KNOWLEDGE AND "KNOWLEDGE"
225
exact relationships which exist between common sense knowledge,
empirical knowledge, physico-mathematical knowledge, philosophy of
nature, and metaphysics. But it is with what they have in common
that
I
wish to take issue. And what they have in common is expressed
in the following representative comments:
What is true is that the explanations of science, since they do not
bring us into intimate contact with the being of things, and are only
explanatory of proximate causes or even simply of that kind of formal
cause which is represented by the mathematico-Iegal option of phe–
nomena (and the entities more or less arbitrarily constructed in support
of that system) cannot suffice for the mind, which by necessity, and
always, asks questions of a higher order and seeks to enter into regions
of intelligibility. (Maritain,
The Degrees
of
Knowledge,
p. 59)
Superior, therefore independent, at least by its own formal con–
stitution: philosophy (metaphysics and philosophy of nature) is as such
independent with regard to the sciences.
I
t should be understood: there is no
formal
dependence of philoso–
phy with regard to the sciences. No scientific results, no scientific
theory, in short, no science in the exercise of its own proper means, can
ever adequately cut the knot of a philosophical problem, for those prob–
lems depend both in the origin and their solution on a light which is
not
in
the reach of science.
(Ibid,
p. 63)
For, formally speaking, metaphysics is in no degree an experimental
science, but a form of knowledge far more purely rational than mathe–
matics.
(Ibid,
p. 66). On the other hand, physico-mathematical knowl–
edge is referred to as a well-founded myth which has contributed to
build up the structure of that universe and its elements: it cannot
endow it with an ontologically explanatory value.
(Ibid,
p. 226)
There are several assumptions made by this position about the
nature of explanation and the nature of rationality that seem to
me to be extremely questionable, but before discussing them
I
should
like to look at some of the specific conclusions reached by this kind
of philosophy of nature and metaphysics.
The philosophy of nature is presumably the study of sensible
existence or of mobile being. Let us ask the simple question: what
does the philosophy of nature tell us about the world of motion
which emperiological physics does not?
As
a source
I
turn to a book
