Synthesized answer
The passages present the difference between monism and pluralism as a fundamental philosophical distinction. _Primâ facie_, the world appears as a pluralism, with its unity resembling that of a collection [1]. Higher thinking involves an effort to refine this initial, "crude form" of the world [1]. However, absolute unity remains elusive and is considered a _Grenzbegriff_ [1].
Pluralism, as described, suggests that the universe is "wild" and that the same occurrences do not repeat identically, but rather return "to bring the different" [5]. For a radical empiricist, the "crudity of experience" is an enduring aspect, and there is no single viewpoint from which the world appears as an absolutely unified fact [5]. Monism, conversely, is treated as a hypothesis that radical empiricism does not dogmatically affirm as something all experience must conform to [1].
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
of _radical empiricism_, in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I say 'empiricism,' because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience; and I say 'radical,' because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, {viii} unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm monism as something with…
may be described as 'oneness' with him, and so from the very bosom of theism a {135} monistic doctrine seem to arise. But this consciousness of self-surrender, of absolute practical union between one's self and the divine object of one's contemplation, is a totally different thing from any sort of substantial identity. Still the object God and the subject I are two. Still I simply come upon him, and find his existence given to me; and the climax of my practical union with what is given, forms at the same time the climax of my perception that as a numerical fact of existence I am…
ce, what makes us monists or pluralists, determinists or indeterminists, is at bottom always some sentiment like this. The stronghold of the deterministic sentiment is the antipathy to the idea of chance. As soon as we begin to talk indeterminism to our friends, we find a number of them shaking their heads. This notion of alternative possibility, they say, this admission that any one of several things may come to pass, is, after all, only a roundabout name for chance; and chance is something the notion of which no sane mind can for an instant tolerate in the world. What is it, they…
aimed at going beyond God, and of attempts to fly above him or outbid him; so I will now explain exactly what I mean. In defining the essential attributes of God, I said he was a personality lying outside our own and other than us,--a power not ourselves. Now, the attempts to fly beyond theism, of which I speak, are attempts to get over this ultimate duality of God and his believer, and to transform it into some sort or other of identity. If infratheistic ways of looking on the world leave it in the third person, a mere _it_; and if theism turns the _it_ into a _thou_,--so we may say…
; and there may be in the whole universe no one point of view extant from which this would not be found to be the case. "Reason," as a gifted writer says, "is {ix} but one item in the mystery; and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned, reason and wonder blushed face to face. The inevitable stales, while doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the universe is wild,--game-flavored as a hawk's wing. Nature is miracle all; the same returns not save to bring the different. The slow round of the engraver's lathe gains but the breadth of a hair, but the difference…