Abstract

In this work, the first of two volumes, Harris attempts to explicitate the world-view implicit in modern science. The second volume, adumbrated at the conclusion of this study, will develop a philosophical synthesis consistent with this world-view. The survey of science, which occupies the bulk of the book, is a masterful tour de force which stresses the striving of every level of reality toward completion on a higher level. His interpretation of physics is generally competent, but tends to rely too heavily on Eddington and on speculative interpretations of general relativity and of the Pauli principle. His evolutionary biology is a sober critical redevelopment of views similar to those which Teilhard de Chardin sketched in glowing prose. In interpreting the findings of neurophysiology and psychology he utilizes Gestalt theory and Piaget's idea of developmental stages. His general conclusion is that mind and thought, the ultimate terms of evolutionary development, must be immanent in every preceding stage, not as consciousness but as rationality. Accordingly, the philosophy modern science requires must be a synthesis, along Hegelian lines, of monism and pluralism, of process and holism. Any philosophy which rests on atomic facts or atomic propositions is, in Harris's opinion, radically incapable of supplying such a synthesis.—E. M. M.