| Abstract: | "The entire scope of the work is to carry up the doctrine of final causes, in a connected form, to its highest uses; and to show that Mind is the final cause, as an ordering force, of all the physical forces, and of all their derivative manifestations in the phenomena of creation. Under the guidance of this principle, that union of the two great departments of human knowledge, hitherto so sedulously kept apart, is attained. Thus, the work, it is hoped, may serve to advance both; for on the one hand, the phenomena of Life and Organisation are Drought into the domain of Philosophy; on the other, the phenomena of Thought are brought into the domain of Physiology. The unifying principle, that mind is dominant over matter and its forces, enables us to compare and generalize phenomena hitherto considered wholly discordant, so as to harmonise them, and thereby to break through that eternal maze of contradictions, as to reason and instinct, consciousness and unconsciousness, life and intelligence, within which all philosophical inquiry has been so long involved. By adding physiology to philosophy, we place philosophy at the head of the inductive sciences, and at the same time bring all the sciences of Life and Organisation into philosophical relation and unity. The basis of this unity is Teleology, applied deductively and inductively to all the phenomena which science investigates"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved). |
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