Piero Martinetti, an Italian metaphysician, was professor of theoretical philosophy at the University of Milan from 1906 until 1931, when he resigned in protest against the oath imposed on university professors by the Fascist regime.

Martinetti sought to reestablish metaphysics as a valid science by a method whose validity would have to be recognized even by positivists. This project involved a refutation of positivism on its own grounds. The positivist attack on metaphysics, Martinetti claimed, is valid only against vulgar or dogmatic metaphysics. Scientific metaphysics meets all the requirements of scientific methodology. It adheres to data that all science must recognize; but it is no mere synthesis of the sciences, for it interprets scientific findings and determines their meaning rather than their mere truth. Consequently, a scientific metaphysics would achieve, on a posteriori grounds, successive unifications of empirical data until the Absolute was achieved.

The first...