And now what about philosophy? I am not going into philosophical
questions here. For that reason I am not going to describe biology
as natural history, or anthropology as the natural history of man.
Let philosophers discuss what "nature" is going to mean for them. In
science the word is question-begging; and the only sound rule in
science is to beg as few philosophical questions as you possibly can.
Everything in the world is natural, of course, in the sense that things
are somehow all akin--all of a piece. We are simply bound to take in
the parts as parts of a whole, and it is just this fact that makes
philosophy not only possible but inevitable. All the same, this fact
does not prevent the parts from having their own specific natures and
specific ways of behaving. The people who identify the natural with
the physical are putting all their money on one specific kind of nature
or behaviour that is to be found in the world. In the case of man they
are backing the wrong horse. The horse to back is the horse that goes.
As a going concern, however, anthropology, as part of evolutionary
biology, is a history of vital tendencies which are not natural in
the sense of merely physical.

What are the functions of philosophy as contrasted with science? Two.
Firstly, it must be critical. It must police the city of the sciences,
preventing them from interfering with each other's rights and free
development. Co-operation by all means, as, for instance, between
anthropology and biology. But no jumping other folks' claims and laying
down the law for all; as, for instance, when physics would impose the
kind of method applicable to machines on the sciences of evolving life.
Secondly, philosophy must be synthetic. It must put all the ways of
knowing together, and likewise put these in their entirety together
with all the ways of feeling and acting; so that there may result a