Background
Boodin, John Elof was born on September 14, 1869 in Pjetteryd, Sweden.
Idealist (with overtones of pragmatism and realism)
Boodin, John Elof was born on September 14, 1869 in Pjetteryd, Sweden.
Universities of Colorado and Minnesota, Brown Universities and Harvard.
Brown University, 1896-1897. Harvard, 1899-1900; Grinnell College. 1900-1904; University of Kansas, 1904-1913.
Carleton College, 1913-1928. UCLA. 1928 -39.
Determined to do justice to the salient features of life and philosophy, Boodin produced a complicated system bringing together fact and value, science and religion, while incorporating portions of classical metaphysical systems with similar objectives. The result was interesting, but then somewhat dated. Boodin came to terms with his contemporaries by subscribing to pragmatism, realism and idealism simultaneously. In his article on pragmatism (1909), he defined it as the application of scientific method to ‘philosophical hypotheses'. This also meant finding the human significance of scientific and philosophical concepts. With respect to idealism he wished to retain its emphasis on value, while avoiding its tendency to ‘psychologitis’. He endorsed both evolutionary theory and modern physics yet, as with the idealists, the goal of evolution is both in the process of being achieved and already present. He held that his view combined ‘empirical realism and cosmic idealism’. He thought of substance as totality, and found it to possess the five attributes of being, time, space, consciousness and form. He thought of the first attribute as ‘pragmatic energism’. The other four are ‘not-being’ in that they are not things although making a difference to things. Consciousness, for example, is energy becoming aware of itself; and form is ‘formulation’, part of the ‘executive constitution’ of nature, having to do with direction, order and standards within the process of evolution. At the same time Boodin referred in a single locution to ‘form, spirit or God’. He argued that God’s existence was not in question since God is ‘the quality of the highest level to which we strive to adapt ourselves [at] our best’. That might be taken to mean that God is merely a quality of human awareness. In fact, however, the fields of physics, organic life, conscious awareness and society—called forth by the interworking of the attributes of substance— constitute a hierarchy of overlapping levels. God as the highest level and 'field of fields’ is both the form evolution must take and an awareness ‘stimulating the evolution of every part in the direction of divinity’. The inertia of the parts, including human indifference and opposition, limits the divine effectiveness, mingling tragedy with achievement. The unfinished essay of the Posthumous Papers (1957) places the foregoing in a context where metaphysics is the only field remaining to philosophy, and where science and metaphysics are correlative disciplines. The former reduces reality to its simplest, measurable aspects, while the latter takes reality in its concreteness, whole ness and individuality. Metaphysics proceeds by discovering the categories necessary to explain experience. The categories, those ‘supreme binders of experience’, come in two forms. One —simplicity, economy, consistency and harmony—are ‘cosmic feelings’ which come to light as humans interact with their environment. Together, the categories explicate a reality which, while richer than, is not inconsistent with, science. Sources: Edwards: Reck 1964; Reese.