
The proper task of philosophy … is to keep alive rational – that is, imaginative and critical – thinking about … our most fundamental problem of all … : How can our human world, the world as it appears to us, the world we live in and see, touch, hear and smell, the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value … exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical Universe?
Nicholas Maxwell: Natural Philosophy redux | aeon.co 2019-05-13
* Wer’s genauer wissen will, für den schreibt Nicholas Maxwell in o. g. Artikel:
In the third edition there are two further rules of reasoning, both inductive in character. In connection with the second of these, Newton comments:
This rule we must follow, that the argument for induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.
And he adds the following remarks concerning induction and hypotheses:
… whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical … have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy, particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that … the laws of motion and of gravitation were discovered.
In these and other ways, Newton sought to transform his … work in natural philosophy into a work of inductive science.