There is one point which I have emphasised and which it appears to me
Professor Mach neglects, namely that our noumenal world of ideas has
an objective meaning. The ideal constructs represent realities. They
do not consist of scaffolds alone and there is no scaffold which has
not been erected to help in building up representations of facts. Let
us call the representation of facts positive science or simply truth
and the scaffolding the mythology of science, and we shall see that the
road to truth leads everywhere through mythology. Certain facts of the
surrounding world impress themselves upon a sentient being and these
impressions come to represent facts. These facts are not seen at once in
their causal connection, they appear unconnected among themselves, and in
the attempt to formulate them, to represent them, to construct them in
mental images, we fill out the gaps of our knowledge with such inventions
as are supplied by analogy.
Mythology is, in religion as well as in science, the indispensable ladder
to truth. We cannot build without scaffolds. So we cannot construct truth
without mythology. We have to introduce allegorical expressions in order
to fill out gaps with analogies.
Mythology becomes fatal to the building up of truth, as soon as we
consider it as truth itself. The scaffold is erected simply as an
assistance for building and if the building is finished the scaffold
should be torn down. The progress of science which is so much helped
by mythology has periods of purification in which the mythology is
discarded. This is sometimes a difficult task, because the very terms
of science are mostly both at the same time truth and mythology,
building-stones and scaffold.
Take, for instance, the term atom. The chemist observes that the elements
always combine in certain proportions and formulates the law of the
equivalence of their atomic weights. In order to think this process, to
reconstruct it in mental images, he imagines that matter consists of
infinitely small particles of constant weight. This is a fiction useful
for its purpose but it may be just as erroneous as the method employed
in the infinitesimal calculus of thinking of a continuous curve as
consisting of a broken line of infinitely small parts, or of thinking
of a certain force as being composed of a parallelogram of forces. The
parallelogram of forces is a scaffold helpful for representing in mental
symbols the coexistence of different abstractions of the same kind (e. g.
motions of a different velocity and direction). But this scaffold is not
a mere scaffold, it is not erected without any purpose, its final aim is
the description of facts.
The proposition to consider light as rays traveling in straight lines
is a scaffold, it is mythology; but this analogy contains a truth, it
contains a real building-stone which should not be torn down with the
scaffold. This truth is one-sided; it represents one feature of light
and disregards other features. It disregards entirely the transversal
oscillations of the ether, yet it describes another feature—viz., the
transmission and refraction of light for the comprehension of which we
need not take into consideration the undulation theory. The physicist
calculates with his formula sinα/sinβ = _n_ the angle of refraction.
There is certainly neither a sineα nor a sineβ in reality, but there are
certain relations of reality which are described in these expressions and
the action of the light has a definite quality which can be determined
with the assistance of the formula sinα/sinβ = _n_.
If the scientist succeeds in determining such real qualities of things,
even though it be done with the assistance of mythology, he discovers
a truth. He has with the help of his scaffolds succeeded in placing a
building-stone where it belongs.
Some scaffolds have to be torn down because they hinder further building;
other scaffolds must remain because they assist us in modeling, and
planning, and predetermining certain processes of nature. They are like
staircases which enable us to reach with ease otherwise inaccessible
places on towers or domes.
* * * * *
The idea that science is full of mythology appears strange to the
non-scientific, and it is often overlooked by scientists themselves.
But the idea that religious mythology in spite of its many irrational
superstitions and wrong analogies beams with truth is also little heeded
by the many. In fact, man’s method of reaching truth is the same in
religion as in science.
The religious ideas such as God and soul are mental constructs which
copy certain realities; but these very terms, such as they are used,
are mythological expressions; they are still surrounded by their
scaffolds. Many people know by their own experience the usefulness and
indispensability of the scaffold. Without the scaffold they would never
have had an inkling of the truth, for the representation of which it was
built, and it is natural that they consider the scaffold as the building
itself. This is the reason why the narrow-minded orthodox denounce anyone
who would lay hand on or tear down any part of the scaffold, which has
become a hindrance to the further development of religious ideals.
Positivism, i. e. the representation of facts without any admixture of
theory or mythology, is an ideal which in its purity perhaps will never
be realised. Nevertheless it is no _ignis fatuus_, no will-o’-the-wisp
that leads us astray. Our science is constantly more and more
approaching this ideal and the progress of humanity is intimately
connected with it.
Science has not merely a theoretic value, its aim and purpose consist
in its application to practical life. Science is throughout ethical.
Thus ethics has also its mythological phase. In agreement with Professor
Mach (p. 204), we should find it ridiculous if one who presumes to be an
ethical teacher of mankind would say:
“Man _must_ not be descended from monkeys,” “The earth _shall_
not rotate,” “Matter _ought_ not everywhere to fill space,”
“Energy _must_ be constant,” and so on.
Why is it ridiculous? Because we cannot prescribe a certain deportment to
facts. It is however not ridiculous to let a precise and carefully sifted
knowledge of facts determine our own deportment.
Science has to teach ethics. But here also we should distinguish between
positive facts and mythology. Ethics based upon mere theories, upon
our interpretations of nature which we add to facts, is mythological;
positive ethics is simply that deportment which is suggested by a
comprehension of the facts themselves.
Mythological ethics may be quite correct, just as much so as the
application of a mythological theory of science may be within certain
limits reliable as a working hypothesis. But it is desirable to
understand the nature of mythological ethics in order to distinguish
between truth and fiction.
When Professor Mach speaks of sensations as being the elements of the
world and of things as being complexes of these elements he apparently
does not use the word sensation in its usual sense. It has ceased to be
an abstract term which represents one feature only of a process of nature
and has become a symbol for an entire reality. And is not such a usage of
terms as if they were not abstracts but the things themselves liable to
lead to misconceptions?
Professor Mach’s “elements,” it seems to me, are only elements, i.
e. ultimate and unanalysable materials, if considered as terms of a
psychological view of the world; they are not elements in the domains of
other abstractions, such as are made by physiology or physics. Moreover,
although this method eliminates the duality of soul and body, mind and
matter, feeling and motion, it does not explain the problem.
Professor Mach might answer that the problem as to the duality of mind
and matter is a sham problem, just as much as the problem why do we
see things upright when the retina picture of the eye shows the things
inverted? But a problem is to him who has solved the problem always a
sham problem. Every problem disappears as a problem as soon as it is
solved. It is true that we see as little with the blind spot of the eye
as with the skin of our back. The problem of the blind spot is not why
do we not see with the blind spot, (which is simply a matter of fact,)
but why do we not notice, when using only one eye, its lack of sight
in a spot surrounded with sight-seeing structures? We have to employ
artificial means to convince ourselves that we are really blind in that
spot!
All problems are merely subjective; they are a conflict between two
conceptions and as Professor Mach himself says, the solution of problems
consists in the adaptation of thought to facts, i. e. to new facts or new
views of facts. By an adaptation of our thought to the enlarged field
of vision the problem vanishes; it has ceased to be a problem. In fact
it never existed as an objective phenomenon. There are no problems in
nature. There are problems only to the investigating mind. But even the
formulation of problems is a problem to be solved, and perhaps the most
difficult and subtle kind of problems is to discover the flaw in wrongly
formulated problems.
The problem of the duality of body and soul, matter and mind, feeling
and motion, ceases to be a problem to him who has worked his way through
to a monistic conception, but to those who have not as yet succeeded in
establishing a unitary view of these ideas, because they take them to be
separate and distinct existences, it is a problem of great importance.