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

32 ETHICS X ND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
the predisposing cause which induces this moving figure
to agitate its lower limbs with such frequency and rapidity?
Now the scientist's answer would be that a set of impulses
travelling along the figure's motor nervous system ii producing
certain contractions and expansions of his muscles.
The impulses travelling along the motor nervous system
would in their turn be said to be due to movements in the
brain, and the movements in the brain would be thought
of as responses to stimuli from the world outside, received
by the brain in the shape of messages travelling to it from
the sense organs.
The details of the answer could be expanded almost
indefinitely, but whatever form the answer finally given
assumed, it would need, if it were to qualify as a scientific
explanation, to satisfy two conditions. These are that
whatever is cited as the cause of the movements of the
figure must be a physical thing or event, and must precede
in time the movement which it causes. Now, the idea of
winning the race, involving, as it does, a conception of
something which does not as yet exist, namely, victory in
this particular race, satisfies neither of these conditions;
it is not physical and it is not past. It is precisely to this
idea that, a teleologist would say, we must look for an
explanation of why it is that the man's legs move as they
do. And since the idea involves a reference to an end
which the man's activity is seeking to realize, it constitutes
an illustration of the ideological mode of explanation.
This ideological mode of explanation which, in the case
of the runner, happens to be the obvious one,
is difficult
to fit within die framework of the conceptions applicable
to physical science. Science, it has frequently been said,
finds difficulty in making provision for the conception of
purpose. Science would also shrink from admitting that
something which does not yet exist, but is as yet only in
the future, namely, the attainment of victory, can influence
events which precede it in time.
To take one more example of what is prima foci* an
let us consider the case of
obviously ideological activity,