This present study began as the author's extension and application of ideas from Whitehead's work to the subject of education, using a chapter from Whitehead's book Science and the Modern World and a pamphlet, The Rhythm of Education as the starting point.

This study of Western philosophic systems, their types, history, relations, and projected future in the next half century, stems from Robert S. Brumbaugh’s forty-year fascination with the paradox of the many consistent overarching systems of ideas that are nevertheless mutually exclusive. Brumbaugh argues that when we isolate these systems’s patterns and look at them more abstractly, they consistently fall into four main types, and the interaction of these four types of explanation and order is a dominant theme (...) in the history of Western philosophy. In Brumbaugh’s view these four philosophic systems are not, as some critical historians and thinkers have claimed, so different that they are mutually unintelligible, forcing us to make a choice among them that is entirely arbitrary. But neither are they, as a majority of past thinkers and historians have hoped, simply parts of some single "right" or "orthodox" scheme. Their mutual understanding requires a method of transformation that interprets one to another without destroying their diversity. The history of Western philosophy from the fifth century A.D. to the present shows a pattern of alternating revolutions in systematic method and direction of explanation. Brumbaugh feels that the pattern is continuing in a change toward a revised Platonism, just beginning with the twenty-first century. He anticipates that it will be a Platonism of a new texture, one that has matured and learned a great deal in the course of the adventures of its ideas through space and time. (shrink)

This is the story of philosophy in ancient and classical Greece. Robert Brumbaugh brings out the intrinsic and current importance in the development of Western philosophy from Thales to Aristotle. He emphasizes the insights and ideas that have proven crucial to later Western thought and reveals the success of the classical thinkers in forming systematic philosophic syntheses. This book is a useful introduction to philosophy. The ancient Greek discoveries led to the major systems used by the West today.

When Mr. Levinson refers to the etymologies as a "circus parade" without underscoring the fact that they take up better than half of the dialogue, he is suppressing a detail that fits his figure of speech rather badly: surely this is an extravagantly long parade for the one-ring Heraclitean-taming act that follows! If this major section were an unordered collection of linguistic facts, puns, and free associations, one could only think that Plato's usual uncanny sense of coherence and proportion had (...) lapsed completely when he perpetrated it. (shrink)

But this is only half of the picture. Plato makes sense to the modern American reader because that reader is influenced by a physics and cosmology radically Platonic in historic origin and in content; and because he is influenced by mathematics and formal logic which are producing challenging original speculation, and which are of a Platonic character both in genesis and nature.

This book recognizes and questions a key assumption about time which is shared by common sense and philosophy—the assumption that time, like a single substance or a homogeneous quality, is subject to the law of contradiction. This leads to the logical conclusion that among different and mutually exclusive accounts of time, whether in science, practical action, or fine art, only one can be the “right” one. Four such accounts are shown here to be internally consistent though mutually incompatible, suggesting that (...) the initial assumption is mistaken, and that in some way each alternative concept of time must be incomplete. Brumbaugh suggests that we must choose the one appropriate to a particular purpose: artistic creation, technological efficiency, discovery of mathematical laws of nature, or work with biological and social phenomena. The selection should allow coherence between that aspect of reality which the selected time concept emphasizes, and the aspect of reality most relevant to a successful execution of our purpose. (shrink)

This paper is an application of a more general formula of transformation which seems to sharpen the issues and explain the opposed reactions involved in treating Aristotle as a contemporary philosopher. In my discussion, I intend to show that Aristotle can be read as a Pythagorean scientist if we concentrate on his applications of mathematics; that he must be read as an anti-Platonic intuitionist if we concentrate on his account of the nature and foundations of mathematics; that the way in (...) which he conceives his theory and practice to be related exactly reverses our contemporary idea of what constitutes explanation and what constitutes pre-demonstrative inquiry. (shrink)

It has seemed to me since, from reviewers' comments, and from my own reactions, that while today we all appreciate the discovery of new sources, philosophers whose central interest is in general practice or in specialties other than classics have not recognized nor appreciated the importance of the textual dimension of such works as Plato Latinus III. I hope to show, in the present critical study of the Latin version of the first part of the Parmenides which forms one section (...) of the complete book, first, that the history of Plato's text should be a topic of general interest to philosophers at large; second, as a case in point, what the Latin Parmenides shows and suggests about that textual history. (shrink)

Whitehead's brilliant analysis of the problems of the modern world concluded, you will recall, that our century is one in which progress and welfare require—and require to an unprecedented degree—redesign of our basic inherited "common sense" conceptions. We are trapped and hindered in our thought and planning by unrealistic and outmoded notions: of location, of duration, of education, of social progress, of beauty, of religion. I am convinced that he was right; but how many of us have thought about the (...) implications of his criticism of simple location toward, for instance, the designs and types of map that we use in textbooks for our elementary schools? We have not seen the need for sustained attention to this sort of problem. (shrink)

There is no agreement at all, however, among translators, editors, and scholars, as to what is the number of problems that Aristotle proposes, nor what are the relations of importance among them. The list is given sometimes as fourteen or fifteen, sometimes as six, as nine, as twelve, as eight, and various other numbers. To a reader remembering the meticulous detail with which Aristotle told his students just how to construct topical notebooks and outlines, it seems quite unthinkable that he (...) could have poured this maze of problems over his audience like a bath-attendant, and left them to shift for themselves in discovering its intended organization. A priori, therefore, we would expect some indication within Aristotle's text of the coordination and subordination of his set of problems. (shrink)

So far as I know, only two readers have paid much attention to my 1953 proposal. G. K. Plochmann was quick to point out its limitations, since the definition of "System" I was using seemed not to apply to the major work of modern philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries. More recently, Donald Sherburne has suggested that the project is a fine idea, and one that should be carried out. His enthusiasm has persuaded me to resume the discussion.

At the outset, the philosopher being challenged hopes that the whole question rests on a false assumption. Maybe one can in fact fit together all of the doctrines of major philosophers in a single system which will be consistent, and so prove that there is no contradiction? But that plan hits a snag almost at once: for there are types of philosophic system so related that whenever a given proposition is true in one, its contrary is true in the other. (...) Sextus Empiricus was particularly ingenious at arranging these dual positions in parallel column, but even without his help, brief experiment shows that a simple conjunction rule will not answer the skeptic’s question. (shrink)

As a beginning, consider the perennial ethical and legal problem of freedom versus determinism. But now put this in the context of the relation of expert testimony to criminal law. As psychiatry and social science develop greater explanatory power, we seem destined to an extension of the defense of irresistible impulse to any criminal action. A legal psychology which talks about "a corrupt will" will run the risk of being dismissed as an "unscientific anachronism," and jurisprudence will be replaced by (...) sociology. (shrink)

The directions for constructing the figure are to take a line cut into two unequal parts, and cut each part in the same ratio. The proportions of the lengths of segments to one another will then represent the "relative clarity" of each of four kinds of knowledge, and Book vi. closes with a summary of these proportions. If we letter the four segments from top to bottom a, b, c, and d, their relation is a:b :: c:d. From the context, (...) it is quite clear that these four segments are unequal. However, if any line is cut in a ratio m/n, and its segments subdivided in that same ratio, two of the resulting segments will be equal, and their ratio 1:1. However, this is the construction explicitly given in the directions. (shrink)