William Thomas Sherman

Peithology William Thomas Sherman

from the Preface: "As a philosophy or philosophic method, peithology is offered as a skeptical idealism; which like transcendental and critical idealisms, relates merely to our faculty of knowing and cognition, not 'real things, ' using 'real' in the mundane, conventional sense of the word. It insists that we closely -- as much as possible -- question all assumptions, and more that we should question them to their greatest possible limit. If it succeeds at persuading people to do nothing else or more than this (or more so than they have previously), it will have achieved one of its intended and primary purposes. "As a science, it is a critical pragmatism which, in as uncluttered and straightforward a manner as possible, examines and classifies beliefs while allowing all views as potentially and ultimately valid. In this way, it helps to free all sciences from dogmatism, thus expanding the horizon for giving science the widest and clearest possible vision. If 'peithology, ' as presented in this work, is not -- as it most certainly isn't -- anything new or original in its parts, hopefully it is novel in its focus on and arrangement of certain points and links in the history of philosophical thought and principles of investigation established by modern science."