Erkenntnis Volume 7 Issue 1 1937 [Doi 10.1007%2Fbf00666542] Gilbert Ryle -- Welcoming Speech

7/29/2019 Erkenntnis Volume 7 Issue 1 1937 [Doi 10.1007%2Fbf00666542] Gilbert Ryle -- Welcoming Speech

1/4

Welcoming Speech0. E. Moore, inaugural Address:

303

Ladies and Gentlemen,The Board of the philosoph.ical Faculty of this University have

deputed me to welcome you to Cambridge on their behalf. We areglad that you are meeting in Cambridge, and we hope that yourCongress here wil l be both pleasant and successful. It seems to methat Cambridge is a specially appropriate place for you to meetin, since one of the main infhrences which brought about the kindof movement in philosophy which you represent, was, if I am notmistaken, the publication of a book, which was the work of twoCambridge men - I mean Princ ipia Mathematics. It seems to methat Principia Mathematics has had an immense influence in sug-gesting several of the different lines of investigation, in which youare interested, and I abelieve that future historians of philosophywi ll regard it as one of the main sources of much that is most cha-racteristic in your movement. Let me repeat, on my own behalfand on that of the rest of our Board, our good wishes for succesof your Congress. We hope that you will enjoy your stay inCambridge, and that your discussions wil l be enlightening andstimulating.

Gilbert Ryle (Oxford), Welcom ing Speed:Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to join with

Professor Moore in welcoming you all to this congress. I cannotclaim to be officia lly representing the philosophers and scient istsof Oxford University in extendin.g this greeting to you, .si,ncethey were, I fear, for the most part unaware of the fact ,&at sucha congress was to be held. But I can claim, I think, to be arepresentative specimen of Oxford ph~ilosopher, so in expressingmy own feelings I can be confijdena that I am uttering sentimentswith which my colleagues wou1.d be in wholehearted accord.

It mtight be of interest to you to be given in a few words asketch of the contemporary position of philosophy in Oxford,especially of its relation to the sciences. There are, I suppose, fewif any universities in the world where a larger number of studentsare receiving a fairly intensive education in $ilosophy or wherethere exists a larger faculty of philosophy teachers than in Oxford.But iIt so happens that in both of the schools in Oxford which32 Erkenntnis WI


2/4

304 Gilbert Rylecomprise philosophy, the study of philosophy 6s coupled not withthe mathematical or the experimental sciences, but with suchstudies as Greek and Roman history, language and literature inthe one case and with modern history, politics and economics inrhe other. The result is that, save in a few exceptional cases, nostudent or teacher of mathematics or laboratory sciences has anydirect contact with philosophy, and (no student or teacher of philo-sophy has any ,direct contact with mathematics or experimentalscience.

But this is not quite the whole story. For the general historyof the ancient and of the modern worlds, and the special historyof ancient and modern philosophical thought ,have of cam-se toreckon wiath the growth of the several sciences as one of thestrands and one of the most important strands in cultures of wh.ichhistory is the study.

A student of Plato or of Descartes is, in part, studying astretch of the philosophy of mathematics, and a student ofAristotle, Locke and Kant is studying the philosophy ofbiology, chemistry and physics.

So, though we are not mathematicians or physicists, we arestudents of the thoughts of men who were philosophers of mathe-matics or philosophers of physics and the like.

It does not follow, nor is it true, that we are, as a body, dedi-cated to the philosophy of history or the ph$illosophy of culture ingeneral. Indeed, I am glad to say, the wakers of philosophy inOxford constitute no sort of philosophical party or school ofthought. Some of us are disciples of H eg el , some of K a n t ,some of Russell, of Carnap, of Moore and of Broad -and some, I venture to hope, are no disoiples at all. But il t wouldbe, I think, true u) say that from one angle or another we areall prepared to recognize that the discoveries and the methods ofthe several sciences generate philosophical problems of the fi,rstimportance. And the goal of the movement which focusses itselfin Congresses of this sort> namely the UnJtication of the Sciences,is one which all of us, from motives however different, aspire.

I end upon a note of interrogation. There is a question aboutthe general programme of your movement, the answer to whichI should very much like to be alble to take back to my colleaguesin Oxford, of all philosphical colours an,d persuasions. In what


3/4

Welcoming Speech 3OJprecise sense of unification is the unification of lthe sciencesdesiderated? Or better, what is the precise sort of the disunitybetween the sciences for which this movement seeks a rem>edy or aset of ,remedies?

There are, for example, a variety of ways in which the sciencesmay be said to be disunited, with we have no concern. There isone way i,n which the sciences are Idisunited, namely that somesciences are mature or advanced, while others infantile or primi-tive. Thus psychology is more rudimentary than phys ics andsociology more so than chemistry. But this contrast is no concernof ours. It is for psy&ologists to advance psychology and notfor us.

Again there are at certain times and in certain circumstancesways ia which #the discoveries of one science could be ma.de instru-menta1 to the researches of another, but owing to lack of liaisonsuch co-operation fails to occur or to occur adequately. Perhaps- I do not know - biochemists could collaborate more effectivelywith physiologists than is now the case; or, perhaps, statisticianscould give a helping hand to anthropology. But #these sorts of liaisonbetween sciences, again, are not our business.Lastly, there exist (in some ordinary sense of Iangu~age)language differences between scientists. Some write in Russian,others in English; and within one national language some writetith one vocabulary and some with another. But whatever thevalue woulid fbe of a common language, like Esperanto or Latinor English, and whatever the value would be of a common dic-tionary of technical terms, the sorts of disunity between thesciences which your movement hopes to remove woulld survive theannihilation of these kinds of language differences.

I surmise that the sort of disunity between the sciences whichthe members of your movement Ihave in mind is, in contrast withthe sorts that I have mlentioned, of the following description.There appear to be logical irreconcilab ililties .between some cardinalpropositions of one science and some of anorher, and none the lesswe have the best of reasons for thinking both sciences to be bodiesof well-esta(blished truth. Such conflicts or chshes coerce us intorealiziag that there is something in the logical structure of thepropositions of those sciences to which we are at present blind.We are using concepts succes fully inside our sciences, but having22 .


4/4

30 6 I. Clayfailed to chart those concepts, we f.ind ourselves confronted byseeming discrepancies or contradictions between sets of propositionswhich embody those concepts. Speoimens of this sort of disunitywoul:d be remedied when we fotmd out how to chart, according toone method, the structures of the cardma1 propositions or conceptsof the ,different sciences.

Aad so I ask, is this or something else, the sort of disunitybetween the sciences which your movement aspires methodically toremove?

J. Clay (Amsterdam), The Regression of the Unstructural:Logical positiv ism teaches us that a notion is only completely

understood when we know its structure and when it is reduced toa complex of elements which are connected with one another insome known relation. In soience we have only structural relationsbetween elements. And only these structures, Car n a p concludesin his Log&be Aufbau der Welt, pp. 15-16, can be transferred intoan objective form, and he adds that it is necessary to limitourselves to these structural statements (,+daf3 es notwendig ist, sichauf die Strukturaussagen zu beschrZnken).

This may poss ibly be taken as a tautology, ,by arguing that ascientific statement which is understood by another person cannoteo ipso be anything else but a structural relation. In this con-clusion, however important it may be, one thing seems to havebeen forgotten.

Let us consider geometry where the foregoing idea was firstconceived. It was found, when investigating the axioms, thatevery statement about points is just as meaningful if applied toplanes, and conversely. Consequently, the sentence remained mean-ingful even if the elements were completely changed. Sti ll, itcannot be denied that in practice, in every case when the sentenceis used, one wi ll have to know whether one is $dealing with pointsor with planes.

If we now enter into the domain of physics an,d Gology, wenotice that there is a phenomenon, which I should like tocall the regression from the unstructural. And I shoul:d like totake this as a warning against the aversion of positivism to the un-structural and unknown.

Documents

Erkenntnis Volume 7 Issue 1 1937 [Doi 10.1007%2Fbf00666542] Gilbert Ryle -- Welcoming Speech