My subject is humanity. We can learn about man through careful scientific (rational) study. I have concentrated on knowledge of man gained through natural science to show that these methods are not sufficient to gain a full understanding of humanity. This project aims at introducing what can be called the science of humanity.
This document is a quasi-static or unfolding text. I have endeavored to make this draft digestible as a stand alone whole, but this text is very much a part of an ongoing research effort and as such is subject to change in whole or in part. This manifestation merely represents where I am at present; it provides a record of some of the intellectual ground I have covered to get here; and, some directions for future study and development are indicated.
Donavan Hall
April 1996
Baton Rouge, LA
Natural science is not the only road to understanding the world and our place in it. In fact, the analytic method of natural science is least suited to address questions which are most important to us, for example, questions about the nature of humanity, about the freedom of human will, about the purpose of our lives, about whether the universe has a creator or is just the happenstantial expansion of the quantum vacuum. Applying the analytic method and materialistic assumptions of mainstream natural science to questions such as these can produce misguided results.
My objective in this essay is to define a view of natural science which does not preclude a realistic science of humanity (or more simply a science of man). It is fair to ask up front what I mean by a realistic science of man, since my presuppositions will clearly affect the theory I present below. Thus the rest of this introduction is devoted to a short exposé of my position.
A science of man is a rational inquiry into the nature and condition of humanity. The character of such a science is not obvious and it is in the desire to establish the groundwork for a science of man that this inquiry is put forward. A scientific study of man must produce a theory of humanity which is consonant with our experience of our own nature. For example, a scientific study of man which fails to give an adequate of account of our experience of our own free will cannot be a realistic science of man. A theory of humanity which maintains that our lives are ultimately or intrinsically purposeless, despite our experience of our existence as purposive, is an inadequate theory.
Some thinkers who have addressed themselves to problems such as free will and purposiveness are content to give lip service to our experience of these phenomena, but deny them any deep reality, that is, they say, we might believe that our will is free and that that which we call "I" directs our actions, but the reality is that our actions are determined by the interactions of physical particles and fields. That which we understand to be our self, that free and purposive entity, is merely the passive observer of the mechanical interactions of matter. Such a theory of man is admittedly disappointing and is not very useful since it must stop at the account given; it cannot explain our experience of freedom beyond hiding the supposed mechanism which gives rise to such experience in immense complexity.
I do not deny that natural science will ultimately show the material aspect of our humanity to be highly or completely deterministic. I agree that brain functions might be directed by determined mechanisms which respond to input and internal stimulus. However, I will not concede that because an analysis of matter yields deterministic solutions, that the phenomenon we call man is deep down a definable, mechanistic system. Natural science may lead naturally to mechanistic theories of the action of material systems, but a science of man need not be bound to the results of natural science. We cannot assume that a human being is a wholly material system. In fact we have direct experience of aspects of ourselves which are not material. The phenomenon which we name consciousness is shot through with non-material elements: thoughts, phatasms, and emotional states.
Attempts to come to grips with this double aspect of humanity, with the material and immaterial parts of ourselves, has yielded apparent inconsistencies like the famous mind/body problem popularized by Rene Descartes. Are we body (material) or are we mind (immaterial)? This question has been answered in every conceivable way by some of the greatest thinkers of western civilization. It is not my purpose here to throw my hat in the ring with yet another resolution of this great problem, but I intend to proceed on a path which will take us beyond the problem into new intellectual territory. A path which will bring us closer to understanding the phenomenon which is our selves.
To be clear, this essay is not about the freedom of the human will, nor is it about how we find our lives to be meaningful; what follows is an examination of natural science and how the ideas and methods of natural science affect a science of humanity. I begin with man as I find him--a paradoxical unity of body and mind, a fusion of realities which seems to have no intersection save in man himself. I will argue that natural science, when it restricts itself to its subject, i.e., matter, that it does not lead to contradictions with how we experience ourselves. For those who are uncomfortable with the idea of immaterial realities, I will proffer examples of such realities.
§2. The Character of Natural Science
Scientia
My aim is to formulate the beginnings of a science of man. The term science, in my usage, does not refer only to the study of nature. The science of man is not solely aimed at an explication of man's material makeup; the theory of humanity in which this inquiry finds its end is concerned with the entire phenomenon of man. Science, after the Latin word scientia, is meant to indicate any rational inquiry. Thus the science of man is a rational inquiry into the phenomenon of man. I will refer specifically to the study of nature as natural science.
Two Methods of Science
A scientific (logical or rational) study of any subject employs methods which are broadly categorized as analytic and synthetic. The analytic method breaks wholes into parts so that the inter-relations and functions of parts may be understood. The synthetic method seeks to understand the whole as a synthesis of its parts. Synthesis is the seeking to understand a thing as a unity of relations.
What a scientist does when he is in the laboratory is not dictated by any prescribed method; the scientist does not consciously follow a "scientific" method. The scientist merely investigates in a logical, or failing that, at least a systematic manner. When I speak of a method of science I refer in general to what a scientist does to discover/uncover facts about subjects. It may seem that analysis is prior to synthesis, but in the laboratory, application of the tools of analysis enters where the scientist sees fit. Thus by analyzing the method of the scientist, I do not imply any limits to the ability of the scientist to respond creatively to his subject.
Analysis
Natural science leans heavily on the method of analysis. The physicist analyzes nature in terms of fundamental entities called particles and fields. The assumed ontology of physics is a product of analysis; objects are thought to be collections of these fundamental entities interacting. Some in physical science have adopted the extreme view that the truly real is the utterly fundamentalthis position is called reductionism. The existence of the composite object is subordinated to the existence of the singular or indivisible atom of matter. Not all physical scientists are strict reductionists but the sentiment is common in natural science especially amongst those scientists who gain the attention of a popular audience.
Materialism
Natural science is dominantly concerned with material. The opinion or presupposition that all existing things are material objects is called materialism. Such a position is extremely narrow and does not accommodate the non-material realities which are part of our everyday experience. The materialist might argue with this criticism by saying that those things which we call immaterial are actions of and contingent on material objects; for example, thought, in a materialist perspective, is considered to be the action of a material brain.
Reductive materialism, the position that all things are nothing but an arrangement of particles and fields, is rarely applied dogmatically by scientists. Weaker forms of reductionism, however, are pervasive. In biological science, it is tempting to reduce living things to their genetic makeup. Some scientists claim that the mind is nothing but the collective activity of neurons; they compare the operation of the brain to that of a computer. Such a model of the operation of the mind is called computer functionalism.
Materialism (especially of the reductive sort) has lost its force in this age where many scientists recognize the reality of non-material phenomena. But even if the dogma of materialism is not proclaimed as gospel, many scientists still believe that deep reality ultimately rests on matter. The scientist who readily admits the reality of thought might still tacitly assume that the physical correlate of mental activity is prior to thinking itself. This bias toward matter as a logically prior substance to immateriality is a weakened form of materialism.
In the weak form of materialism, the scientist assumes that even if all of reality is not composed of matter, physical objects are the only things that we can know about with objective certainty. This position is derivative of the scientist's experience in the laboratory. An experiment can be constructed which asks a question of nature; nature gives her reply with perfect uniformity regardless of location or time. A scientist in Scotland will with confidence be able to reproduce the results of an experiment performed in Australia. The same quality of reproducibility and objectivity cannot be ascribed to phenomena which are immaterial. That which is immaterial, when it is observed, is experienced as capricious and subjective.
World and Environment
The world in which we humans live is furnished with both material existences and immaterial realities. To admit the reality of the immaterial and yet exclude it from scientific investigation because its qualities are so distinct from the material, is to leave perhaps the largest part of the world we live in unexplored. A full investigation of the "without" of humanity must include immaterialities. The material environment is but one aspect of the larger world within which the human being lives and moves.
Natural science teaches us about the material world, our environment. Its methods are most suited for uncovering knowledge about physical objects. It tells us how matter interacts with itself. What natural science cannot tell us is anything about that which is purely not material. The weak form of materialism maintains that all immaterialities have a material correlate. It would also insist that understanding this material correlate is not only necessary to understanding the complete phenomenon as experience by a human, but that the material correlate is the only aspect of the problem about which we can be absolutely sure. The immateriality since is cannot be probed by experiment remains forever part of the qualitative description of a phenomenon.
In discussing the co-presence of material and non-material entities, it is useful to reserve the words reality and existence for technical references to the being of material existences and the being of immaterial realities. That is, an immateriality is real, but it does not exist. Matter both exists and is real.
Objective Reality
An immediate objection to the claim that immaterialities are real is that their reality is irrelevant since only existing things are objective. The immateriality, so the objection goes, is a product of subjectivity and is utterly contingent on the material existence of the knower in order for it to hold its own reality.
To refute the claim that the reality of immaterial things is subjective I offer two examples. First, the universality of mathematics suggests that the immaterialities which constitute mathematical systems (theorems, lemmas, proofs, etc.) are objective. Mathematics deals entirely with hypotheses which are not in any way material. If mathematics, inasmuch as it deals with immaterialities, is subjective then one would not expect that independent discoveries of precisely the same concepts would be common occurrences. However, the history of mathematics bears witness to the fact that the objects of mathematics seem to be real in an objective and discoverable way.
The second example is the universality of human moral systems. Without making a thorough comparison of what is considered to be moral, ethical, or right behavior, it is evident that acceptable behavior does not vary greatly from one culture to the next despite the great diversity in custom. Certainly, there are variations in some particulars of acceptable behavior, but largely the entire human race agrees about what moral conduct within a society is. The reality of a notion of human rights is a testament to our acceptance that right conduct is an objective reality.
The Reality of Our World
I now present a simple theory of the objective reality of the world. For the purposes of this section I will use the German word, Welt, to stand for what I have above simply called our World.
The philosopher of science, Sir Karl Popper, has identified the three worlds which make up the whole of our Welt. Popper has (and with great originality) numbered each of the three worlds. World 1 is the external world of matter and energy; here reside all material things. World 2 is the inner world of personal consciousness and subjective knowledge; this world includes all perceptions, feelings, memories, dreams, and creative imaginings. World 3 is the world of culture; herein are to found all theoretical systems, critical arguments, as well as philosophical, theological, scientific, historic, literary, artistic, and technological efforts. Together these three worlds encompass our entire Welt.
Immediately we see that there are two sorts of realities: subjective realities and objective realities. The subjective realities of World 2 do not represent the whole of immaterial reality. World 3 comes into being when individuals join together in society or community. Through communication culture is born and the world of objective immaterialities is born with it.
The question of priority does not subordinate World 3 to the first two Worlds. World 3 has the feel of objectivity despite the fact that it looks as if we invent World 3 as we go along. If World 3 is "out there" and not merely a construct of our collective subjective agreement, how do we go about demonstrating its objectivity? An objection to the arguments in the previous section concerning nearly simultaneous autonomous discoveries of mathematical truths and the similarity of moral views in all cultures is that both mathematics and morality are systems founded on certain basic principles; and because of this, we should not be surprised that elements of each system should be discovered seemingly independently. Because of the nature of the systems of mathematics and morality, the consequences or self-consistent propositions follow logically from the statement of the basic principles. For example, Newton's calculus was an inevitable conclusion given the foundational premises of mathematics. In morality, the taboo on killing your neighbor follows from the basic premise that societies are preferable to humans living in isolation and societies cannot hold together if killing one's neighbor was an acceptable practice. So in Aristotelian terms, the conclusions of any logical system are potentialities waiting to be actualized. We are left with the question then of where the basic principles came from. Do we invent the foundations of our systems or are these foundations "out there"? If we are at liberty to choose any basic premise, then why should there be so few to choose from? Why didn't the human race invent thousands of different mathematical systems? Certainly, moral systems other than the ones we have could be cooked up.
A Binding Problem
Another way of establishing the objectivity of World 3 is by placing it and its contents outside of time. The argument runs like this: placing World 3 on a time line along with World 1 only invites confusion. Time and space are elements which pertain to material existences. Immaterialities are not bound to time and as such are not constrained to the normal conceptions of causality. Thus, material existence does not cause immaterial reality since such causation is a physical process which involves spacio-temporality. An approximate way of thinking about immaterial realities is to view them as eternally simultaneous, which is the best way of including such realities in a science of humanity since this is indeed how we experience Worlds 2 and 3--both Worlds are eternally experienced in the present. Ideas of past and future exist in the present. In fact if immaterialities were not real then we would be unable to perceive time at all which is the same as saying that we would not experience anything or would be (equivalently) unconscious. However, this position fails because all human mental acts take place in time and hence we can present as a counterexample to the above argument our very act of cognition which is an immateriality bound to a time. The subject of our mental activity need not be in the present; our minds can range over the whole scope of time, but the act of cognition itself is bound to time. Additionally, our cognition is bound to matter. Immaterialities are bound to materialities. It seems that matter and immaterial are merely two aspects of the same thing. This is one of the possible resolutions of the mind/body dualism. A further question is: are all immaterialities bound to matter? Answering this question would take us far afield of the task at hand. Inasmuch as immaterialities are part of the reality of man, they are bound to material and any attempt to separate them while simultaneously preserving the phenomenon that is man is doomed to failure.
Because of this apparent double aspect of reality, that immaterialities are real and not reducible to material processes, but yet are inextricably bound to material, means that sciences which address the immaterialities must always work closely with the natural sciences. Conversely, natural science is learning that immaterialities cannot be ignored when treating material; the case in point is consciousness studies. The general consensus among scientists of consciousness is that material is only part of the problem. The other part of the problem is far more vexing since it demands an unprecedented partnership between natural and meta-natural sciences.
For all this argument we still have not satisfactorily established the objectivity of World 3.
The objects of World 3 are not real because of our thinking them. World 2 realities display such a contingency. The objectiveness of World 3 does not imply some sort of realm of Platonic forms. When the human mind discovers an object in World 3 the object comes into being. The becoming of an object in World 3 is simultaneous with its discovery, but its existence is not caused by, nor is it sustained by the World 2 realities of human thought. This gives World 3 object the quality of being "out there" to be discovered. Also in World 3 are all those things which can come into existence in World 1. The activity of a human being can take objects in World 3 and fashion them out of material.
The Mind as the Intersection Between Reality and Existence
The problem which we encounter after admitting the reality of immaterialities is how these non-material realities interact with matter. How does a thing lead to the cognition of that object in the mind of a knower? How does a thought lead to physical action? Our experience of macroscopic nature is that no thing influences another thing unless the interaction is mediated by some physical object. Thoughts don't pick up coffee cups. However, I can decide that I want to pick up my coffee cup and my hand will reach out and grasp it.
This problem of the point of contact between reality and existence (between non material and material) is largely artificial. When a scientist asks the question: what process connects thoughts with the actions of material bodies? he immediately assumes that there is some physical connection or process which must be discovered. Thus to explain how thoughts arise in the mind from external objects, a behavioral scientist might arrive at the notion of stimulus and response.
The phenomenon of cognition might be modeled as such: light strikes an object and scatters off of it into the eye of an observer; the scattered light is converted into electro-chemical impulses with initiate a physiological response in the brain which produces the sensation of our being conscious of the external object. No where in this model does any non-material entity show its face. Indeed, in this model the entire notion of a self experiencing the object seems superfluous. The reality of the self is only recovered when we recognize that since both the self and the object are real that the intermediary process which connects the two need only be a real process; the added restriction that the process also be physical is a needless complication. The only science which is broad enough to begin to account for humanity is a science which accommodates the real part of existence.
The Problem of Knowledge
The debate over the character of human knowledge is played out in disciplines ranging from cosmology to consciousness. Natural scientists struggle to give a physical account of human cognition. Their program is fraught with conceptual difficulties, but the search continues for a physical basis of knowledge. I grant that we have much to learn about the machinery of the brain. One aspect of knowledge is indeed physical, but the physical does not encompass the whole of the problem.
§4. The Limits of Natural Science
Stephen Hawking suggests that there is no creator which stands apart from the universe causing it to be. He maintains that to postulate anything that stands outside the universe is meaningless and a needless complication. Marvin Minsky says that consciousness and mental activity is the result of a deterministic algorithm being run on a meat machine. He would have us believe that our thoughts are simply what the brain does when it functions. The poverty of these ideas are evident to even those who accept these positions as truth. Hawking and Minsky might shrug and tell us that we have to live in a creatorless, freedomless universe and that we just have to accept this and go on with our lives despite this stark reality. They can give no prescription for the negativity of their worldviews. Such impoverished positions can be avoided if natural scientists understood the limits of their methods.
Natural science offers us a world which is governed by the natural physical laws and leaves little room for benevolent creators or free, creative human action. That science, when used alone as the sole tool of man's inquiry into the condition or state of things, yields such answers should not surprise anyone. Faulty or impoverished views of the world are the logical result of a materialistic assumption on the part of the scientist which artificially restricts his view when addressing questions which lie outside the adequacy of natural science. To be sure, the natural scientist is in no way the agent of powers which seek to propagate negative worldviews. The statements of scientists such as Hawking and Minsky are born from an inherent (and highly artificial) fragmentation of the human self. The trap which ensnares many scientific thinkers (and I include thinkers in the philosophical sciences) is that they imagine that they can operate wholly as a scientist without regard to the reality of the rest of their human nature. A man is not merely a scientist, he is also simultaneously a man with all the attendant hopes, fears, and dreams of a man. The natural scientist falls victim to the compulsory compartmentalization of his modes of being.
For example, as Minsky operates in the mode of a natural scientist, forgetting that he is a conscious, feeling, and wondering human being, he can imagine that the activity of his brain is identical to the mechanical operation of a computer. His conclusion follows naturally from his disavowal of realities undiscoverable by natural science; that is, he arrives at the picture of the brain as a machine by applying a theory which has as a foundational assumption that the universe is mechanical. Beginning with the assumption that all physical things follow mechanical law must lead to the conclusion that any object which is assumed to be wholly material is likewise wholly mechanical. Once Minsky takes off his natural scientist hat and goes home to his wife and children and behaves as a human being living, he does not experience himself or his conscious activity as mechanical. In fact his common sensical experience of his activity planning contradicts the conclusions he reached earlier while pretending only to be a natural scientist.
The Unity of Man
A person is not at one moment fully a natural scientist and then at another fully a father or a daughter, a gardener, a lover of classical music; the existential phenomenon called man is a single, integrated, coherent being searching for knowledge about the world in which he lives and about his place in it. To understand our world we must employ our whole selves and not merely fragments of ourselves which are sanctioned existences.
A Limitless Frontier
The natural scientist acting as a fragmented being is incapable of answering the creator question or the free will question in any other way than in the negative because of his primary assumption, his presupposition about the character of the universe. The presupposition that material is the only objectively knowable actuality is an implicit claim to authority--with regard to physical objects a natural scientist can claim to know. The reality of the human condition is that we desire to know and to know with certainty. Because physical existences yield objective answers, natural science is a tremendously satisfying intellectual endeavor. A scientist derives pleasure from knowing things. This pleasure drives the natural scientist to try to fit all phenomena into the mold of physical existence so that all questions can be answer, all problems can be solved. Such an approach forces the world into the environment, that is the vastness of the world of man must be stuffed into the tiny box of the physical environment.
Man desires an endless frontier, a limitless expanse to explore, but he also wants the contradictory capacity to define and understand it all. Understanding in human terms means to limit. We cannot have at the same time a limitless expanse and complete understanding. But this does not mean that we cannot have understanding at all. Indeed, a properly developed science with methods suitable to the subject of inquiry is a powerful tool for exploration and understanding. A prerequisite for the study of the world need not be the promise that at the end of our efforts that we can in principle formulate a clear and concise theory of everything. True science (here I mean general rational inquiry) can aid us in making great advances in human understanding. Science has developed to become a precise method for understanding and we should apply that method where it is appropriate. We should take the world as we find it and look for creative ways of understanding it and minimize the number of imposed restrictions we place on what the world could possibly be like. Instead of converging on a single model for the world we should work to generate a multitude of models which capture glimpses of phenomena of all sorts in a way which does not dictate the way the reality should be.
The Reality of Immaterialities
Entertain the notion that natural science questions the possibility of non-material things existing. The first question we should ask is "Is there any thing which is not material?" Then if the answer is yes, we can then ask "Is science the proper discipline to treat non-material things?"
How can the reality of a non-material thing be demonstrated? Certainly, we could not point to a non-material thing like we would a rock and say that "the existence of this thing is evident since I perceive it with my senses." Non-material things are not grasped at all by the senses; the senses are suited to apprehend that which is material. If we are to get a hold on a non-material thing we must have some sort of sense-like capacity which is suited for the apprehension of that which is not matter. This sense-like capacity is nothing other than our intellect (mind) itself. Of course, the intellect is ultimately responsible for understanding anything including material objects, but when the intellect knows a rock it does so with the aid of the sense of sight and perhaps touch. Immaterialities are those things which the mind can grasp through its intellectual sense unaided by the physical senses.
We can now answer the question: "Is there any thing which is not material?" An example of a non-material thing would be that which is grasped by the intellect, but not by the senses. These things are what we call the objects of thought. I can think "horse" and in my mind's eye see an image of a horse, but I would not under any circumstances say that this horse was a material horse. But you object that this mind horse does not exist, but do not we say that the image of the horse is (i.e. exists) in our mind? The objects of thought have what is called an intentional existence or reality. The reality of the objects of thought are contingent on a mind thinking them. Others of you object that the image of the horse in my mind is really just so many neurons in my brain firing and thus from their activity the image is produced. This is no objection at all, since the firing of neurons is not identically the image of a horseI experience (mentally sense) the horse, not the neurons firing. The activity of the neurons produce a mental sensation of seeing a horse, a horse which is presently an object not materially but intentionally in my mind.
Now let us ask the second question, "Is science the proper discipline to treat the image of the horse in my mind?" Would a biologist be inclined to run experiments on my idea of a horse? No! What does science have to do with the objects of thought? You might object that it is again the firing of neurons which is giving rise to the objects of thought, namely the horse which I hold in my mind's eye, and it is the job of science to study the firing of neurons and the associated mental phenomena produced by these firings. That may be true, but no self-respecting scientist would address themselves to the nature of my imagined horse: that is to say, the horse is not what the natural scientist would study, but the underlying impulses which produce the mental sensation of horse. The natural scientist is interested in the neurons and their collective effects, but only in the context of the function of the material object in question, i.e. the brain. Even if a scientist did wish to study the horse that I am imagining, how would he go about it? My mind's horse eludes direct measurement.
We are all confident that our ideas are real, if they were not then we could not be said to have them. Certainly, our ideas do not exist in the same way in which material objects exist, but that is because ideas are not material objects. Thus, if we are going to look into the reality of that which is not material then we had better devise a mode of inquiry suited to such a task. If such a mode could be developed, then it would demonstrate that there is intellectual territory which lies outside the scope of natural science.
Natural Philosophy
The above discussion has shown that immaterial things are realities and that natural science is not properly suited to study these things. If we are to progress from this position to a science of man, we must find a way of linking natural science with the larger task of rational inquiry directed at understanding the phenomenon of man. The study of natural science and of the physical aspects of the phenomenon of man can be called natural philosophy.
Natural philosophy is a study of nature which recognizes it bounds and limitations and most importantly its relation to other aspects of world which lie above the level of environment. Natural philosophy works together with other disciplines to expand the frontiers of human knowledge.
§5. The Character of a Science of Man
So far I have presented and defended the position that natural science is merely one of many valid lines of rational inquiry. The defense consisted of a demonstration that there are realities which lie outside the scope of natural science. Since man is not merely a physical system and has immaterial aspects, it follows that a science of humanity cannot be identical to natural science although natural science is a necessary part of such a science inasmuch as man is a partly a physical creature.
In this final section I will briefly sketch the characteristics of a science of humanity.
A science of man must be creative and adaptive. It should take reality as it is with a view to the totality of the world. Natural science provides valuable information about the environment of man and about the physical nature of man. Natural inquiry is but one glimpse or view of the total unity of the human phenomenon. Realities (as opposed to existences) should not be subject to being poked and probed by the probes of natural science. The ideal tool for experimenting with realities is the mind, a reality itself. Methods appropriate to the subject should be employed in a science of man. Thus important questions concerning a science of man are the appropriateness of certain methodologies and the modes of being of subjects.
A science of man is by its very natural multi-disciplinary. The full spectrum of human rational inquiry taken as a whole is the science of man. We should look to the unity of this science and repair the fragmentation which has crept into the structure of this science over the past three hundred years.
A science of man is only accomplished in a society working together to find unity or at least some common ground on which to establish communication. The disciplines which make up the science of man are so diverse and extensive that no one person could hope to master them all. No one individual will understand the phenomenon of man, but through the work of the collective, humanity can come to understand itself and its world.
No assumptions should be made which restrict the progress of human understanding. What I mean is that a science of man has no room for assumptions which restrict the scientist from exploring all aspects of the human phenomenon; for example, it cannot be assumed that knowledge not validated or discoverable by a particular method is no knowledge at all, or worse, only an illusion with no objective reality.
From these general points it is clear that a science of humanity is a broad subject. In some sense this one science is the reason of being of all other sciences. It might be argued that the study and classification of African dung beetles is not related to a science of man and indeed such a specialized biological science seems wholly unrelated to man, but dung beetles are leaves which have sprung from the same root of life responsible for all life on Earth. Our interest in nature and the physical universe always comes back to something which is related to our human identity and nature.
The job of a natural philosophy is to explore the relations of man and nature and to begin to fathom the wonder of our physical aspect while never forgetting that man is more than the material of which he is made.