Although my blog has been dedicated to
the task of expounding the story of classic German philosophy in
general, the field has been thus far ruled by Christian Wolff, with the
exception of few pietists, who will become fierce enemies of Wolff.
It is time to introduce a new minor figure, this time from the
Wolffian side of the game: Georg Bernhard Bilfinger with his
dissertation De triplicium rerum cognitione, historica,
philosophica et mathematica, articulos.
I called Bilfinger a minor figure, and
judging by his influence, he truly is such. The main point of
importance in Bilfinger's career is that he introduced Germans to
Chinese philosophy and especially to Confucianism – even in the
dissertation he mentions these themes in passing.
We have already have the opportunity to
familiarise ourselves with the dissertations of the time when we
looked at Wolff's first publication, which combined elementary mathematics with rather strong philosophical conclusions without any clear connecting link. Bilfinger's
dissertation is rather less ambitious and is mostly a discussion of
the ideas of Wolff and his teacher Tschirnhaus.
The main purpose of Bilfinger's thesis is to
classify and define different types of cognition or science.
Bilfinger starts by determining various meanings of the term
philosophy by comparing it with mathematics (well, actually he just
follows his two predecessors, as he does in the whole book). When you
learn mathematics, you might learn various definitions of
mathematical objects. Similarly, philosophy if often restricted to
mere verbal bickering, where the fight is all about the meaning of
words. This is the lowest type of philosophy: although it is
important to make one's meaning clear, it is not worth to start
arguing for the meaning of a word.
Secondly, we could be taught who was
the person who discovered some important theorems. This corresponds
with merely historical study of philosophers, philosophical schools
and their opinions. Beyond the verbal explanation of mathematical and
philosophical terms and the historical description of mathematics and
philosophers, there's still the real mathematics, and corresponding
to it, real philosophy. What do these consist then?
To answer this question, Bilfinger
presents another division, this time between different moments of
cognition. Cognition should begin with a historical phase, where
history has the traditional sense: we observe and experiment. The
results of this historical phase are then to be used by philosophy as
a material for discovering the first principles of cognition. These
principles are then to be used finally in mathematics for deriving
new truths.
The three types of cognition,
historical, philosophical and mathematical, form then a sequence
based on experience, but ending with a system of knowledge founded on
indubitable experiences: note the balance between empiricism and
rationalism that Wolff had already endorsed. If the sequence would
form a cycle, we would be very close to the later
hypothetico-deductive account of science, where theories are tested
against observations.Yet, Bilfinger imagines that the creation of
theories involves more than mere guess work, and indeed, is what real
philosophy is all about.
It seems amazing, but this is the whole
content of Bilfinger's dissertation: two divisions borrowed from
other philosophers. Next time, we shall return to Wolff and to
another set of reasonable thoughts.
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