Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION BY JOSIAH ROYCE THE " Cosmic Philosophy " is reprinted, in the present edition, without any change of the original text. But if the author had foreseen that his principal contribution to philosophy would remain forever unrevised, he would have deeply regretted the misfortune. During the later years of his life, the interests that determined both the form and the matter of the " Cosmic Philosophy" had been modified in a number of respects. For the first, the more recent discussions of the doctrine of evolution had inevitably placed many aspects of the subject in various new lights. On the other hand, some of the controversies that were prominent in literature in the years between 1869 and 1874 had become, through the changes of current opinion, no longer so important; and Fiske, had he himself revised his book, would probably have given to such topics decidedly less space. Thus, for instance, the extended polemic against Auguste Comte, in which this whole work had its origin, -- a polemic which now takes up so much of the text of the "Cosmic Philosophy," -- could hardly have seemed to our author so necessary, had he rewritten his book about 1900. And so he would probably have retained it only in an abbreviated form, and thus space might have been won for a study of the newer aspects of the evolutionary literature. Moreover, the advances of the special sciences have now decided some matters that, when Fiske wrote in the years about 1870, were still doubtful, and have corrected some current views that he then accepted. The publication of the later portions of Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy " have also made clear the position of the teacher whom Fiske was expounding, in regard to topics which had to be treated without such...