Prévoir et Savoir by Yves Simon (review)

BOOK REVIEWS the ideational, logical, and-one might say-theoretic component of things. It is by existence that essence acquires fullness and actuality. In the ens ut ens which Aquinas recognized in reality, there is room for the two-fold philosophy that must be affirmed when East meets West in world understanding. There is the .immediate component of existential character and the theoretic component of the essence which has such a character, theoretic not in the sense of a so-called scientific theory, only indirectly and provisionally verified, but in the sense of directly leading man to the inescapable certitudes of metaphysics and morality. This book has been hailed as a monumental work. If we accept its central thesis and its accent on science, it may well be a monument in the graveyard of Western culture. But on the other hand, there is a faint interlinear glimmer at times of that dualism which perennial philosophy finds figured in the relation of essence and existence-a dualism which alone accounts for the immediate-theoretic contrast and union, a dualism which alone guarantees that diversity and unity that make cultures organic, progressive, and generally open to outside influences. Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. VINCENT EDWARD SMITH. Prevoir et Savoir. By YVEs SIMON. Editions de l'Arbre. Montreal, 1944. Pp. 205. The subtitle describes this little and highly interesting volume as " Studies of the Idea of Necessity in Scientific Thought and in Philosophy." These studies comprise a main part on the Theory of Determinism (106 pp.) and several shorter essays on Science and Systematics, The School of Vienna, Epistemological Pluralism, the Object of Physical Knowledge, and the Knowledge of the Soul. These latter essays, although deserving consideration , are, however, of minor importance compared with the main part; they are also partly of a more critical nature and must be passed over in this report. The study on determinism starts with an analysis of the notion of chance. Common-sense views as a chance-event any which is contrary to expectation, as that which could not have been foreseen. There are, however , events which may be foreseen and none the less must be labelled accidental or fortuitous. An observer at a street corner may forsee that two cars moving towards each other at a right angle must collide; the accident is nevertheless due to chance. Chance is not defined in terms of the unforeseen or the unpredictable, but by the non-unified plurality of the BOOK BEVIEWS 263 causal lines of which the event is the result. The author quotes approvingly Cournot: " Events resulting from the combination or the coincidence of other events which belong to series independent of one another are those one calls fortuitous or products of chance." The common-sense notion is dominated by practical considerations. The predictability of an event does not influence its relations with its real causes, but it modifies profoundly its human significance. Predictable events become objects of human prudence ; unpredictable events cannot be controlled. The common-sense opinion is in need of philosophical correction. Any theory of indetermination, says the author in the chapter on the " Philosophical Equivocations Concerning Determinism," must presuppose determinism, because it would otherwise deny ultimately the rationality of the universe and therefore its intelligibility. The chance-event must be viewed as inevitable as soon as the causal lines are given, the meeting of which constitutes the chance-event. This necessity, however, is not " essential " but " historical," not one of right, but solely of fact. It is correct to say that a chance-event has no cause; it has several causes and the plurality of causes is irreducible. Such a plurality has unity only in our mind, not in reality. The chance-event is inexplicable, irrational, unintelligible ; it is because of this that rationalism denies emphatically the reality of chance. Explication rests on identity, but the chance-event is not identical with any of its causes in virtue of the latter's plurality. The plurality of causes is unified only on the level of the First Cause which " organizes chance." The argument is continued in the chapter " Causality and Identity ": it is impossible to reduce the world totally to a unity...