of relatedness which are disclosed by scientific research as part and
parcel of the constitution of nature, from whatever Source, knowable or
unknowable, that constitution be derived. Of these modes there are many;
indeed, if we deal with all concrete cases, their number is legion. For
purposes of illustration, however, we may reduce them, rather
drastically, to three main types. There are relations of the
physico-chemical type,[53] which we may provisionally follow Spencer in
regarding as ubiquitous; there are those of the vital type, which are
restricted to living organisms; there are those of the cognitive type,
which seem to be much more narrowly restricted. How we deal with these
is of crucial importance. Denoting them by the letters A, B, C we find
that there are progressively ascending modes of relatedness within any
given type. There is evolution within each type. Within the
physico-chemical type A, for example, atoms, molecules, and synthetic
groups of molecules follow in logical order of evolution. Now the
successive products, in which this physico-chemical type of relatedness
obtains, have certain _new and distinctive properties_ which are not
merely the algebraic sum of the properties of the component things prior
to synthesis. We may speak of them as constitutive of the products in a
higher stage of relatedness, thus distinguishing constitutive from
additive properties.[54] Similarly when B, the vital relations, are
evolved, the living products, in which these specific relations obtain,
have new constitutive properties, on the importance of which vitalists
are right in insisting, though I emphatically dissent from some of the
conclusions they draw from their presence. For if, beyond the
physico-chemical, a special agency be invoked to account for the
presence of new constitutive properties, then, in the name of logical
consistency, let us invoke special agencies to account for the
constitutive properties within the physico-chemical--for radio-active
properties for example. If a Source of phenomena be postulated, why not
postulate One Source of all phenomena from the very meanest to the very
highest? There remains the case of C--the synthetic whole in which
cognitive relatedness obtains. This is unquestionably more difficult of
scientific interpretation. But I believe that like statements may be
made in this case also. What we have, I conceive, is just a new and
higher type of relatedness with specific characters of its own. But of
this more in the sequel.
It must be remembered that A, B, C stand for _relationships_ and that
the related things are progressively more complex within more complex
relational wholes. Relationships are every whit as real as are the terms
they hold in their grasp. I do not say more real; but I say emphatically
as real. And if this be so, then they ought somehow to be introduced
into our formulae, instead of being taken for granted. We give H{2}O as
the formula for a molecule of water. But that molecule is something very
much more than two atoms of hydrogen + one atom of oxygen. The
absolutely distinctive feature of the molecule is the specific
relatedness of these atoms. This constitutive mode of relatedness is,
however, just taken for granted. And it is scarcely matter for surprise
that, when we find not less specific modes of vital relatedness in the
living organism, they are too apt to be just ignored!
Revert now to the empirical outcome of scientific research, for as such
I regard it, that new constitutive properties emerge when new modes and
types of relatedness occur, and when new products are successively
formed in evolutional synthesis. This, it will be said, involves the
acceptance of what is now commonly called creative evolution. I am far
from denying that, in the universe of discourse where Source is under
consideration, the adjective is justifiable. But, in the universe of
discourse of science, I regard it as inappropriate. What we have is just
plain evolution; and we must simply accept the truth--if, as I conceive,
it be a truth--that in all true evolution there is more in the
conclusion than is given in the premises; which is only a logical way of
saying that there is more in the world to-day than there was in the
primitive fire-mist. Not more 'matter and energy', but more varied
relationships and new properties, quite unpredictable from what one may
perhaps speak of as the fire-mist's point of view. This is no new
doctrine, though it has received of late a new emphasis. Mill, dealing
with causation,[55] speaks of a 'radical and important distinction'.
There are, he says in substance, some cases in which the joint effect of
the several causes is the algebraical sum of their separate effects. He
speaks of this as the 'composition of causes', and illustrates it from
the 'composition of forces' in dynamics. 'But in the other description
of cases', he says, 'the agencies which are brought together cease
entirely, and a totally different set of phenomena arise.' In these
cases 'a concurrence of causes takes place which calls into action new
laws bearing no analogy to any that we can trace in the separate
operation of the causes'. They might, he suggests, be termed
'heteropathic laws'. G. H. Lewes, too,[56] in his _Problems of Life and
Mind_, drew the distinction between properties which are _resultant_ and
those which are _emergent_. These suggestions were open to Spencer's
consideration long before the last edition of _First Principles_
appeared. They were, however, too foreign to the established lines of
his thought to call for serious consideration.
But if new relationships and new properties appear in the course of
evolutionary progress, where is the opportunity for that unification of
scientific knowledge which, according to Spencer, is the goal of
philosophy? To be frank, I am by no means sure that this question can be
answered in a manner that is other than tentative. Perhaps we have not
yet reached the stage at which more than provisional unification is
possible. Such provisional unification as is suggested by a survey of
the facts is that of seemingly uniform correlation in a hierarchy of
logical implication. There are certain modes of relatedness which belong
to the cognitive type. It would seem that whenever these obtain they may
be correlated with other modes of relatedness which are of the vital or
physiological type; and that these, in turn, may be correlated with
those that are physico-chemical. Thus C implies B, and B implies A. The
order cannot be reversed. Physico-chemical relations, _as a class_, do
not imply those that are physiological.[57] The implication is not
symmetrical. Spencer was within sight of this when he spoke[58] of the
abstract-concrete sciences as 'instrumental' with respect to the
concrete sciences, though the latter are not 'instrumental' in the same
sense with respect to the former. But unfortunately he regarded the
'chasm' between the two groups as 'absolute'. And for him the proper
home of properties--of all properties it would appear--is the
abstract-concrete group--mechanics, physics, and chemistry. This
seemingly leaves no place for a specific type of properties connected
with vital relatedness as such. In fact Spencer's method of treatment
reduces all modes of relatedness to the A type, the laws of which are,
for him, the primary 'causes' of all kinds of differentiation and
integration. Hence the laws of biology and psychology can ultimately be
expressed and explained, he thinks, in mechanical or mechanistic terms.
But in the doctrine of implication they are just the laws of B and C
respectively, though laws of A may underlie them in a logical sense. And
as we ascend the evolutionary plane from A to AB and thence to ABC--from
the physico-chemical to the vital and thence to the cognitive--we find
new modes of relatedness, new forms of more complex integration and
synthesis, new properties successively appearing in serial order. This
seems to me simply to express, in outline, the net result of
interpretation based on empirical observation--though much, very much,
requires to be filled in by future research. And the new properties are
not merely additive of preceding properties; they are constitutive, and
characterize the higher evolutionary products as such. Why they are thus
constitutive, science is unable to say. Spencer, of course, calls in the
Unknowable to supply the required nexus.[59] Otherwise, in each case, he
confesses that 'we can learn nothing more than that here is one of the
uniformities in the order of phenomena'.[60] None the less we may be
able some day to establish an ordinal correlation[61] of cognitive
processes with physiological processes, and an ordinal correlation of
these physiological processes with those of the physico-chemical type.
That I conceive to be the ideal of strictly scientific interpretation if
it is to be raised progressively to a level approaching that of the
exact sciences. It certainly is not yet attained. But I see no reason
why we should not regard it as attainable. It will involve the very
difficult determination of many correlation coefficients and
constants--and for some of these our data are, it must be confessed,
both scanty and unreliable.
We must here note a much-discussed departure on Spencer's part from his
earlier position. On the first page of the _Biology_ in the earlier
editions, and in the last, we are told:
'The properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by
combination are not destroyed in reality. It follows from the
persistence of force that the properties of a compound are
resultants of the properties of its components, resultants in
which the properties of the components are severally in full
action, though mutually obscured.'
There is no hint here of Mill's heteropathic laws nor of Lewes's
emergents. But in the last edition a special chapter is inserted on the
Dynamic Element in Life. We here find a tardy recognition of the
presence of specific vital characters.
'The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible
as the results of any physical actions known to us.... In brief,
then, we are obliged to confess that Life in its essence cannot be
conceived in physico-chemical terms.'[62]
I speak of this as a tardy recognition; but it is one that does honour
to the man; it is a frank admission that his previous treatment was in
some measure inadequate, which a smaller man would not have had the
honesty or the strength of character to make. Of course it is traced
down to the Unknowable. 'Life as a principle of activity is unknown and
unknowable; while phenomena are accessible to thought the implied
noumenon is inaccessible.'[63] Still, certain specific characteristics
of living organisms are explicitly recognized as among the accessible
phenomena; and these cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. But
did Spencer fully realize how big a hole this knocks in the bottom of
the purely mechanical interpretation of nature he had for so long
championed?
There remains for consideration the place of the cognitive relation in
Spencer's philosophy of science. We need not here discuss his
transfigured realism. Apart from the customary references to the
Unknowable, of which what is knowable is said to be symbolic, it comes
to little more than laying special emphasis on the truism that what is
known in the so-called objective world involves the process of knowing;
from which it follows that, apart from knowing it the objective world
cannot be known. From this Spencer draws the conclusion that terms in
cognitive relatedness have their very nature determined in and through
that relatedness, and cannot _in themselves_ be what they are, and as
they are, in the field of cognitive symbolism. This may or may not be
true. I am one of those who question the validity of the arguments in
favour of this conclusion. Since, however, the philosophy of science
deals only with the knowable--of which the so-called appearances with
which we have direct acquaintance are the primary data--we need not here
trouble ourselves with the controversy between realists and symbolists.
Even on Spencer's view the world as symbolized is the real world _for
science_.
Now one way of expressing the fact that the cognitive relation is
always present where knowledge is concerned is to proclaim 'the truth
that our states of consciousness are the only things we can know'.[64]
But it is a terribly ambiguous way of expressing the fact. What is here
meant by a state of consciousness? So far as cognition is concerned it
is, or at any rate it involves, a relationship between something known
and the organism, as knowing--for Spencer assuredly the organism, though
a so-called inner aspect therein. Of course it is a very complex
relationship. It comprises relations in what is known, and relations in
the organism as knowing. Hence Spencer defines life, psychical as well
as physical, as 'the continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations'.[65]
'That which distinguishes Psychology is that each of its
propositions takes account both of the connected internal
phenomena and of the connected external phenomena to which they
refer. It is not only the one, nor only the other, that
characterises cognition. It is the connexion between these two
connexions.'[66]
So far well. Cognition is a very complex network of relatedness
involving many terms. What are these terms? For Spencer the internal
terms are ultimately nervous (=psychic) shocks in highly integrated
aggregates; and the external terms are, proximately at least, things in
the environment. But both alike are spoken of as states of
consciousness. There is surely an opening for ambiguity here. Sometimes,
too, the words subjective affections are used in place of states of
consciousness. 'Thus we are brought to the conclusion that what we are
conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and
resistance, are but subjective affections.'[67] Well, these states of
consciousness, these subjective affections, fall into two great
classes--the vivid and the faint. The former, which we know as
sensations, accompany direct and therefore strong excitations of the
nerve-centres; the latter, which we know as remembered sensations, or
ideas of sensations, accompany indirect and therefore weak excitations
of the same nerve-centres.[68] And then we are told that the aggregate
of the faint is what we call the mind, the subject, the _ego_; the
aggregate of the vivid is what we call the external world, the object,
the _non-ego_.[69] It would seem, then, that the aggregate of vivid
_subjective_ affections is the _objective_ world so far as knowable. To
say the least of it, this terminology is somewhat perplexing.
No doubt our knowledge of the external world involves a subtle and
intricate inter-relation of what is experienced vividly and what is
experienced faintly--of what is actually presented and what is ideally
re-presented. The distinction between them is a valid one. But when
Spencer equates this distinction with that between the external world
and the mind, as he does in the passages to which I have referred, the
validity of his procedure is seriously open to question.
It must be confessed that an adequate analysis of cognitive relatedness
on scientific lines is not to be found in Spencer's works. I am not sure
that it is yet to be found in the works of any other philosopher, though
there are many signs that the difficult problems it involves are
receiving serious attention. This much seems certain, for those who
accept the spirit, though not perhaps the letter, of Spencer's teaching:
that there it is as a constitutive mode of relatedness in the realm of
nature, and that, if it forms part of the evolutionary scheme, if it is
present in the conclusion, so far reached, though it was absent in the
physico-chemical premises, if it is to be included in a philosophy of
science it must be dealt with by that philosophy on lines strictly
analogous to those on which any other relational problem is treated.
Firmly as we may believe in the reality of Source, we must not call to
our aid some psychic entity, some entelechy, some _elan vital_, to help
us out of our difficulties; for one and all of these lie wholly outside
the universe of discourse of science; and not one of them affords the
smallest help in solving a single scientific problem in a manner that is
itself scientific.
We have seen that Spencer believed that the task of psychology is to
investigate the correlation of external and internal relations, and, in
that sense, itself to correlate them within a scientific interpretation.
Now the outcome of the former correlation is some form of behaviour or
conduct on the part of the organism. No doubt such behaviour affords
data to be dealt with in subsequent cognition. But it implies the prior
cognition which leads up to it; and it is this prior cognition,
abstracted from the behaviour to which it leads, that we have to
consider. It is so terribly complex that it is difficult to deal with it
comprehensibly in a brief space. Let me, however, try to do so, at least
in tentative outline. There occurs, let us say, an external event in the
physical world, such as the motion of a billiard-ball across the table;
and when during its progress this stimulates the retina, there is an
internal physico-chemical process which runs its course in retina, optic
nerves, and the central nervous system. We may regard these two
processes, external and internal, as _so far_, of like physical order.
With adequate knowledge the two could, in some measure, be serially
correlated as such. But the physico-chemical processes in the organism
are not only of this physical type. They are vital or physiological as
well. And this makes a real difference. Of course this statement is open
to question. But I, for one, believe that there are specific relations
present in physiological processes, _qua_ vital, other than those of the
physico-chemical type--relations which are effective and which require a
distinctive name. So far I am a vitalist. At some stage of evolution
these new modes of effective relatedness came into being, whereas in the
fire-mist and for long afterwards they were not in being. None the less
when they did actually come into being, under conditions of which we are
at present ignorant--though not so ignorant as we were--they were
dependent upon, and, for our interpretation, they logically imply, the
physico-chemical relations which are also present. In any given case
they further imply, through heredity-relatedness, the evolutionary
history of the organism in which they obtain. This so-called historical
element in biology no doubt involves a characteristic vital
relationship. But, I take it, the physico-chemical constitution of any
inorganic compound, and of any molecule therein, has also its
history--has relationship to past occurrences within its type, which
have helped to make it what it is. Still, in the organism the relation
to past happenings has a quite distinctive form which we deal with in
terms of heredity. See, then, how we stand so far. The internal
physiological process implies a long chain of heredity-relationships
through which the organism is prepared for its occurrence. It also
implies a physico-chemical basis, an underlying[70] physico-chemical
process. And this implies as a condition of its occurrence, the external
event, the passage of the billiard-ball across the table. In a broad
sense we may say that the inner process knows the external event which
is a condition of its occurrence. But we have not yet reached cognition
of the psychological type.
Before passing on to indicate, in tentative outline, the nature of this
higher mode of relatedness, I pause to note two points. The first is
that knowing in that extended sense which I have borrowed,[71] is
essentially selective in its nature. The physiological process, in the
case I have taken, knows only that external event which is directly
before the eyes and which is serially correlated with changes in the
retinal images through the stimulation of specialized receptors. Of
other external events it has no such knowledge. Compare this with the
gravitative knowledge--if a yet wider extension of the meaning of the
word be permitted--which the earth has of the sun and all the other
members of the solar system--nay more, in degrees perhaps infinitesimal,
of all other material bodies in the universe. The motion of the earth in
its orbit implies the whole of this vast field of gravitative
relatedness. The existing orbital motion at any moment implies, too, the
preceding motion which it has, in a sense, inherited from the past.
Abolish the rest of the universe at this moment and the earth's motion
would cease to be orbital. In virtue of its 'inheritance from the past',
it would continue at uniform velocity in one direction. The continuous
change of direction and velocity we observe, is a response which implies
gravitative knowledge. In a sense, then, the whole solar system is known
by the earth as it swings in its orbit.
The second point may be introduced by a question. Granted that we may
say, in a very liberal sense, that the earth in its motion has this
gravitative knowledge--is such knowledge accompanied by awareness? We do
not know. But the point I have in mind is this, that the question itself
is vague. Awareness of what? There must be awareness of something; and a
definite question should be directed towards the nature of that
something. For example: is the earth aware of its own motion? Or is it
aware of the solar system? Or is it aware of the relation of the one to
the other? If it be said that the second of these is meant when we ask
whether the knowledge is accompanied by awareness, well and good. The
answer will serve to define the question. Take now a case of biological
knowledge. Are the plants in the cottager's window, when they grow
towards the light, aware of a process in their own tissues? Or are they
aware of the sunshine? Or are they in some measure aware of the
connexion between the one and the other? To all these questions we must
answer, I suppose, that we do not know. But it may have been worth while
to ask them in a definite way.
We pass, then, to cognition in the usual acceptation of the term--to
what we speak of as knowledge in the proper and narrower sense. My
contention is that this is a mode of relatedness which science must
endeavour to treat on precisely the same lines as it deals with any
other natural kind of relatedness. At some stage of evolution it came
into being, whereas in the fire-mist, and for long afterwards, it was
not in being. None the less when it did come into being, it was
dependent on, and for our interpretation it logically implies,
underlying physiological processes, as they in turn imply
physico-chemical processes, in each case serially correlated. It is
pre-eminently selective. And just as any physiological process, however
externally conditioned, is grounded in[72] the constitution of the
organism, as such, so too is any cognitive process grounded in the
constitution of the organism as one in which this higher type of
relatedness has supervened. Again, just as the physiological
constitution implies a prolonged racial preparation, describable in
terms of that mode of relatedness we name heredity, so, too, does any
cognitive process imply, not only this racial preparation of the
biological kind, but also an individual preparation of the psychological
kind--implies relatedness to what we call, rather loosely, prior
experience--which itself implies a concurrent physiological preparation.
Now there can be no doubt that awareness is a characteristic feature of
the knowledge of cognition, whether it be present or absent in knowledge
in the more extended sense. We must just accept this as what appears to
be a fact. In science we do not pretend to say why facts are what they
are and as they are. We take them as they are given, and endeavour to
trace their connexions and their implications. Accepting, then,
awareness as given, we must ask: Awareness of what? It is sometimes said
that cognition is aware of itself. I am not sure that I understand what
this means. If we are speaking of the cognitive relation, which is an
awareness relation, the question seems to be whether a relation of
awareness is related to itself. But of course if a field of cognitive
relatedness be regarded as a complex whole, any part may be related to
the rest, and the rest to any part. That kind of self-awareness--if we
must so call it!--is eminently characteristic of cognition in the higher
forms of its development. On these terms cognition is aware of
itself--though the mode of statement savours of ambiguity.
Let us next ask whether there is awareness of the underlying cortical
process. If we are speaking of direct awareness, apparently not. The
correlation between the two is only discoverable through a very
elaborate and complex[73] application of further cognition in
interpretative knowledge. We only know the correlated cortical process
by description, as Mr. Bertrand Russell would say,[74] and never by
direct acquaintance.