NATURALISM ---A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS

DR V.K.MAHESHWARI Ph.D DR SURAKSHA BANSAL Ph.D

College of Education (D.I.M.S ) College of Education ( D.I.M.S )

MEERUT. INDIA MEERUT.INDIA

,“Naturalism is the doctrine which separates nature from God, subordinates

spirit to matter and sets up unchangeable laws as supreme”.According to this
law, nature is supreme, all answers should be sought in nature and it alone
can solve all the philosophical problems.-- Ward

RUNNING through most of the educational literature today one finds a dominant
thread. The importance of this fact is for life as well as for education. The central
theme of this thread is expressed in such terms as “continuous progress,” “the
perfectibility of mankind,” and “perpetual betterment through scientific advances.”
The underlying philosophy of this outlook is signified by the term “naturalism .As
a philosophy of life (perhaps the oldest one) it maintains that nature is the only
reality worthy of the serious consideration of man, and that man himself is the apex
of this reality.
Naturalism is a concept that firmly believes that ultimate reality lies in the nature
of the matter. Matter is considered to be supreme and mind is the functioning of
the brain that is made up of matter. The whole universe is governed by laws of
nature and they are changeable. It’s through our sense that we are able to get the
real knowledge. The senses works like real gateways of knowledge and exploration
is he method that helps in studying nature
Basic Concept of Naturalism

The meaning of the name naturalism is strongly implied in the word itself. It is the
view point which regards the world of nature as the all in all of reality .
Naturalism, commonly known as materialism, is a philosophical paradigm
whereby everything can be explained in terms of natural causes. Physical matter is
the only reality -- everything can be explained in terms of matter and physical
phenomena. Naturalism, by definition, excludes any Supernatural Agent or
activity. Thus, naturalism is atheism. Naturalism's exclusion of God necessitates
moral relativism.

Naturalism is an artistic movement advocating realistic description: in art or

literature, a movement or school advocating factual or realistic description of life,
including its less pleasant aspects. In literature,

Naturalism has strong belief in religious truth from nature: a belief that all
religious truth is derived from nature and natural causes, and not from revelation.

The doctrine rejecting spiritual explanations of world: a system of thought

that rejects all spiritual and supernatural explanations of the world and holds that
science is the sole basis of what can be known

HISTORICAL RETOSPECT

Ancient period
Naturalism appears to have originated in early Greek philosophy. The earliest pre
-socratic philosophers, such as Thales, Anaxagoras or most especially Democritus,
were labeled by their peers and successors "the physikoi" physikos, meaning
"natural philosopher," borrowing on the word physis, meaning "nature") because
they sought to explain everything by reference to natural causes alone, often
distinctly excluding any role for gods, spirits or magic in the creation or operation
of the world..

The philosophy of the early Greeks was dominated by the search for the One
Principle, or cause which should explain phenomena. No distinction was made
between matter and spirit. The first speculations were made by the early Ionian
physicists known as the "School of Miletus.
AS for as the history of philosophy is concerned, naturalism is the oldest
philosophy. The earliest figures with whom our histories of philosophy commonly
begin were naturalists. Thales, who lived in Miletus, as coastal city so ancient Asia
Minor, during the early part of the sixth century B.C., observing water to be such a
large constituent of many material and living forms, decided upon it as the one
single substance common to all things. The daring of Thales, marking him as a
naturalist, is that he found his final substance within Nature

Thales was born at Miletus about the year 640 B.C. and lived until about 550 B.C.
He was a mathematician, astronomer, and businessman. "The principle of all
things is water; all comes from water, and to water all returns."

For Thales, the principle of things is water, or moisture, which should not be
considered exclusively in a materialistic and empirical sense. Indeed it is
considered that which has neither beginning nor end - an active, living, divine
force. It seems that Thales was induced to proffer water as the first principle by the
observation that all living things are sustained by moisture and perish without it.

. Anaximander and Anaximander, who lived in the same century, formed, together
with Thales, the Milesian school. Both were disposed to explain realty in terms of
one substance, and like Thales did not go beyond the realm of Nature to identify
this substance. Matter

Anaximander was born at Miletus about the year 611 B.C. and died about 547 B.C.
Anaximander was probably a disciple of Thales According to him"The principle
of all things is infinite atmosphere, which has a perpetual vitality of its own,
produces all things, and governs all things.:”

For Anaximander, the first principle of all things is the "indeterminate" - apeiron.
There are no historical data to enlighten us as to what Anaximander may have
meant by the "indeterminate"; perhaps it was the Chaos or Space of which
physicists speak today .All things originate from the Unlimited, because movement
causes within that mysterious element certain quakes or shocks which in turn bring
about a separation of the qualities contained in the Unlimited.

The first animals were fish, which sprang from the original humidity of the earth.
Fish came to shore, lost their scales, assumed another form and thus gave origin to
the various species of animals. Man thus traces his origin from the animals.
Because of this, Anaximander has come to be considered the first evolutionist
philosopher.
. Anaximenes

Anaximenes was born toward the end of the sixth century B.C., and died about 524
B.C. He was probably a disciple of Anaximander and he composed a treatise of
unknown title.

According to Anaximenes the first principle from which everything is

generated is air. Air, through the two opposite processes of condensation and
rarefaction, which are due to heat and cold, has generated fire, wind, clouds, water,
heaven and earth.He reduces the multiplicity of nature to a single principle,
animated and divine, which would be the reason for all empirical becoming.

But the ancient roots of naturalism have much fuller body in four other men who
have been called atomists, only two of whom were contemporaries. Leucippus and
Democritus,. Epicurus (341-270 b.c.), more than a century later, whose carrier was
largely subsequent to Aristotle’s was devoted to the ideas of Democritus. And
Lucretius (96-55 b.c.), though not even a Greek and born almost two and one half
centuries after Epicurus, was a great admirer of Epicurus. All four are called
atomists because they conceived of reality as fundamentally a matter of atoms
moving in space.
Leucippus and Democritus
Leucippus and Democritus explained the world in a commonsense reeducation of
Nature two simple things: empty space and atoms. They assumed that there is and
can be such a thing as empty space, a vacuum or void containing nothing. This
empty space they containing nothing. This empty space they considered to be the
same as nothing, nonexistence, or nonbeing. About the substance filling empty
space, giving us all the things making up the world, they reasoned that it must be
constituted by small indivisible units piled one upon another. These hypothetical
units they called atoms. Theoretically, at least, division of parts into smaller parts
can go on indefinitely. But Leucippus and Democritus argued that there must be
some infinitesimal unit which is elemental and cannot be divided further. This,
because of its imputed indivisibility, they called an atom.
Little was said about empty space, nor could there be; it was a void in which
atoms could move. The atoms, however, were considered to be of an infinite
variety of sizes, shapes, and weights. Everything in Nature as we now behold it is
the result of atoms moving through space. When the atoms come together in
clusters, things come into being; when they move apart, objects dissolve and fall
into nonexistence. Even mind and soul are made up of atoms, evolving and
dissolving in the same manner. But mind and soul are made of fine, smooth atoms
which are perfectly round, similar to the atoms of which fire was supposedly
composed. Mind and soul, like fire, have great mobility; and their atoms therefore
must be very active.

The motion of atoms in space was described by Leucippus and Democritus as

sheer motion,. The motion might be described as random, in the sense that there is
movement in all kinds of different directions. Such random movement resulted in
atoms colliding with one another, thence forming clusters and accumulating the
mass to constitute such objects as rocks, trees, and planets.

From this elemental ground, Nature as we now know it has evolved, according to
Leucippus and Democritus. Worlds whirled together as the atoms formed large
masses in vast swirling motions. Vegetation grew, animals developed, and man
arose, his speech and institutions resulting with the same kind of necessity as
produced minerals and vegetation. .

Epicurus does go definitely beyond Democritus in considering the

knowledge problem .he was at least aware that if objects are made of atoms, and
the mind and soul are also made of atoms, some explanation must be found,
harmonizing with the atom-space description of reality, making somewhat clear
how the impression of an object gets into the mind of the man who beholds it.
His solution was that objects give off a kind of film of atoms which is transmitted
to the mind through the sense, anther yields a king of photographic replica of the
object. This replica is not a copy pure and simple, for it is constituted by atoms
given off by the object itself. It is a valid image of the object, in which the very
qualities of the object are retained, having been transmitted to the mind by the
particles given off by the object.

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes Like the ancient naturalists, Hobbes conceived Nature as an

affair of bodies moving in space. He was not, however, an atomist, for he did not
agree that any body could be so smaller. A body he defined as a thing which exists
in and of itself and has no dependence what so ever upon our though about it.
Bodies exist outside of us and do not depend on any relation to us. By space
Hobbes meant a place outside of the mind which can be filled by an object. If you
think of a book on our desk as being moved from the place it now occupies to
another spot, you can at least imagine a space which was left vacant by the book
being moved, a space which could be occupied by another object. There yet
remains one other item in Hobbes’ description of Nature, namely, motion; and
motion he defined as :the privation of one place and the acquisition of another.” It
is that way of behaving seen in Nature by which a body can first occupy one spot,
then another, and still another, and so on. Motion is as fundamental as rest; it is not
caused by something other than motion; it is its own cause. If a body is in motion,
some body which is at rest will have to impeded its movement in order for it to
come to rest. Contrariwise, when a body is at rest it does not get into motion unless
it is pushed by another body endeavoring to get into its place.

Combining these definitions, we have Nature described by Hobbes as an

aggregate of things existing outside of our minds, and therefore evidencing the
reality of a space beyond us, but also an aggregate of things moving from one
place to another in that space which is beyond us. This is the same as the
description given by Democritus and Epicures except that bodies may be both
larger and smaller than atoms, and also that Hobbs seems to have been more
aware of an observer making this description. Space is defined by him as a kind of
beyondness in contrast to the mental processes of the observer. .

Jean Jacques Rousseau

 . Rousseau, in his A Discourse on Inequality, an account of the historical

development of the human race, distinguished between “natural man” (man as
formed by nature) and “social man” (man as shaped by society). He argued that
good education should develop the nature of man. Yet Rousseau found that
mankind has not one nature but several: man originally lived in a “pure state of
nature” but was altered by changes beyond control and took on a different nature;
this nature, in turn, was changed as man became social. The creation of the arts
and sciences caused man to become “less pure,” more artificial, and egoistic, and
man’s egoistic nature prevents him from regaining the simplicity of original
human nature. Rousseau is pessimistic, almost fatalistic, about changing the
nature of modern man.

 Émile, his major work on education, describes an attempt to educate a simple and
pure natural child for life in a world from which social man is estranged. Émile is
 removed from man’s society to a little society inhabited only by the child and his
tutor. Social elements enter the little society through the tutor’s knowledge when
the tutor thinks Émile can learn something from them. Rousseau’s aim throughout
is to show how a natural education, unlike the artificial and formal education of
society, enables Émile to become social, moral, and rational while remaining true
to his original nature. Because Émile is educated to be a man, not a priest, a
soldier, or an attorney, he will be able to do what is needed in any situation.

Francis Bacon

According to Bacon, man would be able to explain all the processes in nature if he
could acquire full insight into the hidden structure and the secret workings of
matter. Bacon's conception of structures in nature, functioning according to its
own working method, concentrates on the question of how natural order is
produced, namely by the interplay of matter and motion. In De Principiis atque
Originibus, his materialistic stance with regard to his conception of natural law
becomes evident. The Summary Law of Nature is a virtus (matter-cum-motion) or
power in accordance with matter theory, or “the force implanted by God in these
first particles, form the multiplication thereof of all the variety of things proceeds
and is made up” . Similarly, in De Sapientia Veterum he attributes to this force an
“appetite or instinct of primal matter; or to speak more plainly, the natural motion
of the atom; which is indeed the original and unique force that constitutes and
fashions all things out of matter” . Suffice it to say here that Bacon, who did not
reject mathematics in science, was influenced by the early mathematical version
of chemistry developed in the 16th century, so that the term “instinct” must be
seen as a keyword for his theory of nature Bacon's theory of active or even vivid
force in matter accounts for what he calls Cupid in De Principiis atque
Originibus . Bacon's ideas concerning the quid facti of reality presuppose the
distinction “between understanding how things are made up and of what they
consist, …. and by what force and in what manner they come together, and how
they are transformed” . This is the point in his work where it becomes obvious
that he tries to develop an explanatory pattern in which his theory of matter, and
thus his atomism, are related to his cosmology, magic, and alchemy.
Middle ages to modernity
With the rise and dominance of Christianity and the decline of secular
philosophy in the West naturalism became heretical and eventually illegal, thus
making it difficult to document the history of naturalism in the Middle Ages. When
the Renaissance reintroduced numerous lost treatises by Greek and Roman natural
philosophers, many of the ideas and concepts of naturalism were picked up again,
contributing to a new Scientific Revolution that would greatly advance the study
and understanding of nature Then a few intellectuals publicly renewed the case for
l naturalism, like Baron d'Holbach in the 18th century.
In this period, naturalism finally acquired a distinct name, materialism, which
became the only category of metaphysical naturalism widely defended until the
20th century, when advances in physics as well as philosophy made the original
premise of materialism untenable
Today, noteworthy proponents are too numerous to count, but prominent defenders
of naturalism as a complete worldview include Mario Bunge ,Richard Carrier ,
Daniel Dennett , and David Mill.

Certain extreme varieties of politicized naturalism have arisen in the West, most
notably Marxism in the 19th century and Objectivism  in the 20th
century. Marxism is an expression communist deals in a naturalist framework,
while Objectivism is the exact opposite, an expression of capitalist ideals in a
naturalist framework.

. FORMS OF NATURALISM

Naturalism in the broad sense has been maintained in diverse forms by Aristotle,
the Cynics, the Stoics, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, Auguste
Comte, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, William James, John Dewey, and Alfred
North Whitehead, philosophers who differ widely on specific questions. Some, like
Comte and Nietzsche, were professed atheists, while others accepted a god in
pantheistic terms. Aristotle, James, and Dewey all attempted to explain phenomena
in terms of biological processes of perception; Spinoza and the idealists tended to
emphasize metaphysics; later thinkers of all schools have placed emphasis on
unifying the scientific viewpoint with an all-encompassing reality. This
amalgamation of science and an overall explanation of the universe in naturalistic
terms is the source of much of contemporary philosophic thought
Metaphysical naturalism (also known as ontological
naturalism or philosophical naturalism)

, Characterizes any worldview in which reality is such that there is nothing but the
natural things, forces, and causes of the kind that the natural sciences study, i.e. the
things, forces and causes which are required in order to understand our physical
environment and which have mechanical properties amenable to mathematical
modeling. Metaphysical naturalism entails that all concepts related
to consciousness or to the mind refer to entities which are reducible to
or supervene on such natural things, forces and causes. More specifically
metaphysical naturalism rejects the objective existence of any supernatural thing,
force or cause, such as are described in humanity’s various religious and
mythological accounts. In this view, all "supernatural" things are ultimately
explainable purely in terms of natural things. It is not merely a view about what
science studies now, but it can also emphasize what science will encompass in the
future. Metaphysical naturalism is a monistic and not a dualistic view of reality

. ]Physicalism & pluralism

  Physicalism entails the claim that everything everyone has observed or claimed
to observe is actually the product of fundamentally random arrangements or
interactions of matter-energy, arrangements or interactions that follow natural laws
of physics, in space-time, and therefore it is unreasonable to believe anything like
a creator deity exists.

Pluralism (which includes dualism) adds to this the existence of fundamentally

random things besides matter-energy in space-time (such as reified abstract objects

  Naturalism of physical sciences

Its metaphysical conclusions differ over abstract objects like "mind," "soul," "free
will," or anything having to do with self-made men.The mind is caused by natural
phenomena What all metaphysical naturalists agree on, however, is that the
fundamental constituents of reality, from which everything derives and upon which
everything depends, are fundamentally mindless. So if any variety of metaphysical
naturalism is true, then any mental properties that exist (hence any mental powers
or beings) are causally derived from, and ontologically dependent on, systems of
nonmental properties, powers, or things. This means metaphysical naturalism
would be false if any distinctly mental property, power, or entity exists that is not
ontologically dependent on some arrangement of nonmental things, or that is not
causally derived from some arrangement of nonmental things, or that has causal
effects without the involvement of any arrangement of nonmental things that is
already causally sufficient to produce that effect.

"Since philosophy is at least implicitly at the core of every decision we make or

position we take, it is obvious that correct philosophy is a necessity for scientific
inquiry to take place." There are basic philosophical assumptions implicit at the
base of the scientific method - namely, that reality is objective and consistent, that
humans have the capacity to perceive reality accurately, and that rational
explanations exist for elements of the real world. These assumptions are the basis
of naturalism, the philosophy on which science is grounded.

Biological Naturalism
For educational philosophers, the relevant form of naturalism is Biological
Naturalism. It stresses upon the process of evolution and self preservation. Our
native experiences works moreover as a guide to us. So, it is advisable not to
violate the laws of nature but to live by nature, for nature and through nature.
Biological Naturalism has various educational implications and its aim is self
expression. There is no control on any kind over the developing organism is
allowed and there has to be complete freedom given. In other words, there is no
predetermined aim at all.

Absolute Methodical Naturalism

 is the view that it is in some sense impossible for any empirical method to
discover supernatural facts, even if there are some. [This is compatible with (but
does not entail) the view that something other than empirical methods might be
able to discover supernatural facts.]

Contingent Methodical Naturalism

 entails the belief that, judging from past experience, empirical methods are far
more likely to uncover natural facts than supernatural ones. It is generally an ill-
advised waste of resources to pursue supernatural hypotheses, but it would not be
impossible to confirm them empirically if any were true. Thus not all
methodological naturalists will be metaphysical naturalists

THEORITICAL RATIONALE OF NATURALISM.

METAPHYSICAL POSITION

Concept of God

Many naturalists do not use the term God , but surprisingly there are Naturalists
who talk about God ,and although they do not advance classical arguments for His
existence they go on to give some definition of His nature.

According toWiesman, the renowned Naturalist God is within Nature .He is not
all nature nor more than nature .He is that particular structure of nature in nature
which is sufficiently limited to be described as making possible the realization of
value and as the foundation of all values

God is that process within Nature which is a kind of open door to all who would
grow in richness of life and at the same time God is the stable ground in Nature
which sustains and constitute the values by which life is enriched ,Because of
this,God, the structure of value itself,is the greatest of all values, the most worthy
in human experience to which man must adjust if he is to grow in the possession
and enjoyment of value.

The Concept of Self

Tow important aspects of the query about man are whether he has a soul and
whether he is good or bad. For Naturalists they are not much interested in the soul
of man and his moral conditions . According to Naturalism ,man is a child of
nature; yet, nevertheless, he is a most significant child .For in the evolutionary
processes that have been at work in the universe so far, man is on the very crest of
the wave. He has capacities and has achieved heights common to no other child of
Nature True enough, he has selfhood of a sort; but there is such a remarkable
gamut of refinement in the achievements in selfhood of different men that it is
difficult to say what it is that men possess in common as a self , or, traditionally as
a soul .The self seems to be an organization of experiencing .Such a description is
quite far from those which state that man is made in the image of God. The human
self is seen by naturalism as an offshoot of Nature ,and not as springing from
beyond Nature.

Concept of Universe

The family of naturalists becomes exceedingly large, especially in modern times,

when one the label of naturalism to denote ay parson who denies (implicitly or
explicitly) the existence of anything above nature, or those who disregard the
supernatural. Thus Rousseau, who was a deist, fits into this category , even though
he believed that God had created the world. Spencer, the agnostic, falls into the
same class since he believed that even if the supernatural realm existed man could
know nothing about it

EPISTEMOLOGICAL POSITION

. Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly

labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong, but insists that all phenomena
and hypotheses can be studied by the same methods and therefore anything
considered supernatural is either nonexistent or not inherently different from
natural phenomena or hypotheses.

In terms of epistemology or theory of knowledge, naturalists highlight the value of

scientific knowledge. Francis Bacon emphasizes the inductive method for
acquiring the scientific knowledge through specific observation, accumulation and
generalization. He also lays emphasis on the empirical and experimental
knowledge. Naturalists also lay stress on sensory training as senses are the
gateways to learning

The naturalist rejected the role that intellect or reason play in the knowing process
and put forth the claim that the only valid from of knowing process and put forth
the claim that he only valid form of knowledge is that derived from experience. For
the early naturalists, “experience” chiefly meant that mode of acquiring knowledge
based on direct contact of the organism with the physical world thought the senses.
The more sophisticated naturalists included the refined modes of knowing used by
the empirical sciences. Both, however, imply a denial of reason as a source of
knowledge. In practice, both types of experience are evident in naturalistic
educational theory.
. THE LOGIC OF NATURLISM

There are tow general observations to be made concerning the logic of naturalism
which will help to describe the setting for its more specific discussion. The first is
that, most generally considered, formal deductive logic such as was mentioned
briefly in the introduction has a minor place in the methods of logic approved by
naturalism.

The second observation is that is great variation in the methods of logic employed
by naturalists. The logic of the earlier and more naïve naturalism is the simple
material logic of induction. In modern naturalism, if the epistemology is realistic,
greater place is given to deductive logic because of the confidence placed in the
independence of relations by realists.

This narrows the task of the present discussion to a consideration of simple

induction as the logic of naturalism. Of course, the kind of naturalism referred to is
more especially the earlier naturalism such as inspired the first steps in the
development of scientific method. In its most elementary form, induction is the
accumulation of accurate and detailed information by direct relation with Nature.
Whereas the formal logic of education deals wit the forms by which propositions’
are dependably tied together; induction is the collection of the material on which
propositions must be based if theory are to be true propositions. Syllogisms may do
well in relating propositions correctly; but their value depends almost entirely upon
the material truth of their propositions. Does the major premise describe a fact
about a class of individuals in Nature. And does the minor premise assert what is
fact concerning one individual in that class? One the answer to these questions the
whole value of the syllogism rests. How could men ever have come to the
conclusion. “All men are mortal” without having observed a great number of
people and having recognized that their lives were all terminated by death? And to
do this is to follow inductive method.

Simple induction involve careful observation of Nature, accurate description of

what is observed, and caution in formulating generalizations. The way in which to
get acquainted with Nature as it actually is, is to go directly to Nature and see what
is there. This means painstaking observation in which there is a rigorous piety
ruing out everything but smile recognition of facts. In order to accumulate facts for
later use in large messes, or in groups or classes, or for use by other than those
making the direct observations, it is necessary to record what is observed, and to
do it carefully and accurately, representing the facts only as they are. True enough
one of the chief values of observing and collecting facts is the discovery of
generalizations about Nature; but in this stage of induction there must be much
caution. It is so easy for wishful thinking or preconceived ideas to influence the
handling of the facts. Francis Bacon, the father of inductive method, even advised
caution about hypotheses; he regarded them as “anticipations of Nature”. Here too,
in forming conclusions, as well as in observing the facts and recording them, there
must be rigorous natural piety. There must be careful and patient accumulation of
the facts until the conclusion almost seems to suggest itself as the only
generalization to which the facts could possibly point.

AXIOLOGICAL POSITION

Naturalism believes that “A refined moral life is just as much a work of Nature as
much a work of Nature as is a coarse and vulgar immortality. You are wrong in
implying , first of all, that a natural life is an immoral life .And further more ,your
religious experience that a power from beyond yourself is sustaining you in doing
good is a natural phenomenon .Nature is versatile. Thes experience is no doubt a
valid one. You are being sustained in living a good life. For it is in harmony with
Nature ,when it is inclusively , to do good and avoid evil”

To naturalists, values arise from the human beings' interaction with the
environment .Instincts. drives and impulses need to be expressed rather than
repressed. According to them, there is no absolute good or evil in the world.
Values of life are created by the human needs

It was against this essential unity of all values with the supernatural that the
naturalists revolted. For them, all real values are rooted in nature. There is no need
to call upon the supernatural realm to “sanctify” values since nature possesses its
own inherent values, is its own good! .

The first principle has to do with the general character of values. It is that Nature is
the kind of order that just simply possesses values. According to naturalism, the
values which people commonly enjoy, as well as others yet to be possessed, are
resident in Nature; they do not transcend Nature. Stated from a frame of reference
other than the natural versus the supernatural source of values, this principle also
means that Nature has a qualitative aspect as well as an existence aspect; and when
we experience the qualitative elements in Nature, we are experiencing its values.
Nature is not just a machine in the sense that it merely functions, and also in the
sense that man, being a part of Nature, therefore functions within it as a cog in a
machine. Nature is more than a machine in that there are overtones of enjoyment
and suffering which go along with this functioning; and these overtones are
qualitative, they are values which are enjoyed or endured, as the case may be,
concomitantly as the functioning goes on.

The second principle has to do with the way in which the most desirable values are
to be realized, according to naturalism. This principle is that the way in which an
individual can get the most value out of life is to harmonize his life as closely as
possible with Nature. This principle was foremost, it will be recalled, in the
thinking of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. All of these men shared In
common the desire to find a life which was as free as possible from pain and
suffering. And accordingly they tried to harmonize their lives as closely as possible
with the rhythms of Nature, because in this harmony they felt was their greatest
peace.

1. Ethical Value

Ethics of naturalism is hedonistic, as long as this characterization is accompanied

by the caution that in the conscious though at least of many naturalists the highest
good is the most highly refined and abiding pleasure.

Pleasure is easily discerned as the highest good in the thought of the ancient
naturalists. It is not hard to feel what they must have felt when they desired
quietude and freedom from struggle, pain and fear as the predominant inner
possessions continuing uninterrupted through as many of their experiences as
possible. Most of us share their desire for this same peasce and happiness, although
we may not make it such a supreme value hat we will sacrifice all other possible
values for it. The important thing to note about this highest moral good, first of all,
is a thing to be enjoyed; it is some thing, more on the feeling side of experience,
which the person who possesses it undergoes and enjoys as contentment or
satisfaction. To a person so framing his conception of moral values, the pleasure
ethics of naturalism may seem weak and selfish, because private enjoyment, even
though it may be in no way contrary to convention, is placed prior to all other
considerations.

While the highest good for naturalists is pleasure, it is important to make clear, in
the second place, that many naturalists think of pleasure in the most refined and
inoffensive forms when they speak of its as their highest good. George Santayana
has written pointedly on this subject in a chapter entitled, “Moral Adequacy of
Naturalism.” In answer to the common assumption that naturalism necessarily
means coarseness in morality, he says: “Why is naturalism supposed to be
favorable to the lower sides of human nature? Are not the higher sides just as
natural ?....... I think that pure reason in the naturalist may attain, without
subterfuge, all the spiritual insights which supernaturalism goes so far out of the
way to inspire.”

This may raise questions about the evil which is the counterpart of this highest
good. How is it conceived by naturalism? Since it is something to be avoided, if
not escaped, as we manage our daily life and action, evil would seem to be a
quality or kind of experience which is inflicted upon us. Much less is it a quality of
events in which we ourselves participate or of which we are causes. Evil is a fact of
Nature. There just is evil in the cosmos, in the same way that there simply is good
in it. The ways by which we may seek the good, this quiescent freedom from
anguish, are considerably more restricted than the ways of living by which evil
overtakes us. Otherwise it would not be necessary to give the attention we do to the
quest for the good life. There are all kinds of ways in which accidents can happen;
but there is virtually only one way, certainly not more than a few ways, of being
careful to avoid the accidents of life and possess the unbroken life of peace. And
this is rarely possible.

The moral accidents of Nature have commonly been given the name physical evil.
They are many and well known: earthquake, famine, hurricane, disease, pestilence,
etc. Clearly, these are evils of Nature; man has nothing to do with producing them,
although he may tolerate conditions which if corrected, would lessen some of their
effects. There are also evils, more clearly moral, which men inflict on one another.
War with its inflicted death and destruction is a notable example.
What need to be noted generally about these various evils, as conceived by
naturalism, is that they are qualities and events of the natural order and not the
work of some evil force beyond Nature. Evil, though unwanted, is a natural
phenomenon.

To summarize, we may say then that for naturalism pleasure is the highest good
and therefore the basis of marl judgments; but this pleasure is very subtle and
highly refined for many naturalists. To the extent that a person is consciously
naturalistic in his ethics, he will make his day-by-day moral choices so as to claim
for himself the fullest measure of abiding pleasure and satisfaction. The evil which
it is hoped will be avoided in this way is purely a product of Nature. It is largely
inflicted evil, toward which the attitude of individual man is rightly passive
avoidance. Although men in the mass certainly inflict large-scale social evils on
other men, it is not necessarily so that individual man unwittingly becomes a cause
of evil to his neighbor and to himself.

2. Aesthetic Value

The principles enunciated above regarding the ethical values of naturalism hold
also for aesthetic values. They, too, are rooted in nature and do not depend on any
source outside nature for their validation. Nature itself provides the criterion for
beauty there is no need to call upon universal principles such as unity and
proportion to judge beauty. A landscape is beautiful simply because it is nature. A
painting is beautiful because it reflects nature, not because it elevates man above
nature.

For naturalists, as could be surmised, aesthetic experience and the values it yields
are both purely natural in character and do not involve any spiritual or supernatural
factors. First of all, according to naturalism, the subject who is engaged by
aesthetic experience is a child of Nature. While it takes a high degree of
development to yield the kind of complex nervous system which can communicate
with words and other symbols, and retain meanings long enough to interrelate them
in such a way as to yield aesthetic enjoyment of an object, yet that is what Nature
has yielded in man. “A pattern of responses of high complexity of co-ordination is
possible.” Vivas says, “because in the process of evolutionary development a
nervous system, highly centralized, came into being.” Man, the subject who has
aesthetic experiences, is a sentient organism developed by Nature, which is capable
of centering his meanings in such a way as to experience aesthetic values. These
values, therefore, do not transcend Nature; they are events in the experience of this
highly developed organism which is the result alone of evolutionary processes at
work in Nature.

There is also a minor sense in which aesthetic values are natural. This is that they
are not superior values which only a few select people are capable of enjoying.
They are values which touch areas where we all live; they are natural because they
are “native in the ordinary experience of all men.”

3. Religious value

The religious life for naturalism is the kind of life which is so lived in the breach
between present actual fact and future possible value as to replace circumstances
which destroy value with circumstances which destroy value with circumstances
which possess and conserve value. It is not possible, therefore, to enumerate or
more specifically characterize some values and designate them as the religious
values of naturalism. The chief religious value of naturalism is that aspect of
Nature which makes it possible to realize values and which sustains values which
are worth-while. Since all other possible values stem from this element in Nature,
it is the most wrathful object that there is an the greatest value above all others.
The most significant life that can be lived is the life which is committed to the
achieving of values in one’s own life and in the world. So that the prime
imperative of a naturalistic religion is that its adherents ally themselves with the
value-realizing force in Nature and help to bring into existence values which are
not actual in the present.

4. Social Value

Society is therefore considered less organic in naturalism than in pragmatism, as

well as in idealism. It is an aspect or portion of Nature, not so much an organism
that has rhythms and patterns which, while not contrary to or above Nature, are yet
its won rhythms and patterns. Individual man is therefore considered as Nature’s
offspring, not a child of society or a segment of society whose very being depends
upon the social organism. Although dependent upon Nature, he stands on his own
feet, more or less, as far as his relations to society are concerned. There are what
might be called certain necessities which make it expedient for him to relate
himself somewhat effectively socially; but these are not necessities arising from
the operation of society as an organism, so much as they are accidents or
exigencies to be avoided by working out some kind of social organization to
correct them.

Rousseau’s naturalism rooted man in Nature rather than society. So much did he
regard man as a child of Nature, as over against society, that he proposed in his
Emile to keep Emile away from society until adolescences. In his Social Contract
he reveals how the problem of social organization is complicated by the
importance of the freedom of man. Individual man, he contended, is not a man
unless he is free; if he is in bondage, he is less than a man. Yet unbridled freedom
is neither in harmony with his own welfare not the welfare of society. Evidently
some social organization is needed, but one which preserves for man his freedom.
This is a rather big order, but one which can be filled rather satisfactorily by
democracy. For in democracy, although individual man sacrifices his own
individual freedom by participation in the decisions which determine what the will
of the state is to be.

It would seem that for naturalism social values are synthetic values which result
from agreements in which individual men bind themselves together. They are
secondary goods, not so much preferred as individual goods, which result
indirectly as a consequence of the desire to avoid the grater evils which accompany
anarchy. They are not organic values which are determined in part by the very
nature of society and which would never be possessed by individual men
separately, even if they did not need to be saved from conflict and chaos by some
kind of social organization

EVALUATION OF NATURALISM

However, evaluations of naturalism from other than the supernaturalism point of

view are possible. The notion that man is innately good appears too optimistic in
the light of events of the past century. One might argue that man has become less
human as he becomes more advanced in his evolutionary development. The cruel
wars, injustice toward minorities, and many of the ills of modern man hardly
suggest such optimism.
The nature of society in a modern, complex, industrial, urban world needs
clarification from contemporary naturalists. Much of the classical naturalistic
literature on the nature of social processes is wholly inadequate today.

From various points of view naturalistic epistemology is too limited. To reduce

knowing to experience precludes many possibilities of knowing about ethical and
aesthetic values and the realm of the metaphysical.

From these philosophical limitations one can derive certain short comings in the
educational theories of naturalists. Perhaps the most significant of these from the
point of view of many philosophers is the absence of nay permanent goals for
education. Without some permanence of aims education can easily become a
haphazard, day to day activity without any central focus.

By designating experience as the sole source of knowledge naturalism limits itself

to one methodology and to a narrow curriculum divested of much of the
knowledge acquired by past generations as well as of the many artistic production
of the human race.

References-
1. Bridgman PW, "On Scientific Method," Reflections of a Physicist, 1955

2. "Ignorance reveals itself through arrogance." JP Siepmann quote 1997

3. Siepmann JP, "The Laws of Space and Observation," Journal of Theoretic,

April/May 1999, Vol.1

4. Maheshwari &Maheshwari, “teaching of science” R.Lall Book Depot, Meerut,

India .

5. Thilly Frank, “A History of Philosophy”, Central Publishing House, Allahabad.

India.

6.Breed, Frederick, “Education and the Realistic Outlook,” Philosophies of

Education. National Society for the Study of Education, Forty-first Yearbook, Part
1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942.
 7. Broundy, Harry S., Building a Philosophy of Education. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J. : Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961..

8. Butler, J. Donald, Four Philosophies and Their……… Education and

Religion. New York : Harper & Row.

9.Comenius, John Amos, The Great Didactic. London : A & C Black, 1910.
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10.Herbart, J.F., The Science of Education. Boston : D.C.Heath & Company,

1902.

11.Locke, John Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford : Clarendon

Press, 1902. The basic statement of Locke’s epistemological position.

12.Wild, John, “Education and human Society : A Realistic View,” Modern

Philosophies and Education. National Society for the study of Education, Fifty-
fourth Yearbook, Part I. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1955.