The Logos philosophy presented here is the simplest and most profound of all philosophies, the newest as well as the oldest. There is only one other philosophy of the same importance and that is materialism – in its most extreme form, the attempt to explain man and all life, however complex, in mechanical terms. The latter was dominant up to a few years ago, due to the enormous success of physics and chemistry. All other sciences such as psychology, sociology, economics, etc. attempt to imitate physics, but they fail because they are dealing with human beings who share in the life and power of the Logos which is “unscientific” in its aims and methods.
Those psychologists who reduce human behavior to a simple stimulus-response mechanism are called by Arthur Koestler in his The Ghost in the Machine “Flat earth psychologists” (New York, 1968).
A surveyor in surveying a small piece of ground, perhaps five or ten acres, treats it as if it were flat, but if he is surveying a large area, determining, for example, the boundary of the state of Kansas, he must take into account the curvature of the earth. The psychologists or philosophers who base all reasoning on what can be observed or measured, in other words, those who wish to imitate physics, and so share its success, are like the flat earth surveyors who can ignore the curvature of the earth because they are surveying only a small part of it. Many of our activities can be defined in terms of stimulus and response, but it does not follow that our bodies are simply very complicated machines. Though a mechanistic explanation can be useful to a biologist for purposes of observation and measurement, the life process itself is entirely different.
The thinking part of the brain is concerned with means and not ends. The ends are known only by feeling, which may be feelings of love or hatred. Only the feeling of love would permit the species to survive through cooperation and mutual support. The feeling of hatred destroys the possibility of cooperation which is essential to survival. Hatred destroys the environment on which life depends. Love is not only the greatest virtue, but the most practicable. If those who profess the Christian religion would take seriously the commandments of Christ, our chances of survival would be enormously increased.
