On the history of thinking and the “laboratory” experiments of philosophers.
The great historian of philosophy—and through that exercise a profoundly philosophical historian—Étienne Gilson often defended the idea that one cannot truly conduct proper philosophical inquiry without an understanding of its history. As he writes in his 1937 Unity of Philosophical Experience:[1]
One of the greatest uses of history of philosophy is precisely that it brings us their experimental demonstration. By observing the human mind at work, in its failures as well as in its successes, we can experience the intrinsic necessity of the same connections of ideas which pure philosophy can justify by abstract reasoning. Thus understood, the history of philosophy is to the philosopher what his laboratory is to the scientist; it particularly shows how philosophers do not think as they wish, but as they can, for the interrelation of philosophical ideas is just as independent of us as are the laws of the physical world.
This passage occasions a few remarks. First, one should note that, a decade later, Gilson explores this theme at greater length in the Aquinas Lecture delivered at Marquette, History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education. Second, it must be recognized that Gilson himself dealt with a laboratory thrown into quite some chaos, relative to its status today. Though he spent much of his life with access to great libraries, these libraries themselves had confused collections of texts and had not yet established such pathways to verifying authorship and dating as we have attained today. Much of his work occurred during the interwar political upheaval of Europe, and during, or after, the Second World War. Paper was often at a premium and books were kept to their most essential content, eschewing a lot of the scholarly apparatus that today bloats many texts to undue lengths.
So too, Gilson’s own work admittedly suffers a certain impoverishment of scholarly standards and availability. Often he makes claims without attribution or citation, and one can and ought to challenge his reading of many great authors and thinkers. That said, I believe his point is one we ought all to take quite seriously.
1. The Philosopher’s Experiments
What is an experiment? Our English word, it is worth noting, derives from the Latin experimentum, itself a compound from “ex” (out of) and “peritus” (“experienced, tested”)—in a sense, what results from something tried or tested. The idea of the scientific laboratory experiment, a controlled set of conditions to isolate a particular observable mechanism or causal relation, narrows the scope of the word’s original significance. That something be tried or tested does not require confinement to controlled circumstances, even though this may be very useful for isolating specific relations or reactions. But to fully realize whether those controlled experiments explain the phenomena in truth, or there remain causal factors unknown, there must be some uncontrolled experience as well.
The philosopher, looking to discern the truth proper to his own subject, may look at a world wholly uncontrolled and posit theories and explanations for the things observed. His studies might be all “in the field”. He may even do this somewhat fruitfully: after all, there must be initial points of discovery, and not everything is already known—far from it. But so too, in the history of philosophy, we find records of others’ explorations and experiments in thinking. We thereby see how their ideas—which may be alike to, or related somehow, to the ideas born from our own natural process of intellectual discovery—not only are developed but oftentimes the results they have produced in the lives of those who followed those thinkers.
On the one hand, we might see quite a few of these results, as taught to others, to be erroneous, misleading; perhaps even disastrous. This might be due to the poverty of the teaching; or it might be no fault of the teacher, and only of the recipient who took things the wrong way. But on the other hand, no doubt each of us will think some of these results quite correct, and quite beneficial, and thus well-worth repeating, handing on, even strengthening. To some, this selectiveness might seem contrary to the spirit of philosophy. And for the veteran, well-worn, well-experienced, and well-grounded thinker, it is; for such ought to engage those ideas with which he disagrees, so as to point out how they lead their students astray. But so too, the idea that we teach philosophy only to teach “how to think, and not what to think”, is to separate the real from the true, and eviscerate both in the process. “If a man does not think he knows what is true and what is not true in philosophy,” Gilson writes, “he has no business to teach it.”[2]
2. Replication and Innovation
Every experiment, ideally, in order that its results be regarded as successful, must be replicable. Of course, the experiments of contemporary science require also that they be “falsifiable”—which is to say, that the thesis can be disproven by the experiment. Such negative certitude does not quite fall so easily upon the idea of the philosopher: for his is a much broader experiment, of greater consequence. Not all such ideas can be tested under controlled conditions, either: say, ethical ideas about the relationships between spouses, or metaphysical concepts about the nature of God. These have real effects, to be sure, and theirs is not merely a “subjective matter of opinion” or an “imagined” reality.
This does not mean any such ideas are complete or whole and proven or conclusive, however. The persons in whom they are developed and by whom they are articulated are, of course, fallible persons. It seems to me that every good philosopher ought, in fact, to be a fallibilist: to recognize our ideas are not immune to correction through further inquiry.[3] Even our strongest and most deeply held convictions, that is, ought to be open to revision when new truths knock at the door.
Thus, although it is in fact good that we, in reading the thinkers of the past, make some effort where we see it fruitful to replicate some of their more promising and amenable ideas (efforts at inculcating Aristotelian virtue come to mind), neither should we shy away from innovation or improvement. Unfortunately, a great many adherents to diverse philosophical greats arrange their whole careers around efforts merely to replicate the master’s results. And much like duplicitous practitioners in the modern sciences, great efforts are taken to “hack” the data in order to fit the theory. Such efforts are a discredit not only to those making them, but an insult to the thinkers they intend to promote. The real thinking of a human mind, that is, seeks always to humble itself before the truth of what is: not the truth as expressed by another mind, which may present a clearer picture, but is a picture drawn from being itself, nonetheless.
3. Not Just Building a Better Laboratory
Digital technology, for all its many warts and faults at present, may make experimentation in this philosophical laboratory more accessible. Never before has there been such a system better suited to cataloging, indexing, searching, and evaluating the texts of our forebears, with speed and ease. This availability has its dangers, of course, but the promise is very real.
But we must build and use this laboratory with due responsibility. We cannot confuse access to texts, and the ability to parse their language—to find within them complex patterns and interesting correlations—with truly understanding what they mean or why they are important. Works like those written by Plato or Aristotle, or any of the great thinkers of the Western tradition, are not texts understood in a single reading. They are to be studied, investigated carefully; read not only many times, but discussed with friends and teachers.
We must become skilled, that is, in the arts of philosophy by which these experiments are conducted, if we are not merely to understand their results, but to undertake such experiments ourselves. The philosopher’s laboratory is not a museum of completed investigations, that is, nor a place merely for attempting to confirm what others have already concluded. Rather, it is a place for us to continue and advance the inquiries—with humility and fidelity to the truth.
[1] Gilson 1937: Unity of Philosophical Experience (Scribner’s Library), 120.
[2] Gilson 1947: History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education, 26.
[3] See Peirce 1893: “Fallibilism, Continuity, and Evolution” in CP.1.141.
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