Der Wert der Menschheit in seiner historisch-philosophischen und seiner heutigen naturwissenschaftlichen Bedeutung

Abstract

THE author expounds a new interpretation of nature—a “Pythagorean-atomistic”evolution principle-which correlates a recognition of necessitarian uniformity with the concept of a high degree of contingency in natural happenings. The first part of the book is devoted to a historical sketch of the development of philosophic thought, in which the author discerns an analogy to the phyletic evolution of organisms. He then passes to a survey of the world of energies, and the discovery of its principle of development. The third section is devoted to the position of living organisms in nature, and here the author recognises that there is truth both in the vital-istic and in the mechanistic interpretations. But the mechanistic interpretations of vital activity that work are not like those which apoly to the inorganic; there is a dualism and antagonism separating the two sets of formulæ. In fact, the organism stands by itself “with an independent genesis and tendency.”In the fourth part of his book Dr. Strecker investigates the factors in the self-evolution of the animate world, and subjects “Darwinism” to a detailed criticism, his sympathies being Lamarckian. The chief point in the criticism is not unfamiliar, that selection is a secondary and directive, not a primary and originative factor. In the concluding part of this section there is an interesting discussion of “purposiveness,”for instance, in development. This is regarded not as a fundamental property which explains things, but as a secondary achievement which has to be explained. It is not primary, but an outcome of progressive evolution. The concluding part of the book is on man's place in nature, and contains a vindication of an “anthropocentric ”cosmology. Der Wert der Menschheit in seiner historisch-philosophischen und seiner heutigen naturwissenschaftlichen Bedeutung. By Dr. F. Strecker. Pp. xiii + 392. (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1910.) Price 7.40 marks.