Carl H. Hamburg

HE past does not change; it cannot, for what has happened T cannot be undone. Yet how are we to understand what has happened? Our perspective on it lies in the present, and is subject to continual change. These changes, made in the light of our new knowledge and new experience, call for fresh evaluations and constant reconsideration. It is now one hundred fifty years since the death of Immanuel Kant, and this, the third volume of Tulane Studies in Philosophy is dedicated to the commemoration of the event. The diversity of the contributions to the volume serve as one indication of Kant's persistent importance in philoso­ phy. His work marks one of the most enormous turns in the whole history of human thought, and there is still much to be done in estimating its achievement. His writings have not been easy to assimilate. The exposition is difficult and labored; it is replete with ambiguities, and even with what often appear to be contradictions. Such writings allow for great latitude in interpretation. Yet who would dare ·to omit Kant from the account? The force of a man's work is measured by his influence on other thinkers; and here, Kant has few superiors. Of no man whose impact upon the history of ideas has been as great as that of Kant can it be said with finality: this 5 6 TULANE STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY is his philosophy.

The year 1959 has been called The Centennial Year in view of the anniversary of the publication of The Origin of SPecies and the centenary of the births of many who later contributed much to the philosophy of the recent past, such as Samuel Alexander, Henri Bergson, John Dewey and Edmund Husser!' The essays in the present volume which are on subjects germane to any of the anniversaries celebrated this year have been placed first in the present volume. CENTENNIAL YEAR NUMBER DARWIN AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD JAMES K. FEIBLEMAN The knowledge of methodology, which is acquired by means of formal education in the various disciplines, is usually com­ municated in abstract form. Harmony and counterpoint in musical composition, the axiomatic method of mathematics, the established laws in physics or in chemistry, the principles of mathematics - all these are taught abstractly. It is only when we come to the method of discovery in experimental science that we find abstract communication failing. The most recent as well as the greatest successes of the experimental sciences have been those scored in modern times, but we know as yet of no abstract way to teach the scientific method. The astonishing pedagogical fact is that this method has never been abstracted and set forth in a fashion which would permit of its easy acquisition. Here is an astonishing oversight indeed, for which the very difficulty of the topic may itself be responsible.

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Since prefaces, for the most part, are written after a book is done, yet face the reader before he gets to it, it is perhaps not surprising that we usually find ourselves addressed by a more chastened and qualifying author than we eventually encounter in the ensuing pages. It is, after all, not only some readers, but the writer of a book himself who reads what he has done and failed to do. If the above is the rule, I am no exception to it. The discerning reader need not be told that the following studies differ, not only in the approaches they make to their unifying subject-matter, but also in their precision and thus adequacy of presentation. In addition to the usual reasons for this rather common shortcoming, there is an another one in the case of the present book. In spite of its comparative brevity, the time-span between its inception and termination covers some twenty years. As a result, some (historical and epistemological) sections reflect my preoccupation with CASSI­ RER'S eady works during student days in Germany and France. When, some ten years later, CASSIRER in a letter expressed "great joy" and anticipation for a more closely supervised con­ tinuation of my efforts (which, because of his untimely death, never came to pass), he gave me all the encouragement needed to go to work on a critical exposition of his "symbolic form" con­ cept.