Synechism
Synechism
(Gr. syn, with; and echein, to hold) A theory of philosophical explanation developed, and first named by C. S. Peirce (Monist, II, 534). He defined the theory as”That tendency of philosophical thought which insists upon the idea of continuity as of prime importance in philosophy, and in particular, upon the necessity of hypothesis involving true continuity.” (Baldwin, Dict. of Philos. and Psych., N. Y. 1902, II, 657). Continuity seems to have been the name chosen by Peirce for the complete interdependence and inter-relationship of all things. An explanation is not good which relies upon an inexplicable ultimate. In this he was reacting, possibly, to such contemporary principles of explanation as Spencer’s Unknown, and the Absolute of German and English Hegelianism. Synechism was no doubt an important forerunner of the Pragmatic theory of explanation, but Peirce, in describing synechism, stressed the value of generalization, (“the form under which alone anything can be understood is the form of generality, which is the same thing as continuity”), much more than modern pragmatism does. — V.J.B.