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SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
The Herbert Spencer Lecture
Delivered at the Museum
7 November, 1913
by
C. LLOYD MORGAN, F.R.S.
Price Two Shillings net
Oxford
At the Clarendon Press
MCMXIII
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow New York
Toronto Melbourne Bombay
Humphrey Milford M.A.
Publisher to the University
SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Towards the close of 1870, while I was still in my teens, my youthful
enthusiasm was fired by reading Tyndall's Discourse on _The Scientific
Use of the Imagination_. The vision of the conquest of nature by
physical science--a vision which had but lately begun to open up to my
wondering gaze--was rendered clearer and more extensive. Of the theory
of evolution I knew but little; but I none the less felt assured that it
had come to stay and to prevail. Was it not accepted by all of _us_--the
enlightened and emancipated men of science whose ranks I had joined as a
raw recruit? Believing that I was independently breaking free of all
authority, to the authority that appealed to my fancy, and to a new
loyalty, I was a willing slave. And here in one glowing sentence the
inner core of evolution lay revealed.
'Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that
not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular and animal life,
not alone the nobler forms of the horse and the lion, not alone
the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that
the human mind itself--emotion, intellect and all their
phenomena--were once latent in a fiery cloud.'[1]
With sparkling eyes I quoted these brave words to a friend of my
father's, whose comments were often as caustic as his sympathy in my
interests was kindly. With a grave smile he asked whether the notion was
not perhaps stripped too naked to preserve the decencies of modest
thought; he inquired whether I had not learnt from _Sartor Resartus_
that the philosophy of nature is a Philosophy of Clothes; and he bade me
devote a little time to quiet and careful consideration of what Tyndall
really meant--meant in terms of the exact science he professed--by the
phrase 'latent in a fiery cloud'. I dimly suspected that the old
gentleman--old in the sense of being my father's contemporary--was
ignorant of those recent developments of modern science with which I had
been acquainted for weeks, nay more for months. Perhaps he had never
even heard of the nebular hypothesis! But I felt that I had done him an
injustice when, next morning, he sent round a volume of the _Westminster
Review_ with a slip of paper indicating an article on 'Progress: its Law
and Cause'.
Such was my introduction to Herbert Spencer, some of whose works I read
with admiration during the next few years.
I have no very distinct recollection of the impression produced on my
mind by the germinal essay of 1857, save that it served to quicken that
craving, which is, I suppose, characteristic of those who have some
natural bent towards philosophy--the imperative craving to seek and, if
it may be, to find the one in the many. In any case Tyndall's suggestive
sentence was here amplified and the underlying law was disclosed.
'Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development
of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of
Government, of Manufacture, of Commerce, of Language, Literature,
Science, Art, the same evolution of the simple into the complex,
through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the
earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of
civilisation, we shall find that the transformation of the
homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress
essentially consists.'[2]
Here was just what I wanted--on the one hand the whole wide universe of
existence; and on the other hand a brief formula with which to label its
potted essence. How breathlessly one was led on, with only such breaches
of continuity as separate paragraphs inevitably impose, right away from
the primitive fire-mist to one of Bach's fugues or the critical
doctrines of Mr. Ruskin, guided throughout by the magic of
differentiation. What if the modes of existence, dealt with in
successive sections, were somewhat startlingly diverse! Was not this
itself a supreme example of the evolution of that diversity which the
formula enables us to interpret? For if there were a passage from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, the more heterogeneous the
products--inorganic, organic, and superorganic, as I learnt to call
them--the stronger the evidence for the law. Only by shutting one's eyes
to the light that had been shed on the world by evolution could one fail
to see how simple and yet how inevitable was the whole business.
If then differentiation be the cardinal law of evolution--for the
correlative concept of integration receives no emphasis in this early
essay--does not the universality of the law imply a universal cause?
Just as gravitation was assignable as a _cause_ of each of the groups of
phenomena which Kepler formulated; so might some equally simple
attribute of things be assignable as the cause of each of the groups of
phenomena formulated in terms of differentiation. Now the only obvious
respect in which all kinds of Progress are alike, is, that they are
modes of change; and hence in some characteristic of changes in general,
the desired solution must be found. Thus we are led up to the statement
of the all-pervading principle which determines the all-pervading
process of differentiation. It is this: _Every active force produces
more than one change--every cause produces more than one effect._[3]
In the first part of the Essay many and varied facts are adduced to show
that every kind of progress is from the simple to the complex. The aim
of the second part is to show why this is so: it is 'because each change
is followed by many changes'. From the beginning, the decomposition of
every expended force into several forces has been perpetually producing
a higher complication, and thus Progress is not an accident but a
beneficent necessity. In a brief third part we are bidden to remember
that
'after all that has been said the ultimate mystery remains just as
it was. The explanation of that which is explicable does but bring
out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which
remains behind.... The sincere man of science, content to follow
wherever the evidence leads him becomes by each new enquiry more
profoundly convinced that the Universe is an insoluble problem....
In all directions his investigations bring him face to face with
the unknowable; and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the
unknowable'.[4]
There is I think a growing consensus of opinion that the first of
these three parts, subsequently expanded and illustrated with
astonishing wealth of detail in the volumes of the _Synthetic
Philosophy_, contains the germ of all that is best in the teaching of
Herbert Spencer; and that it was amid phenomena which admitted of
interpretation from the biological, or quasi-biological, point of view
that he found his most congenial sphere of work and the one in which his
method was most effectively employed. The story of evolution is the
story of inter-related changes. In any organic whole there are certain
salient features of the historical sequence.[5] The parts get more
different from each other, and they also get more effectively connected
with each other; the individual whole gets more different from its
environment, and it also preserves and extends its connexion with the
environment; the several individuals get more different from others,
while their connexion with others is retained and new connexions are
established. Nowadays these central ideas may seem familiar enough; but
that is just because Spencer's thought has been so completely
assimilated. And then we must remember that these main principles are
supplemented by a great number of ancillary generalizations, many of
which have been incorporated in the scientific doctrine which is current
to-day. We must bear in mind that of the _Biology_ Charles Darwin
wrote:[6] 'I am astonished at its prodigality of original thought.' Of
the _Psychology_ William James says[7] that of the systematic treatises
it will rank as the most original. These are the opinions of experts. No
discussion of sociology or ethics is complete if it ignores Spencer's
contributions to these subjects. The _Ethics_, says James[8] is a most
vital and original piece of attitude-taking in the world of ideals. It
was his firm and often inflexible 'attitude' which was a source of
strength in Spencer, though it was the strength of rigidity rather than
that of sinewy suppleness. This was part of a certain 'narrowness of
intent and vastness of extent' which characterized his mental vision. He
was so obsessed with the paramount importance of biological
relationships that in his _Sociology_, his _Ethics_, his _Psychology_,
he failed to do justice to, or even to realize the presence of, other
and higher relationships--higher, that is, in the evolutionary scale.
But it was his signal merit to work biological interpretation for all,
and perhaps more than, it was worth. It was on these lines that he was
led to find a clue to those social and political developments, the
discussion of which, in the _Nonconformist_ of 1842, constituted the
first step from the life of an engineer to that other kind of life which
led to the elaboration of the _Synthetic Philosophy_.[9] In his later
years he was saddened to see that many of the social and political
doctrines, for the establishment of which he had striven so strenuously,
were not accepted by a newer generation of thinkers. Still, to have
taken a definite and, for all his detractors may say, an honoured
position in the line of those who make history in the philosophy of life
and mind--that could never be taken away from him.
It will perhaps be said that this emphasis on the philosophy of life
and mind does scant justice to the range and sweep of Spencer's
philosophy as a whole; and no doubt others will contend that the
emphasis should be laid elsewhere; on the mechanical foundations; on
evolution as a universal principle. It will be urged that Spencer
widened to men's view the scope of scientific explanation. He proclaimed
'the gradual growth of all things by natural processes out of natural
antecedents'.[10] Even in the _Nonconformist_ letters 'there is', he
himself says,[11] 'definitely expressed a belief in the universality of
law--law in the realm of mind as in that of matter--law throughout the
life of society as throughout the individual life. So, too, is it with
the correlative idea of universal causation.' And if there be law it
must at bottom be one law. Thus in _First Principles_ Spencer propounded
a sweeping and sonorous formula, which every disciple knows by heart,
embodying the fundamental traits of that unceasing redistribution of
matter and motion which characterizes evolution as contrasted with
dissolution. Was it not this that he himself regarded as his main
contribution to philosophy? Did he not himself provide a summary,
setting forth the sixteen articles of the Spencerian creed; and is not
this summary given a prominent position in the Preface he wrote to
Howard Collins's _Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy_? Do not these
fundamental articles of his faith deal with ubiquitous causes, with the
instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects, with
segregation and equilibration, and with the basal conception of the
persistence of force? There is here, it may be said, no special
reference to the organic and the superorganic. And why? Just because
Spencer's interpretation is all-inclusive; because biology, psychology,
sociology, ethics are, broadly considered, concerned only with incidents
of the later scenes of the great mechanical drama of evolution. Are we
not again and again bidden, now in forecast, now in retrospect, to look
below the surface, and constantly to bear in mind that the aim of
philosophy, as completely unified knowledge, is 'the interpretation of
all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force'?[12] It is true
that the affairs of the mind give pause and seem to present something of
a difficulty. But even here 'specifically stated, the problem is to
interpret mental evolution in terms of the redistribution of matter and
motion'.[13] An adequate explanation of nervous evolution involves an
adequate explanation of the concomitant evolution of mind. It is true
that the antithesis of subject and object is never to be transcended
'while consciousness lasts'.[14] But if all existence, distinguishable
as subjective, is resolvable into units of consciousness, which in their
obverse or objective aspect are oscillations of molecules,[15] what more
is required to round off the explanation of every thing, save the
Unknowable--save the Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are
united? In the end we are baffled by mystery; let us, therefore, make
the best of it and rejoice.
'We can think of Matter only in terms of Mind. We can think of
Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have pushed our explorations
of the first to its uttermost limit we are referred to the second
for a final answer; and when we have got the final answer to the
second we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of
it.'[14]
And so neither answer is final. Finality is only reached when both are
swallowed up, not in victory, but in defeat. Shall we not then glory in
defeat and sing its praises often?
I must leave to some future Herbert Spencer lecturer the discussion of
his doctrine of the Unknowable and the critical consideration of its
place and value in philosophy. I would fain leave it altogether on one
side; but that is impossible. Although the _First Principles_ is divided
into two Parts, dealing respectively with the Unknowable and the
Knowable, we have not by any means done with the former when we turn
from the First Part to the Second. With Spencer we have never done with
the Unknowable, the Unconditioned Reality and the other aliases by which
it goes. His persistence of force is the persistence of Unknowable
Force. In a leading passage, at any rate, it is avowedly 'the
persistence of some Cause which transcends our knowledge and conception.
In asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality without beginning or
end'.[16] There must, he holds, be something at the back of the
evolutionary drama which we study--something that is both a principle of
activity and a permanent _nexus_.[17] The pity of it is that we know
not, and can never know, what on earth (or in heaven!) it is. We only
know that it exists, and somehow produces the whole show. Now it would
much conduce to clearness of thought and of statement if we could agree
to eliminate those terribly ambiguous words 'force' and 'cause' when we
are dealing with the fundamental postulate (if such it be) that there
must be something at the back of evolution to make it what it is; and
the word Source seems ready to our hand and might well be given this
special significance. But Spencer uses Agency, Power, Cause, Force, in
this connexion. In how many senses he uses the word 'force' I am not
prepared to say. It is often a synonym for cause; it stands alike for
matter and energy;[18] it is the objective correlate of our subjective
sense of effort.[19] There is a 'correlation and equivalence between
external forces and the mental forces generated by them under the form
of sensations'.[20] And when we pass to human life in society, whatever
in any way facilitates or impedes social, political, or economic change,
is spoken of in terms of force.[21] With an apparent vagueness and
laxity almost unparalleled, force is used in wellnigh every conceivable
sense of this ambiguous word--except, perhaps, that which is now
sanctioned by definition in mathematical physics. I say apparent
vagueness and laxity because, subtly underlying all this varied usage,
is the unifying conception of Source as the ultimate basis of all
enforcement. From this flows all necessity whether in things or thoughts
or any combination of the two. Thus persistence of force is Spencer's
favourite expression for uniform determinism at or near its Source.
Now, as I understand the position, science has nothing whatever to do
with the Source or Sources of phenomena. By a wise self-denying
ordinance it rules all questions of ultimate origin out of court. It
regards them as beyond its special sphere of jurisdiction. It deals with
phenomena in terms of connexion within an orderly scheme, and it does
not profess to explain _why_ the connexions are such as they are found
to be. In any discussion of this or that sequence of events which may
fall under the wide and rather vague heading of evolution, it is just a
consistent story of the events in their total relatedness that science
endeavours to tell. The question: But what evolves the evolved? is for
science (or should I say for those who accept this delimitation of the
province of science?) not so much unanswerable in any terms, as
unanswerable in scientific terms. For the terms in which an answer must
be given are incommensurable with the concepts with which science has
elected to carry on its business as interpreter of nature. To this
question therefore the man of science, speaking for his order, simply
replies: We do not know. Is this, then, Spencer's answer? Far from it.
The man of science here makes, or should make, no positive assertion,
save in respect of the limits of his field of inquiry. If you beg him to
tell you what that which he knows not is, or does, he regards such a
question as meaningless. But Spencer's Unknowable, notwithstanding its
negative prefix, is the Ultimate Reality, and does all that is in any
way done. We may not know _what_ it is; but _that_ it is, is the most
assured of all assured certainties. And when it comes to doing, what can
be more dramatically positive than that which bears a name of negation?
Whatever it may not be, it is the Power that drives all the machinery in
this workshop of a world; it is the Power which lies at the back of such
wit as man has to interpret it, and, in some measure, to utilize its
mechanism.
It seems plain enough that Spencer distinguishes, or seeks to
distinguish, between those knowable effects which we call natural
phenomena and their Unknowable Cause or Source. And this seems to be in
line with the distinction which his critic, M. Bergson, draws between
'the evolved which is a result' and 'evolution itself, which is the act
by which the result is obtained'.[22] An act implies an agent, and the
agency of which the evolved is a manifestation is for M. Bergson Life,
while for Spencer it is that very vigorous agency--the Unknowable. Now
in criticizing Spencer, M. Bergson says:
'The usual device of the Spencerian method consists in
reconstructing evolution with the fragments of the evolved.... It
is not however by dividing the evolved that we shall reach the
principle of that which evolves. It is not by recomposing the
evolved with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which
it is the term.'[23]
But does Spencer ever suggest that we shall thus reach the principle of
that which evolves--by which, if I mistake not, M. Bergson means the
Source of evolution? Does he not urge that we can neither reach it in
this way, nor in any other way? For M. Bergson, as for Spencer, it is
unknowable by the intellect--it can only be known by what M. Bergson
calls intuition. For both thinkers, the intellect provides only a world
of symbols; and Spencer's transfigured realism may be matched by what
Dr. Wildon Carr calls M. Bergson's transformed realism.[24] So long as
we are dealing with the evolved--which is that with which alone science
attempts to deal--Spencer, M. Bergson, and the rest of us are in like
case. We must stumble on intellectually with our symbols as best we may.
'Whether we posit the present structure of mind or the present
subdivision of matter in either case we remain in the evolved: we are
told nothing of what evolves, nothing of evolution.'[25] _Nothing of
what evolves!_ Spencer might exclaim with a groan. Have I then written
all those pages and pages on the Unknowable for nought? Is it not a
fundamental tenet of my philosophy that there must be, and therefore is,
a Source of the evolved--of the phenomenal world which is merely an
expression in terms of intellectual symbolism, of that ultimate Power
which, though its nature may baffle the intellect, is none the less the
most real of all realities?
It would take us too far from the line of Spencer's thought to consider
M. Bergson's doctrine that it is the intellect that portions the world
into lots;[26] that cuts the facts out of the interpenetrating whole of
reality, and renders them artificially distinct within the continuity of
becoming. It suffices to note that on such a presupposition 'the
cardinal error of Spencer is to take experience already allotted as
given, whereas the true problem is to know how the allotment was
worked'.[27] I am not prepared to give--indeed I have been unable to
find--M. Bergson's own solution of the problem. I gather that it was
Life itself that somehow allotted concepts and objects in such
correspondence as should be practically useful though metaphysically
false and illusory. But just how it was done I have still to learn. 'The
original activity was', we are told, 'a simple thing which became
diversified through the very construction of mechanisms such as those of
the brain,'[28] which, as Life's tool, has facilitated the chopping up
of a continuous interpenetrating reality into mince-meat for
intellectual assimilation. Such a conception was foreign to Spencer's
thought. But some of us may find it hard to distinguish M. Bergson's
'original activity' from Spencer's Unknowable, which, so far as one can
make out, somehow produced precisely the same results. As a matter of
fact, M. Bergson seems to put into Life, as Spencer put into the
Unknowable, the potentiality of producing all that actually exists.
For Spencer, as for M. Bergson, we live in a world of change. But
neither is content to accept changes as facts to be linked up within a
scheme of scientific interpretation. Both must seek their Source. Now to
inquire into the Source or Sources of phenomena is characteristic of man
as thinker. And if, in common with those whom I follow, I regard this
quest as beyond the limits of science, I am well aware that such
delimitation of fields of inquiry is by no means universally accepted.
M. Bergson, for example, regards metaphysics as the _Science_[29] which
claims to dispense with symbols, which turns its back on analysis, which
eschews logic, which dispenses with relativity and pierces to the
absolute, which, apparently, uses the intellect only to establish its
utter incompetence in this department of 'science'. Merely saying that
this, whatever else it may be, is not what I, for one, understand by
science--and not, by the way, what M. Bergson in other passages seems to
mean by science[30]--I pass on to Spencer's treatment of the philosophy
of science which, for him, is 'completely unified knowledge', 'the
truths of philosophy bearing the same relation to the highest scientific
truths that each of these bears to lower scientific truths.'
I suppose one of the basal truths in his philosophy of science is for
Spencer the universality of connexion between cause and effect. Now let
us eliminate Source as the Ultimate Cause (so far as that is possible in
Spencer); let us restrict our attention to cause and effect in the realm
of the knowable. When we try to do this we find his statements
concerning them scarcely less puzzling than those that refer to force,
with which cause is so often identified. Thus we are told[31] that
'motion set up in any direction is itself a cause of further motion in
that direction since it is a manifestation of a surplus force in that
direction'; and elsewhere[32] that 'the momentum of a body causes it to
move in a straight line and at a uniform velocity'. A distinction is
drawn between cause and conditions. But both produce effects, and only
on these terms can there be that 'proportionality or equivalence between
cause and effect' on which Spencer insists.[33] There is, however,
scarcely a hint of what constitutes the difference between cause and
conditions, save in so far as he speaks[34] of 'those conspicuous
antecedents which we call the causes' and 'those accompanying
antecedents which we call the conditions'. Many of the details of his
treatment I find most perplexing; but to recite examples would be
wearisome. And then, in the ninth and tenth articles of the Spencerian
creed, cause plays a somewhat different part. For, there, the
instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects are
given as the chief causes which 'necessitate' that redistribution of
matter and motion of which evolution is one phase. Similarly, as I have
noted above, in 'Progress: its Law and Cause', the fundamental attribute
of all modes of change--that every cause produces more than one
effect--is itself spoken of as a cause, and likened to 'gravitation as
the cause of each of the groups of phenomena which Kepler formulated'.
In these cases a generalization is regarded as the cause of the
phenomena from which the generalization is drawn. But sometimes it is
spoken of as the reason for the phenomena.[35] Here again, however, as
throughout his work, reference to Source is close at hand. Hence, in
place of the words cause and force, the word agency[36] sometimes stands
for that which produces effects; or the word factor may be used. Thus we
are told[37] of phenomena continually complicating under the influence
of the same original factors'; and we meet with the argument (contra
Huxley) that states of consciousness are factors, that is, they 'have
the power of working changes in the nervous system and setting up
motions'.[38] Always close at hand, constantly underlying Spencer's
thought, is the notion of power which works changes. In his treatment of
the philosophy of science we are never far from the noumenal Source of
phenomena.
'For that interpretation of things which is alone possible for us
this is all we require to know--that the force or energy
manifested, now in one way now in another, persists or remains
unchanged in amount. But when we ask what this energy is, there is
no answer save that it is the noumenal Cause implied by the
phenomenal effect.'[39]
Was it partly with Spencer in view that Mr. Bertrand Russell recently
urged[40] that the word cause 'is so inextricably bound up with
misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the
philosophical vocabulary desirable'? Professor Mach[41] had previously
expressed the hope 'that the science of the future will discard the use
of cause and effect as formally obscure'. And as long ago as 1870 W. K.
Clifford[42] tried to show in 'what sort of way an exact knowledge of
the facts would supersede an enquiry after the causes of them'; and
urged that the hypothesis of continuity 'involves such an
interdependence of the facts of the universe as forbids us to speak of
one fact or set of facts as the cause of another fact or set of facts'.
Such views may, perhaps, be regarded as extreme; and the word cause is
not likely to be extruded from the vocabulary of current speech, of the
less exact branches of science, or of general discussions of
world-processes. Still, a philosophy of science must take note of this
criticism of the use of a term which is, to say the least of it,
ambiguous. We must at any rate try to get rid of ambiguity. Now we live
in a world of what, in a very broad and inclusive sense, may be called
things; and these things are in varied ways related to each other. (I
must beg leave to assume, without discussion, that the relatedness of
things is no less constitutive of the world with which a philosophy of
science has to deal than the things which are in relation.) And when
things stand in certain kinds of relatedness to each other changes take
place. The trouble is that the kinds of relatedness are so many and the
kinds of change are also so many! Spencer tried to reduce all kinds of
relatedness to one quasi-mechanical type; and he signally failed--or
shall I say that he succeeded only by ignoring all the specific
differences on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by so smudgy an
extension of the meaning of mechanical and physical terms as to make
them do duty in every conceivable connexion?
So long as we can deal with simple types of relatedness, such as that
which we call gravitative, in any given system of things regarded as
isolated, we can express in formulae not only the rate of change within
the system, but also the rate at which the rate of change itself
changes. And these formulae are found to be generally applicable where
like things are in a like field of relatedness. So that Spencer's
persistence of force (at least in one of its many meanings) is replaced
in such cases by sameness of differential equations. And in such cases
we have no need for the word cause. Of course the value of the constants
in any such formula depends upon the nature of the field of relatedness
and of the things therein; and only certain systems, in which the
relations are simple, or are susceptible of simplification, can be dealt
with, at present, in this manner. It is imperative to remember that not
only the rate of change but the kind of change differs in different
relational fields--a fact of which Spencer took too little cognizance,
so bent was he on some sort of unification at all hazards. Revert now to
a field of gravitative relatedness, in which the motion of things is the
kind of change, while the rate of change is expressible in a formula;
may we not say that the co-presence of things in this relationship does
imply certain motions and changes of motion within the system to which
the term gravitative applies? There seems little room for ambiguity if
we call what is thus implied the effect, and if we term those modes of
relatedness which carry this kind of implication, effective. It may,
however, be said that it sounds somewhat strange to speak of relations
as effective. How can mere relatedness as such _do_ anything? What is
implied by the effect is surely, it will be urged, a cause in the full
and rich sense of the word--a cause which produces the effect. For what
is here suggested is nothing more than a generalized statement of the
truth that the relational constitution of the system being what it is,
the changes are what they are! And so we come back to the conception of
an agency which in some way produces the observable change--of a power
which is active behind the phenomenal scene--of force and cause in the
Spencerian sense. But, so far as scientific interpretation is concerned,
this reference to Source--for such it really is--is useless. The
gravitative system can be dealt with scientifically just as well without
it as with it.
What, then, becomes of the scientific conception of energy? Is not
energy that which produces observable change? Is it not active in the
sense required? And can we say that this conception is useless for
scientific interpretation? I suppose most of us, in our student days,
have passed through the phase of regarding energy as an active demon
which plays a notorious part in the physical drama. Spencer loved it
dearly. But some of us, under what we consider wiser guidance, hold that
what we should understand by kinetic energy is nothing of this sort. It
is a constant ratio of variables, conveniently expressed as 1/2_mv_^{2}.
That, however, it may be said, is absurd. Energy is not merely a ratio
or a formula; it is something much more real; perhaps the most real of
all the realities the being of which has been disclosed by physical
science. Granted in a sense, and a very true sense. But what is this
reality? It is the reality of the changes themselves in those fields of
relatedness to which the formula has reference. There is nothing, I
conceive, in the modern treatment of energy that affords any scientific
justification of the Spencerian view[43] that energy is an agent through
the activity of which the constant ratio of variables is maintained in
the physical world.
I feel sure that it will still be said that change must inevitably
imply that which produces change, and that, even if energy be only a
ratio of variables within a changing field, there is still the
implication of Force as the real Cause of which the change itself,
however formulated, is the effect. No doubt this is one of the meanings
which the ambiguous words force and cause may carry. It is to remove
this ambiguity that I have suggested that the word Source should be
substituted for cause in this sense. And what about force? In one of its
meanings it now generally stands for a measure of change. For those who
accept Source as a scientific concept it may well stand for the measure
or degree of its activity gauged by the phenomenal effect; for those who
do not accept it, the measure or degree of the change itself[44]--to be
dealt with in mechanics in terms of mass and acceleration. This leaves
outstanding, however, the use of the word force in the phrase--the
forces of nature--gravitative force, cohesive force, electromotive
force, and so on. It was, I take it, with this usage in view that
Spencer spoke of vital, mental, and social forces. Now the reference in
each of these cases is to some specific mode of relatedness among the
things concerned. We need to name it in some way; and this is the way
that is, rather unfortunately, sanctioned by custom and long usage. When
we say that a thing is in a field of electromotive force we mean (do we
not?) that the relatedness is of that particular kind named
electromotive, and not of another kind. When Spencer spoke of social
forces he had in view changes which take place within a field of social
relationships. We do not really need the word force in this sense, since
the term relatedness would suffice, and has no misleading associations.
But there it is: our business should be to understand clearly what it
means. It does not, or should not, I think, mean more, in this
connexion, than a particular kind of relatedness in virtue of which an
observable kind of change occurs.
We may now pass to cause and conditions. When Spencer distinguishes
between those conspicuous antecedents which we call the causes and those
accompanying antecedents which we call the conditions, he invites the
question: What, then, is the essential difference between them? If the
accompanying antecedents are distinguished as inconspicuous, we surely
need some criterion of the distinction. Furthermore, inconspicuous
conditions are, in science, every whit as important as those which are
conspicuous. Now we all know that Mill regarded the cause as 'the sum
total of the conditions positive and negative taken together.'[45] But
he expressly distinguishes between _events_ and _states_.[46]
Discussing, for example, the case of a man who eats of a particular dish
and dies in consequence, he says:
'The various conditions, except the single one of eating the food,
were not events but states possessing more or less of permanency,
and might therefore have preceded the effect by an indefinite
length of duration, for want of that event which was requisite to
complete the required concurrence of conditions.'
Again he says:
'When sulphur, charcoal, and nitre are put together in certain
proportions and in a certain manner, the effect is, not an
explosion, but that the mixture acquires a property by which in
given circumstances it will explode. The ingredients of the
gunpowder have been brought into a state of preparedness for
exploding as soon as the other conditions of an explosion shall
have occurred.'
And he tells us that physiological processes 'often have for the chief
part of their operation to predispose the constitution to some mode of
action'.
This distinction may profitably be carried further and emphasized in
our terminology. Take any thing, or any integrated group of things,
regarded as that higher order of thing which we call a self-contained
system. Process occurs therein, and process involves change. In so far
as the system is self-contained its changes and states are inherent in
its constitution. We need a term by which to designate that which is
thus inherent and constitutional. The term _ground_ might be reserved
for this purpose. The word ground has its natural home in logic. It is
here extended (if it be an extension) to that to which the logic has
reference in the existing world. One is here following Spencer, who
claims[47] that 'Logic is a science pertaining to objective existence'.
On these terms the constitution of any system is the ground of the
properties, states, and happenings in that system regarded as isolated.
But the changes or properties will be also in relation to surrounding
things or systems. _These_ changes, or modifications of change, in
relation to external things or events, may properly be said to be
conditioned; and we may well restrict the term conditions to influences
_outside_ the constitution as ground. Of course, if we accept this
usage, we must not speak, with Mill, of the constitution of any system
as the condition of its inherent changes or properties. That is why we
need some such word and concept as ground. Now we may fix our attention
on any constituent part of some natural system and make that part the
centre of our interest. That part may be changing in virtue of its
constitution; and the rest of the system, regarded as external to this
selected part, must therefore be regarded as conditioning. It is a
matter of convenience for purposes of scientific interpretation whether
we select a larger or a smaller system-group and discuss its
constitutional character. Thus we may think of the constitution of the
solar system, or of that of the sun's corona; of the constitution of an
organism or of that of one of its cells; of the constitution of a
complex molecule or of that of an atom therein. We have here reached, or
nearly reached, the limiting case in one direction--that of restricting
our field of inquiry. The limiting case in the other direction is, I
suppose, the universe. But could we so expand our thought as to embrace,
if that were possible, the whole universe, then there are no conditions;
for _ex hypothesi_ there is nothing for science outside the universe. We
have reached the limiting concept. Hence, for science, the constitution
of nature is the ultimate ground of all that is or happens.
Let us now see how we stand. Consider the following statements:
1. The Unknowable is the cause of all the phenomena we observe.
2. The constitution of gunpowder is the cause of its explosiveness.[48]
3. The fall of a spark was the cause of the actual explosion of the
powder.[49]
Or these:
1. Life is the cause of all vital manifestations.
2. The inherited nature of a hen's egg is the cause of its producing a
chick and not a duckling.
3. The cause of the development of the chick embryo is the warmth
supplied by the incubating mother.[50]
In each case the reference under (1) is to a transcendent cause which
produces the phenomena under consideration. I suggest that the word
Source should here be used instead of cause. In each case the reference
under (2) is to the nature or constitution of that within which some
process occurs. I suggest that the word ground should here be used
instead of cause. In each case the reference under (3) is to some
external influence. I suggest that the word condition should here be
used instead of cause. We thus eliminate the word cause altogether. But
since, in nine cases out of ten, the conditions, or some salient
condition, is what is meant by cause in popular speech, and in the less
exact sciences, the word cause may perhaps be there retained with this
particular meaning. These are of course merely suggestions towards the
avoidance of puzzling ambiguity. One could wish that Spencer could have
thought out some such distinctions to help his sorely perplexed readers.
One could wish, too, that he had devoted his great powers of thought to
a searching discussion of the different types of relatedness which are
found in nature, and to a fuller consideration of a synthetic scheme of
their inter-relatedness. It is imperative that our thought of relations
should have a concrete backing. 'Every act of knowing', says Spencer,
'is the formation of a relation in consciousness answering to a relation
in the environment.' But the knowledge-relations are of so very special
a type; and the relations in the environment are so many and varied.
Much more analysis of natural relations is required than Spencer
provides. I do not mean, of course, that there is any lack of
analysis--and of very penetrating analysis--in the _Psychology_, the
_Biology_, the _Sociology_, and the _Ethics_. I mean that in _First
Principles_, which must be regarded as his general survey of the
philosophy of science, there is no searching analysis of the salient
types of relationship which enter into the texture of this very complex
world. Such omnibus words as differentiation, integration, segregation,
do duty in various connexions with convenient elasticity of meaning to
suit the occasion. But apart from qualifying adjectives,[51] such as
astronomic, geologic, and so on up to artistic and literary, there is
too little attempt at either a distinguishing of the types of
relatedness or at a relationing of the relations so distinguished. One
just jumps from one to another after a break in the text, and finds
oneself in a wholly new field of inquiry. Little but the omnibus
terminology remains the same. Nor does the _Essay on the Classification
of the Sciences_, with all its tabulation, furnish what is really
required. What one seeks to know is how those specific kinds of
relatedness which characterize the successive phases of evolutionary
progress, inorganic, organic, and superorganic, differ from one another
and how they are connected. This one does not find. The impression one
gets, here and elsewhere, is that all forms of relatedness must somehow,
by the omission of all other specific characters, be reduced to the
mechanical type. This, no doubt, is unification of a sort. But is it the
sort of unification with which a philosophy of science should rest
content?
It may be said that unification can only be reached by digging down to
some ubiquitous type of relation which is common to all processes
throughout the universe at any stage of evolution. But what, on these
terms, becomes of evolution itself as a problem to be solved? Surely any
solution of that problem must render an account of just those specific
modes of relatedness which have been ignored in digging down to the
foundations. Surely there must be unification of the superstructure as
well as of the substructure. Here and now is our world, within the
texture of which things stand to each other in such varied relations,
though they may be reducible to a few main types. There, in the faraway
part, was the primitive fire-mist, dear to Spencer's imagination, in
which the modes of relationship were so few and so simple, and all
seemingly of one main type. How do we get in scientific interpretation
from the one to the other? Will it suffice to breathe over the scene the
magic words differentiation and integration? Spencer appears to think
so. Of course he did exceptionally fine work in elucidating the modes of
differentiation and integration within certain relational fields--though
he sometimes uses the latter word for mere shrinkage in size.[52] But
what one asks, and asks of him in vain, is just how, within a connected
scheme, the several relational fields in the domain of nature are
themselves related, and how they were themselves differentiated. How,
for instance, did the specific relationships exhibited in the fabric of
crystals arise out of the primitive fire-mist relations? At some stage
of evolution this specific form of relatedness came into being, whereas
before that stage was reached it was not in being. No doubt we may say
that the properties of the pre-existing molecules were such that these
molecules could in due course become thus related, and enter into the
latticed architecture of the crystal. They already possessed the
potentiality of so doing. And if we have resort to potentialities, all
subsequently developed types and modes of relatedness were potentially
in existence _ab initio_--they were, as Tyndall said, 'once latent in a
fiery cloud.' But it is difficult to see how the specific modes of
relatedness which obtain within the crystal, can be said to exist prior
to the existence of the crystal within which they so obtain.