Conclusion: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science [EA Burtt]

CONCLUSION

~It was worth several centuries of metaphysical barbarism to possess science.
~Why, again, did none of them see the tremendous difficulties involved ? Here, once more, in the light of our study, can there be any doubt of the central reason ? - these founders of the philosophy of science were mathematical pragmatists, of a rather extreme type.
~Metaphysics they tended more and more to avoid, so far as they could avoid it; so far as not, it became an instrument for their further mathematical conquest of the world.
~Any solution to the ultimate questions which continued to pop up, however superficial and inconsistent, that served to quiet the situation, to give a tolerably plausible response to their questionings in the categories they were now familiar with, and above all to open a free field for their continued mathematical exploitation of nature, tended to be readily accepted and tucked away in their minds with uncritical confidence.
~With final causes and secondary qualities banished from the world of science it mattered not how rough their treatment.
~Had their intense enthusiasm for the reduction of nature been tempered by a more zealous and theoretic approach as to how to deal with this unique creature who was winning this conquest – they could not failed to have seen the matter through to its depths and remained satisfied with their answers.
~God’s mind connected the soul and thinking substance with the spatio-temporal world . . as long as theism lasted.
~. . . as long as theism lasted, men felt intellectually at home in their world; God's mind was the connecting link between the realm of masses and the imprisoned soul, supplying the possibility of communion and the guaranty of truth.
~But surely if all things are immediately and fully present to God's mind, those which are the objects of our thought and knowledge must be present to ours [too]. Otherwise we shall be hard pressed to prove the existence of any God who is more than an idea inside our brains.
~The very prevalence of these curious metaphysical notions of modern times would seem to be a pathetic testimony to the fact that people at large are not successful metaphysicians. And convictions as to man's place in the universe have inevitable emotional corollaries ; for most, also, though illogically, important ethical consequences.