A Realist View of Logic, Physics, and History

Abstract

Man, some modern philosophers tell us, is alienated from his world: he is a stranger and afraid in a world he never made. Maybe he is; yet so are animals, and even plants. They too were born, long ago, into a physicochemical world, a world they never made. But although they did not make their world, these living things changed it beyond all recognition and, indeed, remade the small corner of the universe into which they were born. Perhaps the greatest of these changes was made by the plants. They radically transformed the chemical composition of the earth’s whole atmosphere. Next in magnitude are maybe the achievements of some marine animals which built coral reefs and islands and mountain ranges of limestone. Last came man, who for a long time did not change his environment in any remarkable way, apart from contributing, by deforestation, to the spread of the desert. Of course, he did build a few pyramids; but only during the last century or so did he begin to compete with the reef-building corals. Still more recently he began to undo the work of the plants by slightly, though significantly, raising the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.