GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL 255
collated* We will imagine ourselves to begin with the
physiological account in terms of tubes and pipes, nerves
and bones and blood vessels. These, presumably, can be
analysed into their dhtcmferi compounds, and there will
be, therefore, a chemical account in terms of molecules
and elements. These, again, can be analysed in terms of
their atomic constituents, and to the chemist's, therefore,
we must add the physicist's account in terms of protons
and electrons. Beginning at the other end of the scale,
we shall have to include the psychologist's account in
terms of mental events, images, sensations and so forth,
with special departmental accounts such as the behaviour-
ist's in terms of language habits and conditioned reflexes,
and the psycho-analyst's in terms of unconscious desire
and promptings of the libido. From other points of view
there is the economic man and there is the median man of
the statistician; there is man from the standpoint of the
biologist and man as he appears to the anthropologist.
There is also the account of particular individual men to
be found in the works of the great novelists. Each of these
accounts could in theory be made accurate and complete
complete, that is to say, so far as it goes; yet each would
be couched in different terms. To say that no one of these
accounts conveys the whole truth about a man, but
describes only some particular aspect of him which has
been selected for special attention, would be to state a
commonplace.
That a Man's Personality Eludes Scientific Description.
But more than this is implied by the statement that a
man is more than the sum of his aspects or parts and that
an adequate account of him cannot, therefore, be given
in terms of scientific descriptions of his parts* It is implied
that, if all the different accounts, the physiological, the
chemical, the physical, the psychological, die behaviour*
istic, the psycho-analytic, the economic, the statistical, the
biological, the anthropological and the novelist's, were
collated, supplemented with other accurate and complete