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Contribution to Book
Cause, Nature, and the Limits of Language: Martineau and Maurice on the Philosophical Necessity of Theism
The Metaphysical Society (1869-1880): Intellectual Life in Mid-Victorian England (2019)
  • Richard England, Eastern Illinois University
Abstract
James Martineau and Frederick Maurice sought to show that naturalism was philosophically incoherent by showing the inadequacy of its fundamental terms, such as ‘force’, ‘cause’, and ‘nature’. Maurice argued that historical and contemporary uses of ‘nature’ rested on assumptions that required an agency beyond nature. Martineau claimed that the phenomena that suggested ‘cause’ to observers ultimately rested on that which is beyond the senses. Both claimed that the study of nature alone is insufficient to an understanding of the basic language of scientific investigation, and that there must be a realm beyond the physical. These papers show the importance to theists of Kantian categories and an idealist approach to nature. While Maurice and Martineau used epistemological arguments against naturalistic metaphysics, they did not claim that there were additional intuitions that granted access to truths beyond nature.
Keywords
  • James Martineau,
  • Frederick Denison Maurice,
  • causation,
  • naturalism,
  • theism,
  • nature,
  • terminology
Disciplines
Publication Date
2019
Editor
Catherine Marshall, Bernard Lightman, Richard England
Publisher
Oxford Scholarship Online
ISBN
9780198846499
DOI
10.1093/oso/9780198846499.003.0006
Citation Information
Richard England. "Cause, Nature, and the Limits of Language: Martineau and Maurice on the Philosophical Necessity of Theism" The Metaphysical Society (1869-1880): Intellectual Life in Mid-Victorian England (2019)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/richard-england/3/
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-NC-ND International License.