KNOWLEDGE AND "KNOWLEDGE"
217
to the best illustration of the family face.
If
we proceed in this way
philosophical knowledge at best is a poor and distant relative of
practical and scientific knowledge. Indeed, its legitimacy depends
entirely upon its being like the latter, and
it
is certainly more unlike
than like. Is philosophical knowledge a different
kind
of knowledge
or is it knowledge of a special
field
or
aspect
of things like astronomy
or linguistics?
If
the first, how can we explain the history of philoso–
phy and its conflicts with scientific knowledge; if the second, how
explain that it seems to be in a state more suggestive of astrology
or psychoanalysis than of any well-ordered science?
If
the state of philosophy today tends to confound those who
would speak of "philosophic knowledge," the history of philosophy
is an even more damaging witness against them. Philosophy as a
subject matter once embraced the logical, physical, biological, social
and psychological sciences.
As
these developed into recognized bodies
of knowledge, they declared their independence, changed their names
and scorned their origins, leaving philosophy to make
claims
to a
special kind of knowledge-claims which many people, including
some philosophers, regard merely as wishful, the expression of paro–
chial interests and concerns. This allegedly special knowledge, some
say, provides no truths but only guidance, hope or "comforts."
These strong impeachments would be turned aside if it could
be established that philosophy, contrary to what most of its prac–
titioners in the past believed, is actually autonomous in relation to
science, that the kind of knowledge about nature and men that
philosophy gives us is in no way dependent upon the concrete in–
sights gained through science, technology and common sense. There
are two hurdles to be cleared in establishing this. The first is the
effect certain scientific findings have had in the past upon the philo–
sophical view of man and his place in the universe. It
is
hard to
defend the autonomy of philosophy when we consider the enormous
influence of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, in the seventeenth
century, of Darwin in the nineteenth, of Mach and Einstein in the
twentieth, on the philosophies of their time. The second hurdle is a
potential one: if experimental biologists working today were able
to synthesize unmistakably living things from inorganic substances,
even those who firmly maintain the independence of philosophy
would have a hard time convincing themselves that
this
particular
