[Philosophy] can never be revolutionised by discovery, as, for all I know, a particular science may be, and as a particular branch of technique certainly often is. This, I take it, is the meaning of saying that in it you cannot make discoveries. Philosophy rests on the whole spectacle of the ordered universe, and on the judgments of value which are essentially and rationally implied in that visioin. To revolutionise it would be more than to pass from one civilisation to another, though that is perhaps the nearest realisable analogy. It would almost be to pass from one universe to another. In estimating such sayings as these, it must be remembered that philosophy does not make itself. It is in the main a reading of civilisation.
And it cannot fail to be progressive. A limited technique, which is readily revolutionised by a discovery, can hardly be progressive. A whole way of doing is abandoned, and a new one takes its place. But the vision of reality, which embodies the changes of life and knowledge, while retaining the singleness of its first impressions, must necessarily progress so long as thought survives. It must progress, because it incorporates new matter with old. If it dropped the old in passing to the new, then indeed there would be change, but no certainty of progress.--Bernard Bosanquet (1914-15) "Science and Philosophy"
Alex Klein was kind enough to call my attention to Bosanquet's response to Russell's lectures ("On Our Knowledge of an External World.") Bosanquet's target here is the very idea of a scientific philosophy (which Bosanquet traces back to Kant's "famous aspiration to the sure march of science." [Bosanquet is quoting the preface to the second edition of the first Critique]; Bosanquet also notes the indebteness of Russell's epistemology to Kant.) In particular, his target is the picture later associated with Kuhn in which a science is about generating breakthrough, revolutionary discoveries. And, again, anticipating the Kuhnian idea that such a paradigm shift entails (almost) the passing "from one universe to another." Bosanquet explicitly allows that this (Kuhnian) position is true for the sciences (and, to be a bit anachronistic, engineering), but not philosophy.
Bosanquet rightly discerns that if one embraces philosophy as a (Kuhnian) normal science then one opens the door to revolutionary changes and thereby undercuts the very idea of genuine progress (rather than paradigm-dependent-progress). This insight does not rest on Bosanquet's conception of philosophy or his faith in progress and the eternity of the human species ("But the vision of reality, which embodies the changes of life and knowledge, while retaining the singleness of its first impressions, must necessarily progress so long as thought survives.")
Preserving first impressions matters a lot in love, of course, and philosophy.
Against Russell's attempt to cleanse philosophy from practical interest and feeling (recall), I have some sympathy for Bosanquet's desire to keep value and human interest within philosophy: ("its object, prima facie, is the universe, with all its activities and values, among which the theories of exact science with their objects form only a certain proportion." (6)) It is no surprise that Russell rids philosophy of sympathy (recall), while Bosanquet embraces a "complete and sympathetic outlook over our world," (17; some other time I'll discuss his attack on relations and his defense of evolutionary thought.)
Even so, Bosanquet is too comfortable in presupposing a like-minded audience and he underestimates the appeal of Russell's philosophy; not just its "cosmopolitan" outlook (against his own embrace of a "national" philosophy), it's appeal to transferable method (as opposed to his own faith in the "judgments of great men" (15)), but especially because Russell has always been clear about his own rejection of the Kuhnian conception of philosophy as normal science. Russell's scientific philosophy is methodological ((recall) and one might add an embrace of a certain set of epistemic virtues) not paradigmatic. To put the point from a Kuhnian perspective: Russell is at ease with a kind of permanent change in the content of philosophical claims and this makes it very suitable to the modern age (even if we give up on his theory of theory conception).
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