I
The conception of science as a body of thought embracing the whole
of our rational convictions about reality has hardly yet been
generally reached. Man is still so far from being a rational animal
that the application of rational methods of inquiry to all branches
of his experience is still instinctively resisted--as if reason
were an alien and hostile intruder. Beliefs which are held with
passion, being the expression of instinctive preferences, are felt
not to belong to the “sphere” of science. On all questions where
his passions are strongly engaged, man prizes certitude and fears
knowledge. Dispassionate inquiry is welcomed only when the result is
indifferent. Nearly every great scientific generalisation has incurred
the _odium theologicum_--which is not the exclusive possession
of theologians--from the Copernican hypothesis to the theory of herd
instinct. That science, although continually wounding men, should
nevertheless have progressed, is evidence that it serves impulses
deeply rooted in man’s nature. The great scientific innovator, like
the great altruist, is treated with ignominy by the society whose
deepest instincts he lives to serve.
Science, the child of irrational impulse, has inherited something
of the parental character. Its history reveals it as purblind and
fumbling, with no clear vision of its aim, no premonition of its
imperial state. Unlike philosophy, it did not aspire to universal
dominion. It was content to investigate the particular instance,
and did not reject a certain incoherence in explanation rather than
accept a generalisation which did not spring from its own ground. It
refused foreign assistance, but kept its independence. That scientific
men did not always understand that science must, from its nature, be
autonomous, is evident from the history of every particular science.
Even as late as Descartes it was considered quite natural to deduce
phenomena from metaphysical principles; and an admixture of mythical
elements is not entirely absent from some branches of science, even at
the present day. Science has not yet reached full consciousness of its
proper ground and aims.
The values served by science, in terms of which its claim to
consideration is to be judged, have become more numerous as science has
developed. The earliest scientific researches were concerned wholly
with the particular event, with, at most, the vaguest inkling of large
perspectives. The savage who discovers that the branch lying partly
in the stream is not really bent, is prompted by the same localised
and detached curiosity which led to most of the early scientific
discoveries. Interest in the oddity of an event is undoubtedly the
root of scientific observations. The more closely the events concern
us, the more pregnant they may be with possible pleasure or pain,
the greater the degree of abstraction necessary to see them in their
relations. Human beings remain miracles to us long after we have
learned to predict the motion of a planet. Psychology is the latest
of the sciences, not so much because of the intrinsic difficulty of
its subject-matter as because our interest in the subject-matter is so
vehement that it is almost impossible to be indifferent to the results.
An intelligent fish would probably have found most of the painfully won
results of human psychology fairly obvious.
From the accumulation of facts and the attempt to see them in
relation springs the scientific theory. With the construction of
theories science enters on a new phase in its development, and
serves a different set of human values. Its facts, the products
of local curiosities, now take on an order, and serve the desire
for comprehension. The apparently dissimilar becomes related; law
supervenes on chaos. The desire for knowledge becomes transformed into
the desire for _significant_ knowledge--significant primarily
for contemplation, and secondarily for practice. It is the scientific
theory alone that gives to science its true being and makes it worthy
of a deep concern. The desire for comprehension is deeply rooted in
human nature. Religious myths and philosophical systems arose in
obedience to this impulse. Science also exists to satisfy this craving,
and the terms on which it does so are altogether to its advantage. The
fact that it is an extension of common knowledge, and infers nothing
that cannot be verified, differentiates it from myth, and is the secret
of the grave and serious satisfaction it affords. Those accustomed
to this homely, invigorating atmosphere find the rarer air of much
traditional philosophy quite insupportable. A certain indifference to
other methods of describing reality becomes more evident as the years
advance and the domain of science becomes more and more extended.
Peaceful penetration takes the place of open warfare, and in face of
rival systems men of science feel less inclined to disprove what they
feel more at liberty to ignore.
Science still falls far short of affording complete comprehension or
of providing so finished a picture of reality that we feel no need
of other speculations. The different sciences do not yet conspire to
form one single coherent body of truth. The interstices between them
are still sufficiently large to admit foreign interpretations. But the
impulse to comprehension, which created science, will be justified by
it: we may have so much faith. Even that moiety of mankind who care for
little beyond pure immediacy will find that science alone can give
them much of what they desire. Scientific theories possess a value
even to those who are strangers to the pleasures of contemplation, for
science has powerful reactions in the world of practice. To those who
have lost their birthright it can offer a mess of pottage.
Besides serving curiosity, comprehension and practice, science offers
richly satisfying objects to the æsthetic impulse. The language of
æsthetics is not far to seek in the writings of men of science, and
were it not that the word arouses such a proprietary fury, we should
agree, reviewing their motives and the kind of their satisfactions,
to call them artists. The matter of the highest art, like that of
true science, is reality, and the measure in which science falls
short as art is the measure in which it is incomplete as science. All
good philosophy, art or science partakes of the nature of the other
two. When these three are regarded as one, each will have reached its
apotheosis.