Evolutionary Naturalism

Archie J. Bahm
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 15, No. 1. (Sep., 1954), pp. 1-12.
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PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
A Quarterly Journal
VOLUMEXV, NO.1 SEPTEMBER 1954
EVOLUTIONARY NATURALISM
I cannot begin this critical essay without first expressing considerable
honest appreciation for a man who has left a permanent mark upon the
history of philosophies of evolution. Personally, Iselected theUniversity
ofMichiganforgraduatework soIcouldstudywith ProfessorRoyWood
Sellars,andthereIassociatedwithhim,asstudent,assistant,andteaching
fellow, for more than five years (February, 1929t oJune, 1943),always
considering him my major professor. Like him, I have, since that time,
considered myself a naturalist, an evolutionist, a humanist, and, with
modifications, a critical realist. Someof thepeculiarities of hismethod of
introducing studentst ophilosophy through aproblem-types approachare
reflected in my own new text.l Even someof hisweaknesses (stressupon
modernt otherelative neglect of ancient,mediaeval, andorientalphiloso-
phies) remain with me. Thus, despite growing disagreement, my debt t o
Sellars is deep and ineradicable. His influence upon others, through his
dozen books, multitude of articles, and long years of teaching, has been
profound, whether theyhave agreed with him or not.
Before criticizing, I shall try to bring together those doctrines which
constitute, or areintimatelyrelated to, Sellars' view about what may be
"called, indifferently, evolutionary naturalism, emergent evolution, or
emergent materiali~rn."~ That Sellars is a naturalist, none will question.
Butin how far heis anevolutionist may well be reexamined.
I t is not easy t o organize Sellars' views on evolution because, t omy
knowledge, hehasnever doneso.Rereading, aftertwentyyears, hisEvo-
lutionaryNaturalism3andtherelevant parts of hisPrinciplesandProblems
of Phi l ~sophy, ~ Bougle's Evolutionof The Philosophy of Physical Re~l i s m, ~
value^,^ The Essentials of Logic,I and Religion Coming of Age, I amim-
pressed by the fact that, despite frequent use of the term evolution, he
has said verylittledirectlyaboutthesubject.Henever wrote about evo-
Philosophy, An Introduction. JohnWileyand Sons,Inc.,N. Y., 1953. Hereafter
symbolized by PI.
Religion Coming of Age, p.141. TheMacmillan Co.,N.Y., 1928. Hereaftersym-
bolized by RCA.
Open CourtPublishing Co.,Chicago, 1922. Hereafter symbolized by EN.
TheMacmillan Co., N. Y., 1926. Hereafter symbolized by PPP.
TheMacmillan Co.,N. Y., 1932. Hereafter symbolized by PPR.
HenryHolt and Co., N.Y., 1926. Hereaftersymbolized by BEV.
7 HoughtonMifflinCo.,Bpston,1917, Revised,1925. HereaftersymbolizedbyEL.
lution, for his Evolutionary Naturalism is a treatment of metaphysical
categories from a point of view of critical and physical realism rather than
an examination of the nature of evolution itself. One looks in vain any-
where in his books for a chapter on evolution. The most sustained attempt
t o deal directly with the problem appears in The Principles and Problems
of Philosophy, Ch. 24, and extends for approximately three paragraphs.
Handicapped by an inability to organize and express his ideas clearly and
succinctly, he spent more time talking about what he was going to say,
or had said, than in saying it. "The evolutionary naturalism which the
keen eye can discern is like a statue hidden in the marble" (EN, p. 19).
Although he carved steadily for many years t o reveal his vision, the result
must still be glimpsed in scattered chippings rather than in rounded form.
I n what follows, I shall attempt something which, so far as I know, he
never undertook t o do, namely, to assemble in one place most of what he
had t o say about evolutionism.
In championing a naturalistic realism, Sellars took up the challenge of
defending it against the attacks of idealism, spiritualism, and romanticism
in all its forms. I n doing so, he first had t o admit' certain inadequacies of
past naturalisms, which "sought to oversimplify by reduction" (EN, p.
13), "ignored novelty and evolutionary synthesis" (EN, p. 17), and failed
t o "take mind seriously" (EN, p. 16). "Darwinism was a step in the right
direction" but it remained "in thrall t o the old physics" (RCA, p. 219).
Although pragmatism was "essentially veracious and sane," (EN, p. 312)
its positivistic and phenomenalistic leanings and its misunderstanding of
critical realism led it in a wrong direction. Likewise, Dewey's abandon-
ment of the category of substance left him, like Russell and Whitehead,
helpless in trying t o account for change and evolution. So, except for oc-
casional appreciation of sympathies with C. L. Morgan, S. Alexander, and
J. C. Smuts, Sellars' spirit was pervaded by a feeling of bearing most of
the burden alone.
Being a physicalist or materialist, Sellars interpreted evolution in terms
of such physical categories as substance, change, novelty, organization,
structure, function, properties, causality, and levels.
1. He is "a defender of substance as against eventism" (PPR, p. 8).
"Change presupposes an endurant which can change" (PPR, p. 303).
"Substantial existence is necessarily absolute and coexistent while i t
exists. Of course, we must distinguish between primary endurance and
secondary endurance" (PPR, p. 314). Although he did not specify the
nature of primary substance, except t o call i t material or physical-he
left this for scientists to settle-he did assume a primary substance which
is "simple, that is, which does not seem t o be further decomposable"
(PPR, p. 298). "If electrons are eternal," (PPR, p. 314) they are simple,
indecomposable, but not inert, for he "rejects any notion of support by
an inner changeless kernel or any assumption of inertness" (PPR, p. 297).
"The endurance of complex, or secondary, continuants depends upon a
primary endurance of being. Were it not for this primary endurance a
complex might vanish like a bubble because its elements had ceased to be.
I conclude that change is never the vanishing of primary being but only
an alteration of pattern. Such a view of the secondariness of change has
always been one of the meanings of substance" (PPR, p. 304).
2. There is "no contradiction in a thing which changes and yet is the
same thing. How are events related to things? Events seem to be changes
in things, and the relation is an intrinsic one. It refers to some alteration
in constitution and properties of the thing so that it is different from what
it was" (PPP, p. 244). "A thing may change in this respect or that, the
limit to be avoided being that of breakdown or dissolution" (PPR, p. 302).
Yet "complex secondary continuants are perishable" (PPR, p. 314).
Change is a principle which is intended to include "change in the stars,
change in the elements, change in the conditions on this earth, change in
chemical combinations, change in organisms, change in human life, change
in society. The principle of evolution means, in the first place, the reality
of basic alterations all through the universe. It stands for the acceptance
of process in the place of fixed and static things" (PPP, p. 271).
3. But also "the principle of evolution stood for more than the reality
of change. It stressed what may be called cumulative change." (Ibid.)
"The new arises from the old by cumulative change" (RCA, p. 176).
"Evolution implies novelty" (EN, p. 161). In addition to novelty for each
particular thing, and to novel things, there are novel levels of things. Yet
novelty is not enough.
4. "There is another principle . . . the principle of organization," (PPP,
p. 274) which involves "the fact of synthesis" (EN, p. 16). "It is the or-
ganization which is novel" and "organization is objectively significant"
(EN, pp. 332-333). Organization is not an accident but "appears to be
intrinsic and native to physical systems'' (PPP, p. 276). Although changes
"are clearly the resultant of components'' (EN, p. 16), "nature seems able
to form systems which have a measure of internal unity which are not mere
collocations of self-sufficient units" (PPP, p. 288). "The constant oc-
currence of creative synthesis'' (PPP, p. 283)) gives rise to "novel wholes
. . . through integrative ca~sal i t y. "~ What holds the whole together?
Nothing extraneous is needed. "The whole is the parts in their spatio-
temporal relations." (Ibid.) "While the process of synthesis is both spatial
and temporal, organization would seem to be more dominantly spatial"
(PPR, p. 302.).
5. What is new at novel levels? Things (substances), properties, struc-
8 In Virgilius Ferm, A History of Philosophical Syst ems, p. 425. Philosophical
Library, N. Y., 1950.
tures, functions, capacities, cnusality, centers of dominance, individuality,
behavior, laws, categories. "A thing has no existence apart from its prop-
erties and its properties no existence apart from a thing. In other words,
a thing and its nature are inseparable" (PPR, p. 161). "These new kinds
of things have properties of their own expressive of their organization and
these new properties are said to emerge. A whole acts differently from its
parts and the laws of the parts are not descriptive laws of the whole"
(RCA, p. 142). "Each level has its own laws and categories" (PPP, p.
372). "These levels involve new capacities" (RCA, p. 177), new "levels of
causality" (PPP, p. 383), and new "centers of dominance" (Fern, loc.
cit.). "Function and structure go together at every level" (EN, p. 334).
"Complex individuality and organization seem inseparable" (PPR, p.
302).
6. How are the different levels related? Hierarchically. "The higher order
implies and includes the lower order" (EN, p. 261). "This rise to higher
levels must rest upon and but carry out the potentialities of the lower
levels" (EN, p. 335). But "there is novelty of an undeniable sort at every
level of reality" (EN, p. 319). "Evolution means that . . . the higher is
an outgrowth of the lower, that A and B integrated are more than A and
B separate" (EN, p. 329). "A system is more than an external sum of parts;
it is an organization in which the whole exerts a control over the parts"
(EN, p. 302). "What each part does is for the sake of the whole, and yet
there is no . . . purpose in it" (EN, p. 335). "The general plan of nature
. . . we likened to a pyramid of tier-like construction. . . . Each new level
depended upon the energies and conditions of the lower level and was
adjusted to its wide-spreading foundation. Matter, itself, was evolved.
Then came the earth . . . life . . . mind . . . and society" (PPP, p. 363).
"For each level laws must be discovered rather than deduced" (PPP, p.
364). "The laws of nature form a hierarchy in which the different levels
are discontinuous" but such discontinuity "does not at all conflict with
the genetic continuity" (ibid.) which "permits both identity and differ-
ence" (EN, p. 332). So "what is true of the higher levels is in its measure
true of the lower levels" (EN, p. 333). "The relations in nature are not
[merely] external, but they are additional and changeable" (EN, p. 282).
This makes the distinction between levels "one of degree" (EN, p. 334).
And "there are degrees of freedom in nature and the higher up we go in
the scale of evolution the more freedom there is because the greater is the
internal organization and plasticity of realities" (PPP, p. 372). But the
higher, being freer than, is not freed from the lower. "The old persists
while the new develops with effort within it" (PPP, p. 364).
7. What are the levels? Are the differences between them analogous or
are some levels substantial and others merely adjectival? Sellars deals
specScally and repeatedly with matter, life, mind, and society as levels.
He also thinks of levels within these levels, e.g., of atoms (PPP, p. 274)
and molecules (PPP, p. 275) as levels of matter, of cells (PPP, p. 278)
and bodies (PPP, p. 290) as levels of life, of ideas and systems of ideas as
"levels of mental activity" (PPP, p. 339), and of families, communities,
states and nations as levels of society (PPP, p. 361), without bothering to
develop distinctions between these sublevels in any detail. When we ex-
amine and compare the relations of life to matter, mind to life, and society
to mind, we find some similarities but also some very significant differences.
Although, on the one hand, "the distinction between the living and the
non-living is one of degree," (EN, p. 334) on the other, "a living body is
literally a new kind of reality" (PPP, p. 291) with ('relative autonomy or
spontaneity" (RCA, p. 226). A society, too, is "a new kind of thing"
(PPP, pp. 351, 354), but also, "clearly, a society is not a physical thing,
but a peculiar grouping of physical things" (PPP, p. 350). However, al-
though "life rises to mind, and the reality of mind and consciousness pre-
sents us with still another apparent gap, or break, in nature" (PPP, p.
291), "mind is not so much a thing as a process" (PPP, p. 350). "Con-
sciousness is not a substance" but is "a complex and changing event
adjectival in some sense to the organism" (PPR, p. 414). "The psychical
is literally in the brain as a quality" (PPR, p. 411), and "is as extended
as the brain-event to which it is intrinsic" (PPR, p. 414). "The brain must
be as rich and unified as mind and consciousness" (EN, p. 336). Thus some
levels are substantially different whereas others are adjectivally different.
But all are "levels of organization in the physical world" (PPR, p. 436),
since "the physical is but another term for being, for existence" (PPR,
pp. 6, 285). Values, too, exist, and thus are physical, and have evolved
adjectivally to human "tendencies and desires" (BEV, p. xxv).
Turning to criticisms of Sellars as an evolutionist, I must face the possi-
bility that my evaluations may be directed against what is my own mis-
understanding of Sellars. Whether or not these criticisms are warranted
will depend partly upon how much of an evolutionist he actually claims to
be and partly upon how much of an evolutionist others have taken him
to be. Since he has openly and repeatedly claimed to be an evolutionist,
and is commonly so interpreted, and since I have asserted that he has left
a permanent mark upon the history of philosophies of evolution, my major
criticism, that he is not a thorough-going evolutionist, will require some
substantiation. His own statements will be used to demonstrate that the
sense in which he may properly be called an evolutionist must be consider-
ably refined. He will have an opportunity to pass upon such refinement.
1. First of all, Sellars was, from beginning to end, a materialist. He
was a materialist who "took time and evolution seriously" and as such
was advocating "a new materialism" (PPR, p. 3; Ferm, op. cit., p. 418)
or "a new physicalism" (PPR, p. 4). His conception of his task was to
show that materialism could account for evolution. But he did not even
wish to claim that matter or the physical was a product of evolution from
some non-material or pre-physical source-as a thorough-going evolutionist
would try to do. His interest is in matter which evolves, not in evolution
which materializes.
2. Furthermore, since to exist is to be physical, there can, for Sellars,
be no evolution beyond the physical. Although new levels of life and mind
and society evolve, they do not progress beyond the physical. They remain
physical as long as they exist. "The evolutionary naturalist does not doubt
that there are levels of integration in nature, but levels of reality is quite
another, and very questionable, category" (EN, p. 204). Does not Sellars
hereby remain reductionistic regarding levels of reality? He appears to
part company at this point with some of his fellow emergentists who assert
that life and mind, at least, are genuinely new substances which, although
continuing to depend upon the physical, have evolved beyond the physical.
They are above the physical rather than being merely new levels of or-
ganization within the physical. Although, to some, this difference may
seem verbal, I believe that Sellars intends it to be real. If so, then he is
not as fully evolutionary as some of his emergentistic colleagues.
3. The universe "as a functional whole" (PPR, p. 314) does not evolve.
"I do not apply the concept of evolution to the universe taken as a super-
entity inclusive of and containing all others, but only to physical systems
within it" (PPR, p. 3).
4. I have found in his writings no conception of downward evolution.
By this I do not mean "devolution," which he recognizes (PPR, p. 433),
but the emergence of novelties inside of larger wholes, which novelties
derive their origin primarily from the wholes within which they function.
While there is nothing in his view to prevent him from accepting such
downward evolution within the emergent levels which he recognizes, he
is prevented from conceiving evolution as extending, or evolving, down-
ward from the inanimate to the extent that he presupposes a need for
some simple primary substances (PPR, p. 297). A more thorough evolu-
tionist would claim that no substance can be so ultimately simple that
further evolution cannot take place within it. For example, if a supposedly
simple substance is related to several other substances, simple or complex,
and if its relations to these other substances are parts of it, then it has
these parts and, having parts, is not simple. Thus, there can be no "abso-
lutely smallest part" (PI, p. 238). Such a view presupposes "a doctrine of
organic relations" (PI, p. 239) which, though never explicitly stated, is
implicit in parts of Sellars' thinking. He asserts that "relations in nature
are not external'' (EN, p. 282), but rejects "the theory of relations so
internal that they destroy the reality of the terms" (EN, p. 204). He
accepts "both internal and external relations" (EN, p. 207) but has not
gone so far as to say that "every relation has both external and internal
aspects" (PI, p. 239). I suggest that, in so far as relations between sup-
posedly simple substances are internal to, and thus parts of, those sub-
stances, and in so far as any change in those relations produces a change
in each substance, it follows that there is some change also in the inter-
relations of the parts of, or within, each substance. Such inner parts, too,
are not simple, for each part is related to the other parts within the sub-
stance and so has its own parts. Since, in principle, there can be no lowest
level of parts, there is no need t o place a lower limit to downward evolu-
tion.
5. Even between supposed upper and lower limits of evolution, Sellars
is not thoroughly evolutionary.
a. "Cumulative evolution seems to be very local and exceptional"
(PPR, p. 433). Sellars, the evolutionist, considers evolution very excep-
tional.
b. His conception of substance, although evolutionary, was only par-
tially so. In contrast to Dewey and Whitehead, who mistakenly abandoned
the concept of substance, Sellars successfully redefined substance so as to
take account of change. But he did not go far enough. Substance is that
which endures, continues, or remains the same, through change. "The
category of substance . . . stands for continuants which may change"
(PPR, p. 274). "There is nothing in endurance opposed to change. In
fact, change presupposes an endurant which can change" (PPR, p. 303).
And "eventness does not preclude endurance, but, rather, presupposes it"
(PPR, p. 305). Thus substance is dynamic. Every substance does some-
thing. Substance functions. Now although Sellars holds that "structure
and function are intimately connected" (EN, p. 143), and that "substance
and function go together at every level" (EN, p. 334), I have not found
him saying, further, that substance and function are related in such a way
that substance is as much dependent upon function as function is upon
substance. In fact, "such a view of the secondariness of change has always
been one of the meanings of substance" (PPR, p. 304). In a more dynamic,
and more evolutionary, view, change would not be secondary to, but at
least equal with, permanence. As I see it, substance can be defined as that
which functions, i.e., derives its nature as substance from its functioning.
Substance is just as dependent upon function as function is upon substance.
Sellars, in effect, admits such a conception in an example of a tree which,
when it decays, i.e., stops function as a tree, ceases to be a substance, i.e.,
"is a tree no longer" (EN, p. 153). Yet this is not typical of his general
outlook. He stops short of making substance and function universally
interdependent. This affects his interpretation of mind, consciousness, and
society as substances. If a mind or a society continues through change, is
it not thereby functioning substantially and so properly called a substance?
His treatment of some levels of evolution, e.g., life, as substantial
and others, e.g., consciousness and values, as adjectival, seems unbalanced.
Now it is true that at some times permanence and at other times change
seems more significant. And we may be warranted in naming one thing as
changing and another as permanent, in order to indicate their dominant
aspects. But since some societies outlast individual members, and some
standards of value persist for centuries while the valuers influenced by
these standards come and go, such societies and such standards are, in
this sense, I claim, more substantial, because they function more sub-
stantially, than such individuals. Sellars finds his primary endurants at
the bottom of his scale of levels. Although one need not go as far as Plotinus,
or even J. E. B~o d i n , ~ in locating primary endurance at the top of the
scale of being, the fact that higher-level endurants are often more sub-
stantial than those which are lower has been considerably neglected in
Sellars' view. Sellars would have been more of an evolutionist if he had
accepted a two-way direction of development, combined with a more
functional conception of substance.
c. Not only are there two ways or directions, up and down, but there
are other dimensions which cut across the levels of matter, life, mind, and
society. "Every term, every thing, every event in fact, is the intersection
of innumerable dimensions that spring from numberless orienting dimen-
sions and criss-cross the universe."1 Not only should we recognize "the
possibility of change in all possible dimensions" (ibid.), but the actuality
of evolution, if we conceive time-spans long enough, in all actual dimen-
sions. Multidimensional evolution has been neglected by Sellars.
d. Since existence may be discovered to develop dialectically, and since,
for Sellars, dialectic is a despised term signifying something unreal (EN,
p. 149) or associated with absolute idealism, we may expect to find, as
we do, dialectical types of evolution entirely missing from Sellars' writings.
I am not referring here so much to the dialectical sweeps of Hegel, Marx,
or Mueller,ll as to simple dialectical aspects of the nature of each existent
and of each level or dimension of existence. For example, it seems to me
that when a change continues, either by continuing to change or by con-
See J. E. Boodin, Three Interpretations of the Universe, Ch. 11. The Macmillan
Co., N. Y., 1934.
lo Charles M. Perry, Towards a Dimensional Realism, p. 134. University of Okla-
homa Press, Norman, 1939.
See Gustav E. Mueller, Dialectic. Bookman Associates, N . Y., 1953.
tinuing changed, its continuing is a kind of remaining, i.e., is a kind of
substance. The more a change continues, in either of these ways, the more
substantial it is. For (a) a changed condition, as long as it remains, is
substantial, and (b) a constant change, in so far as it is constant, is like-
wise substantial. Seen dialectically, then, not only does the difference
between permanence and change seem less great than in non-dialectical
viewpoints, but also the number and kinds of bases for new directions,
levels, and dimensions of evolution increase.
Another, perhaps incidental, dialectical criticism may be noted in the
fact that, although Sellars is willing t o say that philosophical theories have
evolved historically, we do not get the feeling that it is any part of his
ideal that they should evolve very much beyond his own views. I suspect
that he would be unwilling to say that philosophy ought to continue to
evolve so far as to evolve beyond evolutionary theories. In desiring to state
evolutionism in final form, does one seek to put an end to all further evolu-
tion of evolutionism?
e. Sellars did not apply evolutionary concepts in the reconstruction of
other philosophical concepts with as much interest, vigor, or thoroughness
as did certain pragmatists. Dewey, for example, reconstructed traditional
notions of knowledge, truth, logic, and God in ways which Sellars never
attempted.
Although theory of knowledge is Sellars' primary forte (one is tempted to
predict that history will remember him longer as a critical realist than as
an evolutionist), his preoccupation with critical realism turns out to be a
weakness so far as extending evolution is concerned. "That ideas are
historical products and that they have instrumental worth, the critical
realist would proclaim as fervently as does the pragmatist" (EN, p. 55).
But that each idea is itself a dynamic process, adapting to and evolving
through changing contexts, competing with other ideas for acceptance,
being made true by future verification, and supported by a will to believe,
is something Sellars hesitates to go along with. Since he habitually as-
sociates pragmatism with positivism and condemns James' voluntarism
as romanticistic, he "is unwillingly forced to part company with the prag-
matists" (EN, p. 56) because they "never conquered the epistemological
problem" (EN, p. 77). I t now seems t o me that Sellars never fully ap-
preciated pragmatism. He was willing to accommodate pragmatism within
the framework of his critical realism, as he did evolutionism within the
framework of his materialism. But that pragmatism could encompass
critical realism within its range of workable epistemologies, and that
evolutionism could embody the virtues of materialism in its levels and
dimensions of development, better than the reverse, Sellars could not ap-
prove. His irrevocable commitment to his own somewhat limited epistemo-
10 AND RESEARCH PHILOSOPI-IY PHENOMENOLOGICAL
logical premises prevented him from sharing in broad and flexible sympa-
thies with many varieties of pragmatic developments in epistemology.
Doubtless Dewey has over-stressed the evolutionary nature of knowledge;
but the hi t i es in Sellars' epistemological conceptions could stand some
evolutionary loosening.
Although, for Sellars, "truth is something that grows and increases in
volume and significance" (EN, p. 55), ,one gets the feeling from his writings
that the ideal possibilities for growth and increase involve h e d limits and
truth itself has a fixed nature. That the truths men believe have evolved,
Sellars will assert, but that the very nature of truth itself undergoes evolu-
tionary change, Sellars doubtless denies.
Although he has spoken of the logic of evolution, he has made no at-
tempt at reconstruction. "The whole logic of evolution lies in its assertion
that . . . structures are growths" (RCA, p. 219). "I have never seen the
logic of evolution worked out along these lines. . . . It is the idea under-
lying my Evolutionary Naturalism and Alexander's and Lloyd Morgan's
theory of emergent evolution" (PPR, p. 401). In his Essentials of Logic
he gives logic an evolutionary setting. Very much like Dewey, whom he
has been reading, he even describes thought as "an activity which occurs
within the individual's experience. . . . I t arises in response to some problem
or difficulty and aims at its solution or disappearance. It seems to involve
controlled association and invention and to demand something of the
nature of testing and verification" (EL, p. 15). Yet all of the traditional
formulas are kept intact. Although in his evolutionary moments Sellars
claims that "mental operations combine and create" (EN, p. 336), in his
more traditional moods he asserts that "logic does not create new capacities
in the mind of the individual" but "it may train and sharpen the capacities
already there" (EL, p. 5). "I have always favored the Aristotelian tradition
in logic because it seemed to me to follow more closely the real employment
of the intellect in knowing an external world and less the implicative,
hypothetical technique of deduction. It s categories, of course, need re-
vision . . . in the light of an adequate epistemology" (PPR, p. 228). But
this revision is something which Sellars never undertook. In contrast to
both Dewey and Whitehead, who recognized an interdependence between
logic, metaphysics, and epistemology such that one cannot revise one
without also remaking the others, Sellars, it appears, first revised his episte-
mology and then simply accommodated his metaphysics, logic, ethics, and
social philosophy to his epistemological foundations. Dewey's reconstructed
logic was an aid in reconstructing other categories. Whitehead's logic,
although a brilliant development in mathematical methods, turned out to
be a failure so far as evolutionary metaphysics is concerned.12 One cannot
12 See H. K. Wells, Process and Unreal i t y. King's Crown Press, N. Y., 1950.
fully reconstruct a dynamic metaphysics with a static logic. Sellars7 claim
to fame as an evolutionist is restricted by his failure to develop an evolu-
tionary logic.
God, in the minds of evolutionists, also evolves. For Morgan, God
evolves through all the levels of reality. For Alexander, God is at least an
emergent and demergeable level of existence. For Dewey, God constantly
evolves through interactive adaptation. Although Whitehead's "conse-
quent nature of God7' evolves, his "primordial nature" remains unre-
constructed in evolutionary directions. Sellars, again more typically a
materialist than an evolutionist, simply discards God altogether as a meta-
physical principle.
Having ended my criticisms, I may well pause to wonder whether they
have been misdirected. In referring to such ideas as "creative synthesis,
critical points, creative evolution, creative intelligence, organismalism,"
Sellars says: "My hope is that I can assist in the crystallization of these
ideas around a realistic, instead of a romantic, Weltanschauung" (EN,
p. 322). This he has done. I find no similarly expressed hope that he would
achieve anything like a complete evolutionism. He merely wanted ma-
terialists to "take evolution seriously." I hope that he will make use of
his opportunity to comment upon these articles to state more precisely in
how far he considers himself an evolutionist.
In another way my criticisms may have been misdirected, since they are
made from a vantage point in 1954 of a task which was conceived and
undertaken three or four decades earlier. It took considerable courage to
champion evolution in metaphysics in a day when even biological evolu-
tion was popularly frowned upon. Now that evolutionary doctrines are
commonplace, facile criticisms made without regard to earlier conditions
may well be unfair.
I am happy to find already stated by Sellars a view which dawned upon
me but recently as a result of a systematic attempt to define my own view-
point, namely, "that thinkers are apt to be right in what they affirm and
wrong in what they deny" (EN, p. 194). A thesis of this article has been
that Sellars is right in affirming evolution of substance and wrong in
denying further extensions of its evolution.
4 n incidental concluding note about the relation of "organicism," the
name for my own view, to Sellars' language may not be out of place. Al-
though I arrived at it through a somewhat devious personal struggle from
such terms as "organic unity"13 and "organic freedom,"l4 I now note with
l3 See DeWitt 13. Parker, The Principles of Aesthetics, pp. 80ff. Silver, Burdett
and Co., Boston, 1920.
l4 See C. H. Cooley and others, Introductory Sociology, pp. 70, 73ff. Charles Scrib-
ners' Sons, N. Y., 1933.
interest that Sellars, on occasion, toyed with the same term. He most
consistently uses the term organic to refer t o "a level of organization"
(PPP, p. 273), namely, the living or animate level, in contrast to the in-
animate level. Yet he also appears to use the term more generally at times.
"Where there is interdependence and cooperation in a physical system we
have always used the term organic, and it seems quite justifiable to use
the term organicism" (PPP, p. 372). But "I hesitate t o call this an organic
view since Whitehead has appropriated the term" (PPR, p. 319). Doubt-
less I am indebted more than I know to organicistic elements in Sellars'
views. But that he is not a thorough-going organicist appears as easy to
demonstrate as that he was not a very thorough evolutionist.
ARCHIE J. BAHM.