It is unfortunately true that as a science advances it grows more
complex. Not only does its language depart more and more from ordinary
speech by the accumulation of technical terms, but the terms in current
use at any time are defined in terms of others which are defined in
terms of others--something after the manner of the description of
the house that Jack built. The most obvious case of this Chinese box
kind of language is, of course, that of mathematics. A mathematical
theorem occupying one line of type might very well occupy a volume if
written out in ordinary prose in which no terms were used which were
not common property. For this reason modern mathematical discoveries,
except in very special instances, cannot be made intelligible except
to mathematicians. To learn the language of a highly developed science
like mathematics takes about as long as to learn Chinese, but the
task of translation into English is very much harder. For this reason
mathematicians cannot hope for intelligent popular recognition; they
must be content to be regarded either as vaguely impressive figures
or else as mild lunatics busied with incomprehensible and probably
trifling abstractions. Compared with writers, musicians or painters,
they are, for social purposes, mental outlaws. It is apparent, however,
that mathematics was not always so remote. It was possible for Voltaire
to take an interest which was, at any rate, enthusiastic, in the work
of Newton. This was doubtless due, in some degree, to the obviously
dramatic quality of Newton’s discoveries, but it was also due to the
fact that his discoveries could be expressed in comparatively simple
language. Again, physics and chemistry at that time, and for some years
later, were not only intelligible to men without special training, but
such men could actually make valuable discoveries in these sciences.
As these sciences progressed their language became more and more
forbidding and their fundamental notions more and more abstract. Men
without special training, but with scientific curiosity, turned their
attention to the biological sciences. They collected birds’ eggs and
butterflies; they bought microscopes and wrote little papers on the
sea-shells they discovered in a morning’s walk. But biology has now
developed a technical language, and the days of the untrained observer
are almost over. The one science which is still, to some extent,
accessible to these amiable people is psychology. It is growing more
technical, it is true, but the majority of the books dealing with
psychology may still be read almost as easily as a treatise on the
history of the Balkans. And the “psychological” novelist can still
regard himself as being, from one point of view, a scientific man.
Psycho-analysis is, as yet, a favourite subject of discussion in
advanced drawing-rooms where discussions of the principle of relativity
are comparatively rare.
The divorce between science and the general intellectual world is
unfortunate, but inevitable. It is unfortunate both for the scientific
man and for the general _intelligentsia_. The scientific man,
mentally companionless except for the little circle of his immediate
co-workers, becomes less complete as a human being; he fails as a
humanist. He too often accepts his outlawed position and turns his
special interests into his exclusive interests, as if, through some
inverted generosity, he refused to take where he could not give. He
may grow to ignore the other intellectual activities of his time,
as Darwin, to his distress, found he had grown to ignore poetry,
or he may actually become intolerant of such activities and so add
contempt to the ignorance with which his preoccupations are regarded
by the outside world. For the outside world, also, this divorce is
unfortunate. For science, in its own way, satisfies just the same
impulses as do other intellectual interests, and some of them it
satisfies more completely and in a richer way. A great waste of mental
energy and much inconclusive discussion would be avoided were certain
scientific results more generally known, and, more particularly, were
the advantages of the scientific method more widely recognised and the
method itself more extensively practised. An air of superiority is
often noticed in the references of scientific men to certain current
discussions. It is a fault of manner, but one difficult to avoid.
“Inside” information usually has this effect on the possessor, and
when it is information that cannot be shared the attitude is apt to
become chronic. Both sides, then, are the poorer for their lack of
intercourse. But this state of affairs seems to be inevitable. The
claims of the Latin and Greek literatures to attention, whether they
are justified or not, have led to the study of these languages being
imposed on perhaps the majority of the people in this country who are
predominantly interested in intellectual affairs. It is a training
which consumes several years: is a training in the sciences to be
added? This is manifestly impossible. Even if our whole educational
system were radically altered, only those sciences, such as biology and
psychology, which may be understood with comparatively little training,
could ever become objects of common knowledge. But sciences where, in
addition to a severe and prolonged discipline, special aptitude is
necessary, must always be the property of the few. As, every year,
all the sciences grow more complex, so the difficulty of obtaining an
adequate knowledge of them increases. A dead language may be learnt
once for all, but the language of a science must be learnt afresh every
few years. The popular article of Huxley’s day, the link between the
man of science and the general public, is now the link between the more
and less advanced students of the same science. A so-called “popular”
account of Relativity Theory, for instance, is like an annotated
edition of Pindar; a very fair knowledge of the language is assumed
beforehand. It might be thought that the process of reduction, as it
were, could be continued, until finally an account was prepared where
no technical terms were used. But such an account would be, at best,
like a translation of Greek poetry; the essential quality would be
gone. Such translations have, of course, their uses, but the attraction
of science for the scientific man, like the attraction of a poem for
the poet, is not to be communicated in this way. In art the separation
of matter and form is not really possible, and the same is true of the
sciences.