The One Serious Theoretical Problem

Nevertheless, the situation is not quite as bad as it looks at first sight.

There is one real and very serious theoretical problem involved in the position of enlightened scientism. Even though this problem was too peripheral to be of great concern to spiritualist thinkers, as long as it remained un­solved it greatly strengthened the position of those who for other reasons were inclined toward adopting the scientistic creed.

We are speaking of the problem of absolute space that was built into the foundations of modern science through Newton's Principia and that has found its full and satisfactory solution only through Einstein's theory of relativity.

We must discuss this problem for two reasons. In the first place, it was Berkeley's starting point for his recovery of the concrete. Beyond this restricted importance in the English quest for the con­crete, however, it has an importance for understanding the impact of enlightened scientism on the Western scene that can hardly be exaggerated.

The Newtonian theory of absolute space lent a sem­blance of justification to the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." Without this piece of Newtonian doctrine scientistic materialism, with its ramifications in the Encyclopedist movement, in utili­tarianism and positivism, in the sociology of Comte and Mill, in Marxism, and so forth, would have had little ground to stand on.

The belief that science is the key to the understanding of nature in an ontological sense has entered as a decisive ingredient into every one of our political mass movements—liberalism, Progressivism, Darwinism, Communism, and National Socialism. The historical root of this belief is the Newtonian theory of space.