Under Construction @ Keele 2018 Vol. IV (II) | Page 12

4
McTaggart and decline of idealism
John McTaggart worked at the very end of the modern period of idealism’s dominance in
philosophy, and whose ideas most closely echoed those of Eddy, but who had published her
ideas from outside academia nearly half a century before him. 10 The decade following
McTaggart’s death in 1926 marked the rise of logical positivism, a doctrine which claims that,
for a statement to be meaningful, it must be either analytic (i.e. always true independently of
experiment, such as ‘2+2=4’), or the result of empirical observation (e.g. the braking distance
of a car for a given speed). As the assertions of metaphysics, and particularly those of the
idealism, could not be demonstrated in either of these ways, the logical positivists concluded
that they were not merely false, but meaningless. 11 After over a century of domination, idealism
vanished from philosophical academia with extraordinary suddenness.
Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science
Mary Baker Eddy was the creator of the religion known as ‘Christian Science’, which she
promoted from 1875 so successfully that, by the time of her death in 1910, well over 600
churches existed, and no less a figure than Mark Twain had written a lengthy book about both
her and her creation. 12 Christian Science, in addition to the Bible, has another book which is
considered an inspired text: Science and Health, the principal work of its founder and in which
the main tenets are explained. 13 Eddy wrote 15 other books addressing specific issues, the
total of Eddy's work exceeding a million words. Her degree of importance is not in doubt; it is
the nature of that importance I seek to redefine.
Amongst the most important of Christian Science beliefs is the idea that illness is an
illusion (which can be corrected, not cured, as it does not exist) only by prayer, but even more
critical to the later analysis is the Christian Science assertion that this fact is simply a
consequence of the entirety of material reality being, to varying degrees and in specific ways,
illusory. Mary Baker Eddy's argument in a paraphrased form, is roughly as follows. In this
exposition I will initially treat Eddy’s assumption that God exists as axiomatic of her
metaphysical system, but this is temporary, and only for the purpose of launching her
argument; it will be replaced later with what she regarded as experimental proof for God’s
existence.
McTaggart, The Nature of Existence, (1920, 1927); Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key
to the Scriptures (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Company, [1875] 1910).
11 Alfred J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1961), 5.
12 M. Twain 1907
13 Eddy, Science and Health.
10