establish reliable belief. But sensitivity to mankind’s predicament that results in a retreat into mysticism and drugs will not change the predicament. To make useful changes requires more knowledge than feeling provides. Then there is social anti-intellectualism that derives from resentment and distrust directed towards logic and science because of the inhuman ends to which they at times have been applied. There is not only a distrust , but...