Some Aspects of the Philosophy of Science in Japan By Hiroshi NAGAI I Philosophy in its strict sense had not been in Japan until her mod ern age, which broke out at Meiji Revolution about one hundred years ago. It must be remembered that the proper notion of philosophy has its historical origin in ancient Greece and that its development is performed on the basis of Greek tradition in Western Europe. From this point of view we Japanese have been in quite different circum stances from those of European peoples, whose philosophies, I presume, for all varieties in their character and trend, are united in a common mental circle, so that they are on intimate terms with one another. Of course, as generally recognized, it is an irresistibly clear fact that Buddhism and Confucianism had influenced intrinsically on the mental life of Japanese people for a long time, but their doctrines may not be called philosophic in the proper sense. We prefer to consider them respectively a sort of religious speculation or peculiar worldly Wisdom rather than as philosophy. This state of affairs will be said to be due to the special historical and geographical conditions in which our country was so long situated that we could hardly take any chance of international contact with European peoples and their philosophical thoughts. As the leading and decisive one of those conditions we can especially point out the political and social influences of the feudal -63- 64 government, which was established by the Tokugawas and lasted for almost three hundred years; its political absolutism strictly prohibited our countrymen living in four small islands from taking foreign informations. But in 1867 the feudal government was overthrown and thus a new age had dawned. Obtaining the liberty of thought and belief 'we opened our eyes to the outer world and began to endeavour to import various kinds of products of European civilization, such as political social institution, literature, art, technology, industry, education etc. Science and philosophy were also not exceptional, and these things were esteemed as eminent representations of the mental activities of Europeans. This consideration caused our admiration for oversea countries. Under these historical circumstances our antecessors in mod ern age displayed vigorous energies to introduce the oversea cultures into their mother country. Yet, in spite of all their endeavour the effects were not so easily brought in the domain of mentality as in that of materiality. Although the enlightened Japan ingeniously imi tated modern scientific technic and could mobilize it in filling up her national power, she could not therefore necessarily comprehend the mental essence of science and philosophy in the Western World. Accordingly, science and philosophy, being abstracted of their bistorical background and necessity, were rather understood in a formal or superficial appearance. Between science and philosophy an inner and inseparable union had always existed in the western history of ideas, where, I believe , science was not only scientific, but also essentially philosophic and the notion of science deeply depended upon that of philosophy . It may be said that the ideal of philosophy as science is the traditional property of the western philosophy and that it is this characteristic that lacks in our own history of intellect. Of course, even in Western Europe the inseparable alliance maintained between them seems to have been weakened gradually. Above all, from the end of the eighteenth century , -64- 65 separated from philosophical foundations science seems to have begun to develop itself in its own technical aspects; yet, science still remains there an object of considerable interest of many philosophers as well as philosophy is universally interested among mathematicians and scientists. The idea of the philosophy of science, I think, is one of the most important expressions of the European intellect. Were this idea abstracted, there would be little space for its principal activity. Taking this into consideration, it would not be so much difficult to understand how the philosophy of science has not grown so naturally in Japan as in the Western World. As a matter of fact, our philosophy is the newly imported one and its history is made ony in the last one hundred years. Hence we have also had few native philosophers originally creative and epockmaking, such as Fr. Bacon in England, Descartes in France and Leibniz in Germany. At the beginnings of our modern age, the western philosophies accepted by our earlier thinkers were those of English empiricism, e. g. the philosophies of J. Bentham, J. S. Mill and H. Spencer, and at the same time some sorts of French philosophy were welcome. We were mentally instructed and disciplined by those philosophies. The ideas of the western philosophy, however, were not able to be appre hended in their historical connection and essential characteristic; they were rather received as a practical means to social action or individual welfare, for our old custom of thought was still maintained and its inertia deprived us of theoretical activity of pure reasoning. Con fucianism was still the supreme inward lawgiver of our thinking and an antithesis between Confucian doctrine and philosophy, contrasting each other in their main character, could not so easily disappear. This being admitted, it should not be surprised if our advancement of learning was not smoothly and steadily effected. On the contrary, the newly introduced philosophy had: given rise to great confusion for a time, which was promoted with increasing information about. the various doctrines of the western, philosophy. In fact, there appeared -65- 66 many Japanese translations of the works of western philosophers, and up to present days we have had the translations of their chief works; even those of Greek and mediaeval philosophers, especially the dia logues of Plato and some works of Aristotle. It would not be unjust to say that of the eminent works of European thinkers there is none which has not been translated into our own language today. The influence of English empiricism was not lasting; the philosophy of German idealism was soon introduced, too, and after a conflicting discussion on the superiority which was expected to belong to any one of them, the latter won the day. What is the significance of this practical fact? Why was German idealism easier to understand than English empiricism? Was it not due to the historical tradition of our thought which had been based on a certain metaphysical speculation of Buddhism? We can really find that many philosophical terms of the idealism used in translations were borrowed from the words of Buddhist scriptures. In addition to this, we might peculiarly premise even the complicated conditions of our society on which our traditional art of thinking was built up. Nevertheless, so far as these conditions are concerned, a further investigation will be postponed to be left to another penetrating analysis. For the present, it is one of the most important facts for us that German idealism has been really most fa miliar with our modern thinkers and that it has enabled them to satisfy their desire to gain acquaintance with philosophy itself. After this clearing of the ground, we can explain the strange situation in which our academic philosophy has been so long determined; during the last fifty years or so German idealistic philosophy has held the leadership among our researchers, and at distinguished universities in Japan most students have been interested in German philosophy and have inquired into the problems of it. It will be no exaggeration to say that the majority of our leading philosophers owe their thought to German idealism today, e. g. the philosophy of Kant and that of Hegel. And yet, this trend is set forward by Neo-Kantian philosophy -66- 67 and even by the phenomenology of E. Husserl in some different con nection.(1) This statement may be surprising, but we shall scarcely be able to neglect this obvious fact; we must notice that this salient fact was necessary at least until our defeat in the Second World War. Although a large number of explanations and translations of the works of the western philosophers were issued, which, as previously professed, were not always restricted to those of German philosophers, our own philosophy did not make much advance. This granted, what next? What is the real meaning of our endeavour in the last one hundred years? Have we not been only subject to the imported western philo sophy? These questions are too grave to be overlooked. If the subjec tion, however, were all for us, I think we should feel far more uncer tainty about our own abilities to philosophizing than we actually do feel. Even if we felt the uncertainty, we should be confident in our -selves . The justification of this confidence might not be unreasonable. We agree with saying that it is difficult to find any creative philoso pher among us, but it does not mean that there exists none; in fact, -we have fortunately one philosopher of that sort , who is the most celebrated and unusual thinker in modern Japan. His name is Kitaro Nishida. Born at a small village in the northern part of Japan in 1870, he -was Professor of philosophy at Kyoto University from 1910 to 1928 , and died in 1945. His work was immense, his thought was original or radical, and his influence was so fundamental and universal that our philosophical climate was determined by him almost for thirty years.(2) In addition, he is also the founder of the Kyoto School and his system of philosophy is called the Nishida-Philosophy (in Japanese the Nishida-Tetsugaku; Tetsugaku here means philosophy and it must be (1) Kant's chief works are translated into our own language respectively by different scholars and it is the same with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and other German philosophers of modern age.