BOUTROUX, ÉTIENNE ÉMILE MARIE

French philosopher of science; b. Montrouge, July 28, 1845; d. Paris, Nov. 22, 1921. Boutroux succeeded J. lachelier as conference master at the École Normale, and exercised a great influence over a whole generation of French philosophers and philosophers of science, including H. bergson, M. blondel, P. Duhem, and J. Henri Poincaré.

His doctoral dissertation, De la contingence des lois de la nature (1874), was hailed as a landmark in the philosophy of nature. It was an attack on the doctrinaire determinism of academic rationalists and positivists who allowed no contingency in the laws of nature. Scientific laws are abstract figures of an ideal necessity that can never be fully equated with the concrete, physical reality they symbolize; first, because one can never know all of the influences that condition a fact or event, and second, because the human mind, due to its limitations, necessarily eliminates differences in order to stress what is common. Hypotheses, then, are but partial views that are reformable, and in no sense absolute or necessary. They tell little about nature itself, whose behavior is unpredictable and not subject to the scientific formulas man invents to describe it. It is a mistake, then, to absolutize nature or man's way of thinking about nature.

In addition, quite apart from the multiplicity of external factors that condition scientific facts, the constructions of science are influenced by, and in turn have only a limited application to, human life, thought, and freedom. In sympathy with E. Zeller, whose lectures he heard in Germany, Boutroux extended his criticism of determinism in his later works to those neo-Hegelians who viewed history as a deductive science subject to iron laws of necessity. Man's freedom breaks into the closed world of historical and scientific determinism, resisting all attempts to subject the course of progress to an absolute rule.

Yet, man's quest for an absolute and his attachment to the noncontingent reveal a deeper necessity whose complement lies in the area of morality and religion. He is confronted with the fact of duty and the need for a faith, and science itself shows the importance of cooperative enterprise that should engage all men in the common task of wresting from nature her secrets and working toward the universal brotherhood of man. It is the Christian Gospel that outlines what should be the fullest realization of unity among men. Not only does it offer the hope of reconciling freedom and necessity, and the aspirations of the person with the needs of the community, but it also places science and history within the larger framework of a reality that transcends the limits of the contingent order of creation.

Bibliography: Major works translated into English. Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy, tr. j. nield, (London 1909); Historical Studies in Philosophy, tr. f. rothwell (London 1912); William James, tr. A. and b. henderson (London 1912); Natural Law in Science and Philosophy, tr. f. rothwell (London 1914); The Contingency of the Laws of Nature, tr. f. rothwell (London 1916). Studies. a. p. la fontaine, La Philosophie d'É. Boutroux, v. 1 of La Culture française, 3 v. (Paris 1920–26). m. schyns, La Philosophie d'Émile Boutroux (Paris 1924). a. baillot, "La Philosophie et la religion selon Émile Boutroux," Revue thomiste 39.1 (1934) 313–352. j. benda, De quelques constantes de l'esprit humain (Paris 1950).

[j. m. somerville]