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Title: Gallio
or, The tyranny of science
Author: J. W. N. Sullivan
Release date: August 3, 2025 [eBook #76629]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton & Co, 1928
Credits: Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALLIO ***
GALLIO
OR
THE TYRANNY
OF
SCIENCE
GALLIO
OR
The Tyranny of Science
BY
J. W. N. SULLIVAN
[Illustration]
E. P. DUTTON & CO. :: NEW YORK
GALLIO, OR THE TYRANNY OF SCIENCE
COPYRIGHT 1928 BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED :: PRINTED IN U.S.A.
GALLIO
GALLIO
OR
THE TYRANNY OF SCIENCE
1
There can be no doubt that the prestige of science has greatly
increased of recent times. In the days when Dickens wrote _The Mudfog
Papers_ the man of science, to the general reading public, was a purely
comic figure. After the man of science had knocked the bottom out of
the Victorian universe with his theory of Natural Selection he inspired
the respect we accord to whatever is both powerful and sinister. He was
observed, warily and acutely, as an enemy. This reaction was perfectly
justified, for science, as expounded to the populace by such men as
Huxley and Tyndall, deprived life of all that had hitherto made it
worth living. The gravamen of their offence was not that they made man
an integral part of the animal kingdom, but that they presented him
with a universe that was entirely purposeless. Such a doctrine would
probably come as a shock even to a disillusioned and emaciated Eastern
Sage, but to the men of the Victorian age, almost every one of them
brought up in an orthodox Christian household and filled with that
belief in a wise Providence that comes of great material prosperity,
it was nothing short of an outrage. Even the men of science themselves
found their great discovery more than a little disconcerting. Nobody
who reads them can fail to detect something strained, something
occasionally almost frenzied, in their insistence on the duty of
intellectual honesty. These men are, half the time, shouting aloud
in order to hearten themselves. They were quite consciously martyrs
to the truth. This is true, at any rate, of such men as Huxley and
Clifford. There were many men of science, of course, who were not
sufficiently alive to live in a universe of any description. Outside,
their laboratories they had no perceptible existence. Many of them died
simple Christians. But to all interested in such matters it became
evident that the goal of science was the detailed explanation of man
as the accidental outcome of “matter and motion”. Since the arguments
of the man of science could not be met (for only science can cast out
science) the only thing left was to abuse him. This was magnificently
done by Nietzsche, and rather less magnificently by Dostoevsky and
Tolstoi. Nietzsche pointed out that the man of science was not a
human being. He was merely an instrument, the most costly, the most
exquisite, the most easily tarnished of instruments. He was incapable
of love; he was incapable of hate. His one purpose was to “reflect”
such things as he was tuned to receive. The philosophy evolved by such
a creature would be expressive of nothing but his own limitations. He
would be incapable of understanding the problems that concerned a man.
This was also the line taken, more or less, by Dostoevsky and Tolstoi,
and it became very popular with artists of all kinds. Wordsworth’s
scorn for the botanist became the general attitude towards all men
of science. It must be admitted that, judging from biographies of
scientific men, there is much to be said for this view. Their favourite
authors appear to be Shakespeare and Ella Wheeler Wilcox: they are
kind fathers and faithful husbands; in their social relations they
are simple-minded snobs; and they are really amused by “lecture-room
humour”. It seems unlikely that such people know much of the fierce
vitality that sent Saints to rot on pillars and in dungeons, that sent
martyrs to the stake, or even that weaker form of vitality that causes
our Divorce Court judges to be overworked. That they can understand
the universe, when it is obvious they do not understand Clapham, does
not seem likely. That, briefly, was the case of the artist against the
man of science. The artist was conscious of more things in heaven and
earth, staring him in the face, than he believed the man of science had
ever dreamt of in his philosophy.
It is evident that the position to-day is rather different. It has
become different since the War. It is probable, as we shall see
later, that the War itself is partly responsible for the increased
attention paid by the artist to science. But the influence was not
direct. The artist was not transported with admiration for the men
who could make poison-gas,[1] although he may have been more inclined
to believe their philosophy that existence is meaningless. No, the
change was, I believe, due to Einstein: in this respect he must be
likened to Newton and Darwin. The fact that his theory is completely
unintelligible to the enormous majority of those who take an interest
in it is not at all to its disadvantage. Rather the contrary. The
artist is attracted by the theory, and respectful to it, not in the
least because he understands it, but because he feels it is the result
of a most unusual and most powerful _imaginative_ effort. It gives
him a new conception of the power of the human consciousness. This
theory, he is convinced, has come from the heights. It is probable,
as a matter of fact, he thinks this because he believes the theory
to be about that mathematical platitude, a fourth dimension. The
fourth dimension is a phrase to which imaginative people respond with
quite extraordinary intensity. Its popularity is like that of giant
telescopes, as was proved when a thousand pounds was recently offered
for a simple explanation of it. It seems to be the phrase which, to
the non-mathematician, is most pregnant with the vast and liberating
unknown. If its meaning is ever generally understood, we may anticipate
that interest in Einstein’s theory will decline. This will be a pity,
because the popular reaction to Einstein’s theory is perfectly
justified. It _is_ the most profound and original scientific theory
that has ever been invented, and it displays a kind of imagination
almost[2] unprecedented in the history of science. The feeling of the
artist about it is right――it is vastly important to him.
[1] He ought to have been. See _Callinicus_, by J. B. S. Haldane.
Being convinced that the mathematician, at any rate, might be a
poet, the respect of imaginative people for science in general has
greatly increased. Many of them have decided that science is worth
looking into. Unfortunately mathematical physics, the master science
of the present day and the one which has furnished ideals for the
other sciences, is hopelessly technical. It is agreed that a modern
intelligent man, conscious of his responsibilities as an inhabitant
of the twentieth century, should be familiar with “the scientific
outlook”. But to acquire this outlook by brooding over the teachings
and implications of modern physics is not easy. Thus although it is the
recent astonishing development in physics which is responsible for the
renewed public interest in science, it is other sciences that reap the
benefit. We have poets and painters who study anthropology and literary
critics who read books on the nervous system. The result appears to
have been disastrous. At a time when the physicists are abandoning
materialism the artists are accepting it. They are accepting, as the
last word of science, a picture of the world that belongs to the early
bad manner of physics. Again we hear, but this time from our literary
men, that slightly hysterical insistence on the duty of intellectual
honesty. It must be admitted that they have been predisposed to accept
this view by the War. It is a curious but indisputable psychological
fact, perhaps first noted by Tolstoi, that the sight of a large number
of naked human bodies makes it difficult to believe that they are
animated by immortal spirits possessing an eternal destiny. The sight
of the “wastage” that occurred during the War, for those who saw any of
it, produced the same curious effect. Also, a psychological fact that
cannot be denied, it was difficult to preserve belief in the essential
nobility of man when listening to patriotic non-combatants. There can
be no doubt that the War, for a large number of those connected with
it, has made the acceptance of materialism easier. Even the creative
artists, at one time great champions of the spiritual nature of
man, are now sufficiently dubious about his nature to be reduced to
impotence.
[2] I say “almost” because there was Bernhard Riemann and his disciple
W. K. Clifford.
2
The notion that we live in a purposeless universe is so opposed to the
mental habits we have inherited that it is a matter of the greatest
difficulty to bear it constantly in mind. Most of the people who
hold this belief to-day would not do so but for three reasons: the
disillusionment caused by the War, their respect for science, and
their belief that science preaches materialism. As for the War, that
is an experience to which we must accommodate ourselves as best we
may. It is consistent with the belief that man is a developing spirit,
but it is certainly a proof that he is not very far developed. The
respect for science is, I believe, on the whole rather overdone. The
respect is a little excessive even when it relates to mathematical
physics, but it becomes almost absurd when it relates to some other
branches of science. I believe, for instance, that Freud’s form of
psycho-analysis, some forms of behaviourism, and many of the statements
of the eugenists really are as silly as they look. All that they
have in common with such first-class mental activities as physics and
chemistry is the name “science.” It is this name that secures for them
such attention as they get from intelligent people who are not cranks.
But even physics is a more provisional and more human thing than some
romantic references to it would lead one to suppose. Even the tower of
the mathematician, which Mr Bernard Shaw imagines to have been always
unshaken, has been seriously disturbed on more than one occasion. The
student of the history of science will not be too confident even of the
“indubitable certainties” of physics when he reflects on the universal
passion of belief that attached to the notion of a mechanical ether,
for whose present absence from the universe some men of science are
still inconsolable, and when he reflects on the fate that has overtaken
that “most perfect and perfectly established law”, Newton’s law of
gravitation. There are no indubitable certainties in science, a fact
that we who are contemporary with the destruction of the Newtonian
system are not likely to forget. There are only provisional hypotheses.
It may even be, as Mr J. B. S. Haldane prophesies, that physiology
will one day invade and destroy mathematical physics, by which somewhat
dark saying I suppose phenomena mathematically may be given up. Whether
he means that or not, it is a possibility, as Professor Eddington has
hinted. The scientific practitioner usually treats his hypotheses as
tools, but to the layman they become dogmas. One is led to believe
this by seeing that many of those who accept materialism on what they
suppose to be scientific evidence are rendered acutely unhappy by their
belief. A truer knowledge of the status of scientific theories would
render this agony unnecessary. There are people with a natural leaning
towards materialism, and science, preferably somewhat old-fashioned
science, will give them quite sufficient grounds to indulge their
propensity with complete intellectual honesty. But science does not,
and never has, brought forward sufficient evidence to justify a man
turning materialist against his will. And perhaps no man has ever done
so. Perhaps one can take the agonies of modern poets too seriously.
Many artists, not only small ones, have no real indwelling force
such as a man like Beethoven obviously possessed. They are merely
very impressionable and _adopt_ an attitude towards life, and this
attitude is accepted and maintained, not because they really think it
is true, but because they derive strength from it. It gives them a
centre from which they can work; it gives them a feeling of strength
and completeness. The maintenance of their attitude towards life may
become the condition that they exist and function as artists at all.
Nevertheless, the attitude is maintained only by a constant effort of
will, although, since the motive is self-preservation, the artist will
nearly always think himself perfectly sincere. But I shall, without
going into these refinements, take the unhappiness of our modern
literary men at its face-value, those, that is, who believe that the
universe is purposeless and think this belief is founded on scientific
evidence.
The point of view has been well put recently by Mr I. A. Richards,[3]
a literary critic who thinks it possible that poetry may be destroyed
by science. He speaks of the “neutralization of nature” which has been
effected by science, and contrasts this with the “magical view” of the
world that has hitherto been accepted by artists. What he means by
this is that science reveals to us a universe quite indifferent to all
human aspirations, whereas artists have hitherto assumed that man is
of cosmic significance. The poet must learn to accept the scientific
universe and give up believing in things like “inspiration”, “a reality
deeper than the reality of science”, and so on. “Experience”, says Mr
Richards, “is its own justification”, by which he appears to mean that
experience just happens to be what it is by some kind of accident. It
points to nothing beyond itself. The ground for this belief is not,
in Mr Richards’ case, old-fashioned materialism. “It is not what the
universe is made of but how it works, the law it follows, which makes
knowledge of it incapable of spurring on our emotional responses.” This
reminds one of the “iron laws” of the Victorian age, which many people
found so depressing, although the logical connection between existence
having conditions and existence being purposeless is a little hard to
follow. But although the particular iron laws of the Victorians have
gone, Mr Richards finds the theory of relativity no more cheering. “A
god voluntarily or involuntarily subject to Einstein’s General Theory
of Relativity does not make an emotional appeal and physics does not
find it necessary to mention him.” Apparently it is the existence of
any law at all that is resented: the poet can feel happy only in a
world of pure miracle. I strongly doubt the correctness of Mr Richards’
diagnosis.[4] I am certain that not all poets have been as childish
as that. No――the essential element in this general outlook is not
that phenomena occur in an orderly way, but that man’s existence is
not regarded as forming part of some universal purpose. The essential
element is the same as in old-fashioned materialism, the “accidental
collocations of atoms” theory. The emphasis was on the “accidental”
not on the “atoms”. This becomes clear when Mr Richards describes the
appropriate emotional reaction to his view. “A sense of desolation
and uncertainty, of futility, of the baselessness of aspirations, of
the vanity of endeavour, and a thirst for a life-giving water which
seems suddenly to have failed, are the signs in consciousness of this
necessary reorganization of our lives.” It is difficult to believe
that this state of mind can be produced by the recognition of such
facts as that unsupported stones always fall to the ground. But if Mr
Richards is right, I suggest that the poets who are so depressed by
law and order should study, besides the theory of relativity, Quantum
Theory. They will find there much that is, at present, agreeably
miraculous. But one need not fly to miracles to get rid of the bug-bear
of “unalterable law”. It is only necessary to understand the true
status of the unalterable laws, and this is just what relativity theory
enables us to do.
[3] _Science and Poetry_, 1926.
[4] But possibly Mr Richards means that the scientific description
does not include values. See Section 5 of this essay.
3
The idea that there is a conflict between science and art, which is at
bottom the idea that there is a conflict between science and mysticism,
rests, I have suggested, upon an old-fashioned conception of the
status of physics. The first duty of a man who bases his conclusions
on science is to make sure that his science is up-to-date. The science
that leads to the depressing conclusions I have just sketched is not
up-to-date. Until a few years ago the physicist thought that the
material universe he dealt with was a real, objectively existing
universe in the sense that, in the absence of consciousness, it would
be very much the same as it appeared to be. This universe was subject
to laws, and these laws might conceivably have been different. There
was no _a priori_ reason, for instance, why the force of gravitation
should not vary as the inverse cube of the distance. There was no _a
priori_ reason why matter and energy should be conserved. These were
laws of governance of the material universe; their discovery had
required much effort and the rejection of alternatives. Man was in no
sense responsible for them: he happened to live in a universe governed
by them. These were the iron laws of the Victorians and are the laws,
apparently, that depress modern poets. One of the great discoveries of
relativity theory is that these laws need be no more depressing than
the laws of Euclidean geometry. No artist has felt his aspirations
baseless because he cannot draw a circle whose circumference is six
times its radius. He has no more right to despair because there
is an inexorable law of gravitation. This has been made clear by
Professor Eddington, whose mathematical development of relativity
theory is of great philosophical importance, and would, in a more
adequately educated community, be given more newspaper headlines than
Tutankhamen. The real universe, according to relativity theory, is a
four-dimensional world of point-events. Of the nature of point-events
we know nothing. All that we require to know, for the purposes of
physics, is that it takes four numbers to specify a point-event
uniquely, and that some kind of structure――a minimum amount of
structure――may be postulated of the world of point-events. We then
find, purely by mathematical processes, that certain characteristics of
this world will have the quality of permanence. The mind, faced with
this world of evanescent point-events, selects those characteristics
that are permanent as being of special interest. This is merely because
the mind happens to be that kind of thing. As a consequence of this
predilection of the mind there arises space and time, matter, and the
laws of nature. There arises, in fact, the “objective universe”. The
real world of point-events has many other characteristics to which the
mind pays no attention. A different principle of selection, exercised
on the same total world of point-events, would result in an utterly
different universe, a universe that is, for us, quite unimaginable. And
the universe that the mind has selected and constructed from the world
of point-events does not in the least depend on what the point-events
_are_. All that is necessary is that a certain minimum amount of
structure should be attributed to the world of point-events. It is from
the relations between the point-events, quite independent of their
substance, that the mind has created the material universe and its
laws. These laws, it must be emphasized, are _necessary_ consequences
of the mind’s selective action. They are necessary in the same sense
that the sum of the three interior angles of a Euclidean triangle must
be two right angles. Of the underlying reality deduced by physics we
can say almost nothing. It may be what Newton called the “sensorium”
of God, and the point-events may be his thoughts. They do not succeed
one another in time for, at this stage of analysis, space and time are
“merged in one”. This perfectly gratuitous hypothesis may appeal to
some mystics, for our thoughts, considered as belonging to the world
of point-events, would be part of the thoughts of God. It would be
indeed true that in him we lived and moved and had our being. We see,
then, the limitations of physics. All that depends on the _structure_
of reality belongs to physics, including other universes than ours.
All that depends upon the _substance_ of reality for ever lies outside
physics. As to the actual universe we live in, why we should regard
it as actual is a problem for psychology. The difference between the
actual and the non-actual is a distinction conferred by our minds. It
is very probable that the whole movement of the universe in time is
also contributed by our minds. It seems to be true that events do not
take place――we come across them. Why we do not know the future is again
a question of psychology. Ignorance of the future, like the existence
of the material universe, is a clue to the constitution of our minds.
This has a bearing on the question of “purpose” in the universe. The
conception of purpose seems to suppose a process in time, and therefore
may be a totally irrelevant idea when applied to reality.
The philosophical implications of relativity theory will doubtless
take a long time to work out. The four-dimensional universe of
point-events is something that can be argued about but it is, to use an
old-fashioned phrase, “inconceivable”. Mankind, excepting professional
logicians, never remains content with the inconceivable. A purely
logical conclusion is not enough; it has to be grasped imaginatively,
by which I do not necessarily mean that it has to be pictured. To
become familiar with a theory does not merely mean that one is able, as
a form of mental wire-walking, to slip nimbly back and forth over the
logical connections of the structure. It means taking it into oneself
in some indefinable manner――becoming “intimate” with it. Only when a
theory is “realized”, as we say, do we feel that we truly understand
it. Ideas, points of view, that we were able to see only in flashes,
become part of our normal intellectual equipment. The process may
well be called a growth of consciousness. There are ideas which our
consciousness, when it first approaches them is, as it were, too flabby
to grasp. We first have to exercise our mental muscles. Every student
of a line of thought such as mathematics, which is rather outside
our normal preoccupations, becomes aware of an actual change in his
mental powers. Notions so abstract that at first they seemed almost
meaningless gradually become perfectly clear and permanent additions to
one’s mental resources. Students of musical composition find that their
capacity for mentally hearing a number of parts rapidly increases. In
some cases it is almost as if a new faculty of the mind were born and
developed.
The physics of recent years has made heavy demands upon our capacity
for realization. The electron theory, with its analysis of matter into
“disembodied charges of electricity” required, for its understanding,
the breaking up of old habits of thought. To young students the idea
was, at first, extremely baffling――almost nonsense. To realize it one
had to make more abstract one’s idea of matter until the notion of
“substance” was replaced by the notion of “behaviour”. Anything that
behaved in the way characteristic of matter was matter. The central
idea of the restricted principle of relativity, the idea of different
time-systems, was still more difficult to grasp. In this case we had to
become convinced that our ordinary idea of simultaneity, an idea which
seemed perfectly clear, was really a bogus idea. The attacks on the
theory of relativity show, for the most part, merely that their authors
are unable to abandon old habits of thought. With the complete theory
of relativity, as we have it now, the task of adjustment has become
enormous. There cannot be, even now, more than very few scientific men
who naturally approach a problem from the point of view of relativity
theory. In most cases a conscious effort of mental preparation is
required, such as occurs when a novelist, sitting down to continue
his work, deliberately thinks himself into the appropriate frame of
mind. Yet doubtless the next generation or so will think in terms of
relativity theory as naturally as we thought in terms of the Newtonian
system. I would not hold it as impossible that the human mind may come
to realize, imaginatively as well as logically, the four-dimensional
space-time continuum. But it seems that the mind of the physicist, at
any rate, will have to do more than become familiar with relativity
theory. It will have to accommodate itself somehow to the quantum
theory for, although we can write down the laws which govern sub-atomic
phenomena and make deductions from them, these laws are, at present,
unintelligible. An electron behaves as if it had foreknowledge of
what it was about to do and could make the mathematical calculations
necessary to achieve its end. We cannot admit this to be possible, and
we can only suppose that the difficulty arises from the way we think
about things. We must learn to think in a different way, and what the
consequences of that new way of thinking will be no one can say. We
know very little of the possibilities of the development of the human
consciousness.
The proper attitude to-day in which the problem of man’s place in
nature should be approached is one of bewilderment and humility. Both
the material universe and the mind of man are very mysterious things.
At the present time it is only an inadequate mind which is confident
that it knows what is impossible. There was never a time when hearty
dogmatism and loud confidence were more out of place. We must think as
best we can, of course. The next step upward in the development of the
human consciousness will not be achieved by either slovenly credulity
or slovenly scepticism, but only by a terrifying mental travail. I
see a human mind as some multiple plant, here in full flower, there
still in the bud. Different minds have flowered in different ways.
Beethoven’s _Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit_
points to the complete development in him of something which those
of us who understand him have only in embryo. In those who do not
understand him it is non-existent. And the great mystics ought at least
to make us doubt whether it is we who are not deficient rather than
they who are mad. It is rash to dismiss our exceptional moods, our
strange flashes of what seems like insight, as mere whimsies without
significance. They may be faint stirrings of the next thing that is
destined to become fully alive. All that we can say is that the mind
lives in a universe largely of its own creation, and that the universe,
together with the mind, will change in ways we cannot foresee.
4
We have seen that the philosophy that regards man as a meaningless
accident in an alien universe receives no support from modern physics.
The true ground of that philosophy is now, as it always has been, the
apparently meaningless misery that forms part of life. It is not by
mistaking matter for an ultimate reality or by pondering on the fact
that laws of nature exist that we can conclude that man is of no cosmic
significance. That conclusion can be reached logically only on the
basis of arbitrary assumptions. But the conclusion is not, in fact,
reached in that way: it is reached through feeling. And it cannot
be transcended by a logical process, but only in virtue of a mystic
experience.
The old materialistic outlook, although it no longer has any scientific
justification, is still active in many branches of science. It has made
popular certain types of explanation and is the cause of the direction
pursued by certain researches. In particular it has led to a great
deal of useless or misleading work being done in the attempt to reduce
qualitative to quantitative differences.
A good deal of what passes for scientific work amongst eugenists
and psychologists consists of attempts to match things which are
qualitatively different. This is the favourite procedure of that kind
of psycho-analysis which reduces everything to sex. Discrimination
is fatiguing; also, it makes appeal to sensibilities which many
earnest “scientific workers” do not possess. It is much easier to make
measurements than to know exactly what you are measuring.
To give up the ideal of measurability would be equivalent, to many
people, to abandoning “science” altogether. “Science is measurement”,
we are informed. This ideal is borrowed from physics, the science
whose aim it is to give mathematical descriptions of phenomena. But
we may have branches of knowledge that may fairly be called science
although they are not mathematical. We may find it necessary to use
concepts that cannot be mathematically defined. It may not be mere
lack of knowledge which prevents biology, for instance, from being a
mathematical science. It may be impossible in the nature of things ever
to give the equation to a chicken. But the bias towards measurability
is very strong and has led to measurements being made, particularly in
psychology, where we really have no clear idea at all as to what is
being measured. When, for instance, Professor Karl Pearson compares
fraternal resemblances in such things as stature and arm-length with
fraternal resemblances in intelligence and conscientiousness, what
exactly is he doing? A great deal of what is called experimental
psychology impresses one as being nothing but the application of
an inappropriate technique by exceptionally innocent and unworldly
“scientists”. The methods found so successful in physics are applied
to everything under the sun. It is pretty obvious that this is not due
to some mystic, Pythagorean conviction that number is the principle of
all things, but merely to mental inertia. Many “intelligence tests”
and many of the statistical results obtained by the eugenists impress
the ordinary person as being laughably superficial. In their eagerness
to “measure” something our researcher seem to lose their ordinary
common sense, whereas their subject really requires the subtlety and
sympathy of a very good novelist. It is amazing the number of dull,
unimaginative people who find a congenial life work in prosecuting
researches in pseudo-science. The ordinary public, unfortunately,
does not discriminate between one kind of science and another, with
the result that the contempt they rightly feel for some so-called men
of science is apt to be extended to all scientific men. Thus Mr G.
K. Chesterton, having heard that some “scientists” explain the shape
of a church spire as symbolical of phallic worship, begins to doubt
the whole Royal Society. It must be remembered that in science real
insight and imagination are as rare as in any other human activity. In
the clear-cut sciences, such as physics and chemistry, where the right
way of attacking problems is known and where an elaborate technique
has been built up, there is plenty of room for valuable routine work.
All the difficult preliminary work of getting right conceptions and
principles has been done. The routine worker can measure the electric
capacities of different condensers because the difficult notion of
electric capacity has been made clear by his masters. But the routine
worker in psychology who measures “intelligence” is not doing anything
definite at all. His subject is not yet ripe for the application of
such exact methods. In this way the prestige of physics has exerted
a harmful influence on the study of psychology. It is true that some
experimental psychologists are becoming aware of the fact that they do
not always know what they are measuring. There are controversies as to
what a given set of measurements has measured, and some measurements
seem to be undertaken on the off-chance that a meaning will some day be
found for them. It is not suggested that all experimental psychology is
of this kind, but it is certainly true that many psychological papers,
complete with correlation coefficients and “curves” of all kinds, wear
an air of precision to which they have no real claim.
A more definitely materialistic bias is observable in the attempts to
explain psychological happenings in terms of physiology. The result
is that learned and acute men, caught in the jungle of neurology,
painfully fight their way out with some such epoch-making discovery
as that one learns a subject more rapidly if one is interested in
it. This result, which is supposed to be incompatible with the
purely physiological theory of the mind, owes all its difficulty to
that in compatibility. Otherwise it is a perfectly obvious fact of
experience. If it were not for the prestige achieved by materialism
in the Victorian age it is probable that psychology would be very
much further advanced than it is. But the side-tracking influence of
that philosophy has meant that psychologists have had painfully to
discover the obvious. But if materialism, in small doses, delays the
recognition of the obvious, it does, when fully developed, deny the
obvious. This is what the behaviourists do. They deny that we think or
that we can form images in our minds. The only possible answer to this
theory is a satire, as when Voltaire answered the theory that in this
world everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds
by writing _Candide_. But in this queer modern world behaviourism,
instead of being greeted with laughter, is answered carefully and
politely, apparently in the spirit in which Monsieur Bergeret shook
hands with the _vers libriste_ poet, “for fear of wronging beauty in
disguise”. The position of the ordinary man in face of these theories
is, nevertheless, a difficult one. Behaviourism may sound to him
nonsense, but so does non-Euclidean geometry. His natural reaction
would be to class both of them with the theory that the English
are descended from the lost ten tribes of Israel. Nevertheless,
non-Euclidean geometry is not nonsense. In these circumstances it is
probably fortunate that there are people patient enough to prepare
careful and reasoned refutations of any whimsy that anybody cares to
put forth. The extraordinary predisposition of the learned towards
concocting merely silly theories must always be borne in mind. Studious
persons often have a very small range of experience of life; they have
nothing like so broadly based a sense of probability as the ordinary
man of the world possesses, which is why so many of them seem curiously
innocent and gullible. The beaming and genial professor expounding
his theory often seems curiously like a child playing with toys. The
mixture of amusement and respect with which the world watches him is,
on the whole, the correct reaction. As long as he is dealing with
the incomprehensible one may grant him authority. Nobody dreams of
questioning astronomical pronouncements about forthcoming eclipses. But
when he is talking about the very stuff of our ordinary experience,
as in psychology, we do wrong to accept the obviously absurd for
fear that it cannot be as silly as it looks. A great deal of what is
called psycho-analysis, for instance, is merely silly. Only people
singularly deficient in common-sense and completely lacking in a sense
of humour could have invented anything so preposterous. Undoubtedly
some pathological states are of sexual origin, but the lengths to
which the theory has been carried and the kind of interpretations
that are given make the development of psycho-analysis one of the
greatest psychological curiosities of our time. Whole-hearted belief in
psycho-analysis certainly points to the existence of a complex. As with
any other complex, it is defended by arguments to which none except
those who are similarly afflicted can attach the slightest validity.
The complex is strongly materialistic, not in the sense that everything
is reduced to “matter and motion”, but in the sense that the lowest
human activities are made explanatory of all the rest. One often finds,
associated with a belief in materialism, a desire to deny any form
of spiritual excellence. The ostensible motive is simplification, as
when material substances are reduced to a small number of chemical
elements; but it is usually obvious, from the forced explanations that
are attempted, that the real motive is something very different. Much,
of course, must be attributed to insensitiveness, as we see when we
turn to psycho-analytic explanations of works of art. The extraordinary
force of the psycho-analysts’ complex is well shown by the sort of
arguments they find convincing. Thus they may profess to show that
artistic tastes never exist without suppressed sexual desires. Their
way of establishing this fact, which is chiefly by asserting it, is
comparatively rational. But they then proceed to the statement that a
taste for art is merely a disguised form of sexual desire. They might
as well say that it is a disguised form of hunger, since artists are
quite as notorious for being hungry as for being erotic, and artistic
tastes are never found to exist in a man who takes no nourishment.
Not only much modern psychology, but some other modern sciences such as
comparative religion, are prone to a certain fallacy that may be called
the fallacy of “explanation by origins”. This kind of explanation has
been made popular by the theory of evolution, and the fallacy consists
in supposing that to give the historical antecedents of a thing is to
give an analysis of that thing. Thus, some authorities suppose that by
showing that religion has developed from primitive magic rites, they
have thereby proved that religion is nothing but a disguised form of
magic. One might as well say that an oak-tree is a disguised form of an
acorn, or that a man is a disguised form of an amoeba. But this error
is too glaring to be committed by more than a small percentage of our
modern “thinkers”. A much more insidious danger is that this type of
explanation leads one to under-estimate the complexity of the thing
to be explained. There is a tendency to neglect those factors in the
final product which cannot be traced in its historical antecedents.
This is one form of the widespread error of undue simplification. No
human mind can deal exhaustively with concrete facts. Every natural
entity, whether it be a flower or a nation, contains far too many
factors for thought to grasp it completely. The art of human thinking
is to make useful abstractions. Any man is a very complicated creature.
All the artists and scientists of the world could not describe him
exhaustively. But for the purposes of war every man under a certain
military rank was regarded as a physical structure supporting weapons
and a stomach on two legs. This abstraction was useful for the purposes
for which it was invented. A somewhat different abstraction is required
when a man is considered as a voter. When a man is considered as
a “hand” or a “worker” it is found that slightly more complicated
abstractions are required. In fact, the great fault of economic theory
has been that its “economic man” was too simple an abstraction. The
economist left out certain factors in his conception of man, with the
result that his plans, when applied to real men, do not work. I am
suggesting that the sciences which ape physics suffer, amongst other
things, from inadequate abstractions. This is not surprising, for
there is every reason to suppose that the extraordinary difficulties
experienced by physics itself, at the present day, are due to the same
cause. An analysis of this position will show us the direction of the
probable future development of science and help us to see in what
consists the importance of the arts.
5
Many people, including some scientific men, take science too seriously.
They think that science gives a far more comprehensive picture of
reality than it really does. There have been philosophers who have
gone so far as to suppose that those factors of experience that
science does not find it necessary to talk about do not really exist.
This is the basis of the belief that colours, sounds, and scents have
no “objective” existence; they exist only in the mind, whereas such
qualities as mass and extension are supposed to exist independently of
the mind. It is true that science does not find it necessary to refer
to colours, sounds, and scents in giving its description of nature,
whereas it does find it necessary to refer to mass and extension. But
that does not prove that the former qualities are not as real as the
latter, are not as indubitably part of the universe. The scientific
concepts have by no means proved themselves adequate to account for
the whole of experience. Nearly everything of real importance to
man lies at present outside science. The fact is that science was
undertaken as an intellectual adventure: it was an attempt to find
out how far nature could be described in mathematical terms. Certain
primary conceptions――time, space, mass, force, and so on――all of which
can be defined mathematically, were adopted, and it became a highly
absorbing game to find out how much of what goes on around us could be
described, mathematically, in terms of these conceptions. The success
of this effort has been so astonishing that some scientific men have
forgotten to be astonished. They have come to take it for granted that
a complete mathematical description of the world should be possible.
This assumption is not a rational one: it is a pure act of faith. The
great founders of the scheme made no such mistake: they were quite
aware of the precarious nature of their enterprise. Thus, Newton, the
greatest and most successful of them all, says that, if they find the
mathematical method does not work, they must try a different method.
The mathematical method, which is the very essence of modern science,
has, however, worked splendidly. From the time of its origination in
the seventeenth century until the present day it has had no serious
rival. The ancient æsthetic principle, which led to the conclusion that
the planets moved in circles because the circle is the only perfect
figure, is still used by theosophists, but not by men of science.
Similarly the old moralistic principle, which explained the fact
of water rising in a pump by saying that nature abhorred a vacuum,
possibly lingers on only in such superstitions as that sunlight puts
the fire out. In more modern times the only notorious rival of the
Newtonian method was the dialectic method of Hegel, who evolved the
laws of the universe from his inner consciousness. But the best-known
result of this method, that there could not be more planets than were
known to exist, happened to be published on the very day that a new
planet was discovered. The mathematical method, then, is at the present
day without a rival. But, although we cannot at present imagine what
could replace the mathematical method, we must be careful not to
exaggerate the significance of the results that have been achieved by
it. For these results depend not only on the method, but also on the
material the method has to work with. And there is good reason to
suppose, in the present state of physics, that the material with which
science has worked hitherto is turning out to be not quite satisfactory.
This material is chiefly the Newtonian set of abstractions. Newton
postulated, as the fundamental constituents out of which the perceived
universe is built up, Space, Time, and Matter. Space and time he
regarded as absolute and as quite independent of matter. Matter was an
enduring substance that simply inhabited space and time. The analysis
of these conceptions has resulted in the Einstein theory, in which
neither space, time, nor matter are fundamental. The interesting
thing about this analysis, from our present point of view, is that it
shows clearly what arbitrary elements are present in the scientific
description of the universe. For we must remember that moral and
æsthetic elements were ruled out of the real universe simply because
science did not find it necessary to mention them. The foundation
stones of the scientific edifice, namely space, time, and matter,
were supposed to be the only realities. Everything else was a sort
of illusion. Men who must have been theory-mad soberly maintained
that little particles of matter wandering about purposelessly in
space and time produced our minds, our hopes, and fears, the scent of
the rose, the colours of the sunset, the songs of the birds, and our
knowledge of the little particles themselves. The sole realities were
the little wandering particles and the space and time they wandered
in. The existence of everything else depended on the mind, and was
inconceivable without the mind. It is interesting, therefore, that
science has now reached a position where space, time, and matter also
depend on the mind. In giving a scientific description of the universe
Einstein does not find it necessary to begin with space, time, and
matter. These entities become “derivative”. The universe becomes more
spectral than ever if we are going to adopt the materialist principle
that what depends on the mind does not really exist. Even the universe
of wandering particles is comparatively cosy compared with this modern
universe of undefinable “point-events”. But if we do not adopt the
materialist principle we may assert that moral and æsthetic values
are as much a part of the real universe as anything else, and that
the reason why science does not find it necessary to mention them is
not because they are not there but because science is a game played
according to certain rules, and those rules have excluded these values
from the outset. The life-insurance actuary may, for his purposes,
neglect many things about men, and yet calculate, quite correctly,
what percentage of them will die at forty. But he has not proved that
the qualities he has neglected do not exist simply because they do not
come in to upset his calculations. A politician finds that he has to
base his calculations on quite different aspects of mankind from those
found satisfactory by the actuary. In the same way, a mountain is a
different thing to a poet from what it is to a man of science. For the
kind of understanding of the universe that the man of science is after,
the mountain is merely a heap of certain kinds of matter weighing so
many millions of tons. The poet, who is after a different kind of
vision, finds it necessary to take into account quite other factors
which enter into his total experience of the mountain. The scientist
may also experience emotions of awe and reverence in the presence of
the mountain, but for the purposes of his science these factors of his
experience may be neglected. He _abstracts_ from the total concrete
fact of his experience of the mountain. The mountain, as he describes
it in the scientific paper he proceeds to write, is a mere pale
shadow of the real mountain; he probably leaves it indistinguishable
from any other mountain that happens to weigh the same, just as to
the life-insurance actuary all men of forty are exactly alike. If we
believe that the factors in experience that the scientific man neglects
are quite as real as those he takes into account, it becomes a matter
for wonder that science is possible. How is it that science forms a
closed system――that nothing from the worlds it neglects ever comes in
to disturb it?
It is one of the great services of relativity theory to philosophy that
it provides an answer to this question. The answer is that the entities
discussed by physics are defined in terms of one another. The three
hundred years of building up exact science really amounts, in the last
analysis, to doing what the dictionary compiler did when he defined a
violin as a small violoncello and a violoncello as a large violin. Of
course, if this statement were literally true, science would give us
no information about the universe at all. Nevertheless, the statement
is true about the actual procedure of science, and it is in virtue of
this procedure that science forms a closed system. But what is left out
of this description is the scientist himself. The mysterious process
which is not taken into account in this description of the scientific
method is the process by which the consciousness of the scientist makes
contact with the entities he is talking about. In deducting the world
from “point-events”, for instance, we begin by talking about something
we have no direct cognisance of, namely point-events. From point-events
we deduce “potentials”――again a mere word. But from potentials we
deduce “matter”, and here we are talking of something of which we
have direct knowledge. Similarly, the circular definition of violin
and violoncello tells us nothing as it stands. But to a man who can
identify one of these entities, to a man who has ever seen a violin, it
gives genuine information.
We need not be surprised, therefore, that nothing from the outside
ever seems to disturb the equanimity that reigns within the closed
system of physics. The abstractions with which it begins are all it
ever has to deal with. There are no subsequent fresh contacts with
reality. If the region covered by relativity theory embraced the whole
of physics it would seem that, so far as physical science is concerned,
we knew all that there is to be known. But it is notorious that, of
recent years, an entirely new set of phenomena has been discovered in
physical science. These phenomena arise when we consider, not matter
in bulk but matter in its smallest particles. These phenomena are,
at present, strictly incomprehensible. The celebrated quantum theory
provides us with rules for dealing with some of them, but does not
make them intelligible. It seems that science has here reached its
limits. Professor Eddington has even hinted that these phenomena may
indicate that the universe is finally irrational, that is, that the
attempt to describe nature mathematically will have to be given up.
This is a possibility that Newton foresaw. But it seems more likely
that our present state of bewilderment has a different cause. That
cause, we shall probably find, is the insufficiency of the abstractions
hitherto used in science. We have to go back to the concrete facts of
experience and build up a richer, fuller set of abstractions. Physics
is now paying the penalty of inadequate abstraction. In particular, it
must revise its notions of space, time, and substance. This revision
is quite independent of the Einstein theory, and is made necessary,
not by that theory but by the quantum theory. A first attempt at
this revision has been made by that great mathematical philosopher,
Professor Whitehead.[5] We need not deal with his investigation, which
is at present in a highly technical state. The space and time of the
new theory are interconnected and do not consist of independent volumes
and instants. Every volume of space has reference to the whole of
space, and every moment of time refers both to the past and the future.
Hence both memory and expectation are given a rational basis. On the
old view, as Hume pointed out, there is no reason whatever to suppose
that the order of nature should continue. Why do we expect that the
force of gravity will be in existence to-morrow? There was no _reason_
at all for this expectation or for any other. That is to say, the whole
of science itself was based on blind faith. The new foundations of
science make science itself a rational activity. As for the notion of
“substance”, Professor Whitehead proposes to replace it by the notion
of “organism”. We may imagine an electron, for instance, as a repeated
pattern of events. One of the great difficulties of the quantum
phenomena is that an electron seems to pass from one place to another
without passing through the intervening space. On the basis of the new
abstractions this difficulty can be overcome. We have to imagine an
electron as requiring a certain time to manifest itself――just as a tune
does.
[5] _Science and the Modern World._
From our present point of view, however, the chief interest attaching
to these new foundations for science is the place occupied in them
by the intuitions of the poets. Mr Richards, literary critic, tells
us that the poets must learn from science; Professor Whitehead,
mathematician and physicist, tells us that science must learn from the
poets. Instead of the poet having to realize that his intuitions are
illusory and belong to a childish, _démodé_ view of the world, it is
the scientific man who must realize that his abstractions are too thin
and narrow to be any longer useful, and that the poet makes closer
contact with reality. When Wordsworth says:
“Ye Presences of Nature in the sky
And on the earth! Ye Visions of the hills!
And Souls of lonely places! can I think
A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed
Such ministry, when ye through many a year
Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,
On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,
Impressed upon all forms the characters
Of danger or desire; and thus did make
The surface of the universal earth
With triumph and delight, with hope and fear
Work like a sea?...”
he is not, according to Professor Whitehead, expressing fantasies that
the strong-minded realist can afford to neglect: he is describing
the actual concrete facts of experience, facts which, says Professor
Whitehead, “are distorted in the scientific analysis”. It is the artist
not the scientist who deals most adequately with reality. It is the man
of science, taking his pale abstractions for the only realities, who
dwells in dream-land.
So far as we can see at present, however, science cannot abandon its
method. It cannot deal with the whole concrete fact: it must continue
to make abstractions. But the present _impasse_ in scientific theory
is an indication that it must go back to the beginning and include more
factors of the concrete fact in its abstractions. It seems likely that,
in doing so, it will have to presuppose a philosophy very different
from the materialism hitherto current amongst scientific men. The world
will have to be regarded as an evolutionary process, where “patterns
of value” emerge. It will have to be regarded as an interconnected
whole, and the separation of mind from matter, and mind from mind, will
have to be replaced by a conception which regards these distinctions,
in their present form, as unreal. One very desirable result of this
transformation will be that the arts will be taken seriously. The
old outlook did not regard values as inherent in reality. They were
merely expressive of the accidental human constitution, but had no
cosmic significance. Art existed to provide a unique thrill, called
the “æsthetic emotion”. On the new outlook the function of the arts
is to communicate knowledge and, moreover, the most valuable kind of
knowledge. Art, much more than science, expresses the concrete facts
of experience in their actuality. Music, in particular, finds its
highest function in revealing to us the possibilities of the spirit
of man himself. The music of such a man as Beethoven is a revelation
of existence from the vantage point of a higher consciousness. It is,
we may hope, prophetic of the future development of the race. Not
only art, but morals, acquire vastly greater importance on the new
outlook. Morals are no longer a purely private concern, expressive of a
particular human constitution in an alien, strictly non-moral universe.
Men are no longer justified in believing that their only duty is to
preserve their self-respect and to make the most of their opportunities.
Science, in view of our increased knowledge of its aims and powers,
can no longer be presented to us as a tyrant. Science assumes certain
fundamental principles and entities, and there is an arbitrary element
in these assumptions. What science does not assume does not thereby not
exist. It gives, and it appears that it must forever give, a _partial_
description of the universe. The fact that the elements of reality it
leaves out do not come in to disturb it is no presumption against the
existence of these elements. For science forms a closed system simply
because it employs the device of cyclic definition. The teachings of
science, so far as the spiritual problems of men are concerned, need no
longer be regarded as stultifying: they are merely irrelevant.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
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