are, in general, ways by which we can vicariously experience
the emotions of others. All of the expressive arts are made
possible by the fundamental psychological fact that human
beings give certain instinctive and habitual signs of emotion
and instinctively respond to them. In consequence, through
art experience may be immeasurably broadened, deepened,
and mellowed. Through the medium of art, modes of life long
past away can leave their imperishable and living mementos.
Dante opens to the citizen of the twentieth century the mind
and imagination of the Middle Ages. A Grecian urn can
arouse, at least to a Keats, the whole stilled magic of the
Greek spirit. And not only can we live through the life and
emotion of times long dead, but the fiction and drama and
poetry of our own day permit us to enter into realms of
experience which in extent and variety would not be possible to
one man. Indeed, the possibility of vicariously enlarging
experience is one of the chief appeals of art. We cannot all be
rovers, but we can have in reading Masefield a pungent sense
of romantic open spaces, the salt winds, the perilous motion
or the broad calm of the sea. We feel something of the same
urgency as that of the author when we read:
"I must go down to the seas again, the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking."[2]
[Footnote 2: Masefield: _Sea-Fever_.]
Art opens up wide avenues of possibility; it releases us from
the limitations to which a particular mode of life, an accidental
niche in a business or profession has committed us. It
enables us vividly to experience and sympathetically to
appreciate the lives which are led by other men, and in which
something in our own personalities could have found fulfillment.
While the objects of art thus broaden our experience by
their precise and contagious communication of emotion, they
may also express ideas. Thus a play may have a message, a
poem a vision, a painting an allegory. Art is both at an
advantage and at a disadvantage in the communication of
ideas. Ideas, if they are to be accurately conveyed, should
be devoid of emotional flourish, and presented with telegraphic
directness and precision. They should have the clarity of
formulas, rather than the distracting array and atmosphere
of form. But ideas presented in the persuasive garb of
beauty, gain in their hold over men what they lose in
precision. Thus an eloquent orator, a touching letter, a vivid
poem, may do more than volumes of the most definitive and
convincing logic to insinuate an idea into men's minds. Compare
in effectiveness the most thoroughgoing treatise on the
status of the agricultural laborer with the stirring momentum
of Edwin Markham's" The Man With the Hoe":
"Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not, and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
"Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power,
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream he dreamed who shaped the suns,
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More fraught with menace to the universe."
An idea clothed with such music and passion is an incomparably
effective means of arousing a response. It is this
which makes art so valuable an instrument of propaganda.
People will respond actively to ideas set forth with fervor by
a Tolstoy or an Ibsen who would be left cold by the flat and
erudite accuracy of a volume on economics. And the confirmed
Platonist is made so perhaps less by the convincingness
of Plato's logic, than by the inevitable and irrefutable grace
of his dramatic art.
There is, for certain persons educated in the arts, a satisfaction
that is neither sensuous nor emotional, but intellectual.
These come to discriminate form with the abstract
though warm interest of the expert. The well-informed concert-goer
begins to appreciate beauties hidden to the uninitiate.
He notes with eager anticipation the technical genius
of a composition as it unfolds, admiring the craft and skill
as well as the vision of the artist. In extreme cases this may,
of course, degenerate into mere pedantry. But at its best,
it is the satisfaction of the man who, having a keen eye for
beauty, is all the more solicitous for its accurate realization.
The satisfactions of the connoisseur are merely a refinement
of less sophisticated forms of appreciation. To appreciate
the bare sounds of music, or the vividness of color in a painting
is the prelude to more discriminating tastes. It is impossible
for most men to have in all the arts expert judgment,
but the ability to be able to discriminate with authority the
technical achievements of a work of genius, while it does not
supplant the emotional and sense satisfaction derived from
the arts, nevertheless enhances them.
ART AND ÆSTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN THE SOCIAL ORDER. The
creative activity which is, to a peculiar extent, the artist's,
is sought and practiced to some degree by all men. Genius
is rare, but talent of a minor sort is frequent. In the playing
of a musical instrument, in the practice of a handicraft, in
the cultivation of a garden, ordinary men in modern society
find an outlet for invention, craftsmanship, and imagination.
To give this joy of creation, in smaller or larger measure, to
all men is to promote social happiness. In the discussion of
instinct it was pointed out that men come nearest to attaining
happiness when they are doing what is their bent by original
nature, when they are acting out of sheer love of the activity
rather than from compulsion. And since all men possess,
although in moderate degree, the creative impulse, to give
this impulse a chance is a distinct social good.
The employment of the creative imagination demands both
leisure and training. Leisure is needed because, in the routine
activities of industry, men's actions are determined not by
their imagination, but by the immediacies of practical demands.
There may be, as Helen Marot suggests, a possibility
of a wide utilization of the creative impulse in industry. But
a large part of industrial life must of necessity remain routine.
In consequence, during their leisure hours alone, can men
find free scope for some form of æsthetic interest and activity.
The second requisite is training. Even the poor player of an
instrument can derive some pleasure from his performance.
And, under the accidents of economic and social circumstance,
many a flower may really be born to blush unseen through the
fact that its talents receive no opportunity. The occasional
"discovery" by a wealthy man of a genius in the slums, indicates
how a more liberal and general provision of training in
the arts might redound to the general good. And a more
widespread endowment of training in the fine arts, if it did
not produce many geniuses, might at least produce a number
of competent painters and musicians, who, in the practice of
their skill, during their leisure, would derive considerable and
altogether wholesome pleasure.
While high æsthetic capacity may be lacking in most people,
æsthetic appreciation is widely diffused, and the education of
taste and the growth in appreciation of the arts have been
marked. The museums of art in our large cities report a
constantly increasing attendance, both of visitors to the
galleries and attendants at lectures. And the crowds which
regularly attend musical programs of a sustainedly high
character in many cities, winter and summer, are evidence of how
widespread and eager is appreciation of the fine arts. In
the Scandinavian countries and in Germany one of the most
remarkable social phenomena has been the growth of a
widely supported people's theater movement, in which there
has been consistent support of the highest type of operas and
plays.
ART AS AN INDUSTRY. The fact that objects of art are
themselves immediate satisfactions and supply human wants,
makes their provision for large numbers an important social
enterprise. Certain forms of art, therefore, become highly
industrialized. The provision of the objects of art becomes
a profitable business, as it is also made possible only by a large
economic outlay. Tolstoy in his _What is Art?_ brings out
strikingly the economic basis of artistic enterprises in
contemporary society:
For the support of art in Russia [1898], the government grants
millions of roubles in subsidies to academies, conservatories, and
theatres. In France, twenty million francs are assigned for art, and
similar grants are made in Germany and England.
In every large town enormous buildings are erected for museums,
academies, conservatories, dramatic schools, and for performances
and concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen--carpenters,
masons, painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewelers,
molders, type-setters--spend their whole lives in hard labor to
satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of
human activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this.
Not only is enormous labor spent on this activity, but in it, as in
war, the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of
people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs
rapidly (dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly (musicians)
or to turn every phrase inside out and find a rhyme for every
word.[1]
[Footnote 1: Tolstoy: _What is Art?_ pp. 1-2 (written in 1898).]
Tolstoy's point in thus emphasizing the immense energies
devoted to artistic enterprises is to lead us to consider what is
the end of all this labor. He points out scathingly the ugliness,
frivolity, and crudity of much that passes for drama in
the theater, for music in the concert hall, and for literature
between covers. He pleads for a simple art that shall express
with sincerity the genuine emotions of the great mass of men.
Whatever be our estimate of Tolstoy's sweeping condemnation
of so much of what has come to be regarded as classic
beauty, the point he makes about the commercialization of
art is incontrovertible. If art is an industry, the good is
determined, as it were, by popular vote. The many must be
pleased rather than the discriminating. While, as has been
noted, æsthetic appreciation is fairly general, appreciation of
the subtler forms of art requires training. The glaring, the
conspicuous, the broad effect, is more likely to win rapid
popular approval than the subtle, the quiet, and the fragile.
That taste is readily educable is true. But when immediate
profits are the end, one cannot pause to educate the public.
And publishing and the theater are two conspicuous instances
of the conflicts that not infrequently arise between standards
of economic return and standards of æsthetic merit. Even
where there is no deliberate selection of the worse rather than
the better, commercial standards operate to put the novel in art
at a discount. As already pointed out, we tend to appreciate
forms and ideas to which we are accustomed. In consequence,
where commercial demands make immediate widespread
appreciation necessary, the untried, the odd, the radical
innovation in music, literature, or drama, is a questionable
venture. There are notable instances of works which, though
eventually recognized as great, had to go begging at first for
a publisher or a producer. This was the case with some of
Meredith's earlier novels; later Meredith, as a publisher's
reader, turned down some of Shaw. The same inhospitality
met some of the plays of Ibsen and some of the symphonies of
Tschaikowsky.
ART AND MORALS. Attention has already been called to the
fact that objects of art are powerful vehicles for social
propaganda. Indeed some works become famous less for their
intrinsic beauty than for their moral force.[1] The effectiveness
of art forms as instruments of propaganda lies in the fact,
previously noted, that the ideas presented, with all the accouterments
of color, form, and movement, are incomparably
effective in stimulating passion; ideas thus aroused in the
beholder have the vivid momentum of emotion to sustain them.
There is only rhetorical exaggeration in the saying, "Let me
sing a country's songs, and I care not who makes its laws."
Plato was one of the first to recognize how influential art
could be in influencing men's actions and attitudes. So keenly
did he realize its possible influence, that in constructing his
ideal state he provided for the rigid regulation of all artistic
production by the governing power, and the exile of all poets.
He felt deeply how insinuatingly persuasive poets could become
with their dangerous "beautiful lies." Artists have,
indeed, not infrequently been revolutionaries, at least in the
sense that the world which they so ecstatically pictured makes
even the best of actual worlds look pale and paltry in comparison.
The imaginative genius has naturally enough been
discontented with an existing order that could not possibly
measure up to his ardent specifications. Shelley is possibly
the supreme example of the type; against his incorrigible
construction of perfect worlds in imagination he set the real
world in which men live, and found it hateful.
[Footnote 1: The classic instance of a work that certainly was notable
in its early history for its propaganda value is _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.
An extreme instance of a book famous almost exclusively for its vivid
propaganda is Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_.]
In consequence of this discontent which the imaginative
artist so often expresses with the real world, and the power of
his enthusiastic visions to win the loyalties and affections of
men, many moralists and statesmen have, like Plato, regarded
the creative artist with suspicion. They have half believed
the lyric boast of the Celtic poet who wrote:
"One man with a dream at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown,
And three with a new song's measure,
Can trample an empire down.
"We, in the ages lying,
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
We o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth,
For each age is a dream that, is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth."[1]
[Footnote 1: O'Shaughnessy: _Ode to the Music-Makers_.]
Many, therefore, who have reflected upon art--Plato first
and chiefly--have insisted that art must be used to express
only those ideas and emotions which when acted upon would
have beneficent social consequences. Only those stories are
to be told, those pictures to be painted, those songs to be sung,
which contribute to the welfare of the state. Many artists
have similarly felt a Puritanical responsibility; they have told
only those tales which could be pointed with a moral. The
supreme example of this dedication of art to a moral purpose
is found in the Middle Ages, when all beauty of architecture,
painting, and much of literature and drama, was pervaded, as
it was inspired, with the Christian message. Later Milton
writes at the beginning of _Paradise Lost_:
"... What in me is dark,
Illumine, what is low--raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to man."[2]
[Footnote 2: Milton: _Paradise Lost_, book I, lines 22-26.]
In a sense, the supreme achievements of creative genius
have been notable instances of the expression of great moral
or religious or social ideals. Lucretius's _On the Nature of
Things_ is the noblest and most passionate extant rendering
of the materialistic conception of life. Goethe's _Faust_
expresses in epic magnificence a whole romantic philosophy
of endless exploration and infinite desire. Dante's _Divine
Comedy_ sums up in a single magnificent epic the spirit and
meaning of the mediæval point of view. As Henry Osborn
Taylor writes of it:
Yet even the poem itself was a climax long led up to. The power
of its feeling had been preparing in the conceptions, even in the
reasonings, which through the centuries had been gaining ardour as
they became part of the entire natures of men and women. Thus
had mediæval thought become emotionalized and plastic and living
in poetry and art. Otherwise, even Dante's genius could not have
fused the contents of mediæval thought into a poem. How many
passages in the _Commedia_ illustrate this--like the lovely picture of
Lia moving in the flowering meadow, with her fair hands making her
a garland. The twenty-third canto of the _Paradiso_, telling of the
triumph of Christ and the Virgin, yields a larger illustration; and
within it, as a very concrete lyric instance, floats that flower of
angelic love, the song of Gabriel circling the Lady of Heaven with its
melody, and giving quintessential utterance to the love and adoration
which the Middle Ages had intoned to the Virgin. Yes, if it be
Dante's genius, it is also the gathering emotion of the centuries,
which lifts the last cantos of the _Paradiso_ from glory to glory, and
makes this closing singing of the _Commedia_ such supreme poetry.
Nor is it the emotional element alone that reaches its final voice in
Dante. Passage after passage of the _Paradiso_ is the apotheosis of
scholastic thought and ways of stating it, the very apotheosis, for
example, of those harnessed phrases in which the line of great scholastics
had endeavoured to put in words the universalities of substance
and accident and the absolute qualities of God.[1]
[Footnote 1: Taylor: _The Mediæval Mind_, vol. II, pp. 588-89.]
In these supreme instances the ideas have been given a genuinely
æsthetic expression. They are beautiful in form and
music, as well as in content and vision. But not infrequently
where propaganda appears, art flies out of the window. Many
modern plays and novels might be cited, which in their serious
devotion to the enunciation of some social ideal, lapse from
song into statistics. The artist with his eye on the social
consequences of his work may come altogether to cease to regard
standards of beauty. It is only the rare genius who can make
poetry out of politics. Even Shelley lapses into deadly and
arid prosiness when his chief interest becomes the presentation
of the political ideas of Godwin.
In contrast with the theory that art has a social responsibility,
that so powerful an instrument must be used exclusively
in the presentation of adequate social ideals, must be
set the doctrine, widely current in the late nineteenth century,
of "art for art's sake." To the exponents of this point of view,
the artist has only one responsibility, the creation of beauty.
It is his to realize in form every pulsation of interest and
desire, to provide every possible exquisite sensation. The
artist must not be a preacher; he must not tell men what is
the good; he must show them the good, which is identical
with the beautiful. And he must exhibit the beautiful in
every unique and lovely posture which can be imagined,
and which he can skillfully realize in color, in word, or in
sound. Art is its own justification; "a thing of beauty is a
joy forever."
Where art is governed by such intentions, form and material
become more important than expression. Thus there
develops in France in the late nineteenth century a school of
Symbolists and Sensationalists in poetry, whose single aim is
the production of precise and beautiful sensations through
the specific use of evocative words. The form and the style
become everything in literature, in painting, and the plastic
arts. The emphasis is put upon exquisiteness in decoration,
upon precision in technique, upon loveliness of material. The
Pre-Raphaelite movement in poetry, with its emphasis on the
use of picturesque and decorative epithets, the exclusive
emphasis in some modern music on subtlety of technique in tone
and color, are recent examples.
The position taken has clearly this much justification. A
work does not become a work of art through the fact that it
expresses noble sentiments. The most righteous sermon may
not be beautiful. Whatever be the source of its inspiration,
art must make its appeal through the palpable and undeniable
beauty of the formal embodiment it has given to its
vision. However much an object be prized as a moral instrument,
unless it stirs the senses and the imagination, it hardly
can be called a work of art. On the other hand, things intrinsically
beautiful do seem to be their own justification. A
poem of Keats, a Japanese print, a delicate vase, or an exquisite
song demand no moral justification. They are their
own sufficient excuse for being.
But the "art for art's sake" doctrine, carried to extremes,
results in mere decadence or triviality. It produces at best
exquisite decorative trifles rather than works of a large and
serious beauty. Music seems to be the art where sheer beauty
of form is its own justification, for music can hardly be used as
a specific medium of communication. Those compositions
that purport to be "program music," to convey definite
impressions of particular scenes or ideas, are somewhat
halting attempts to use music as one uses language. Yet
even in music, though we may enjoy ingenious and fluent
melodic trifles, we regard them less highly than the earnest
and magnificent beauty of a Beethoven symphony.
But because art is only effective when it appeals to the
senses and to the imagination does not mean that the senses
and the imagination must be stirred by insignificance. The
artist may use the rhythms of music, line and color, the
suggestiveness of words, in the interests of ideal values. Gifted,
as he is, with imaginative foresight to imagine a world better
than the one in which he is living, he may, by picturing ideals
in persuasive form, not only bring them before the mind of
man, but insinuate them into his heart. The rational artist
may note the possibilities afoot in his environment. He may
treasure these hints of human happiness, and by giving them
vivid reality in the forms of art indicate captivatingly to men
where possible perfections lie. "For your young men shall
see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." The artist
may become the most influential of prophets, for his prophecies
come to men not as arbitrary counsels, but as pictures of
Perfection intrinsically lovely and intriguing. When Socrates
is asked whether or not his perfect city exists, he replies that
it exists only in Heaven, but that men in beholding it may, in
the light of that divine pattern, learn to attain in their earthly
cities a not dissimilar beauty.
CHAPTER XIV
SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD
WHAT SCIENCE IS. Science may be considered either as the
product of a certain type of human activity, or as a human
activity satisfactory even apart from its fruits. As an activity,
it is a highly refined form of that process of reflection by
which man is, in the first place, enabled to make himself at
home in the world. It differs from the ordinary or common-sense
process of thinking, as we shall presently see, in being
more thoroughgoing, systematic, and sustained. It is common
sense of a most extraordinarily refined and penetrating
kind. But before examining the procedure of science, we
must consider briefly its imposing product, that science whose
vast structure seems to the layman so final, imposing, and
irrefragable.
From the point of view of the product which is the fruit of
reflective activity, Science may be defined as _a body of
systematized and verified knowledge, expressing in general terms the
relations of exactly defined phenomena._ In all the respects here
noted, science may be contrasted with those matters of _common
knowledge_, of _opinion_ or _belief_ which are the fruit of our
casual daily thinking and experience. Science is, in the first
place, a body of _systematized_ knowledge. One has but to
contrast the presentation of facts in an ordinary textbook in
zoölogy with the random presentation of facts in a newspaper
or in casual conversation. In science the facts bearing on a
given problem are presented as completely as possible and
are classified with reference to their significant bearings upon
the problem. Moreover the facts gathered and the classifications
of relationship made are not more or less accurate, more
or less true; they are tested and verified results. That
putrefaction, for example, is due to the life of micro-organisms in
the rotting substance is not a mere assumption. It has been
proved, tested, and verified by methods we shall have occasion
presently to examine.
Scientific knowledge, moreover, is general knowledge. The
relations it expresses are not _true_ in some cases of the precise
kind described, _untrue_ in others. The relations hold true
whenever these precise phenomena occur. This generality
of scientific relations is closely connected with the fact that
science expresses relations of exactly defined phenomena.
When a scientific law expresses a certain relation between _A_
and _B_, it says in effect: Given _A_ as meaning this particular
set of conditions and no others, and _B_ as meaning this particular
set of conditions and no others, then this relation holds
true. The relations between _exactly_ defined phenomena
are expressed in general terms, that is, the relations expressed
hold true, given certain conditions, whatever be the accompanying
circumstances. It makes no difference what be the
kind of objects, the law of gravitation still holds true: the
attraction between objects is directly proportional to the product
of their masses and inversely proportional to the square
of the distance between them.
Thus science as an activity is marked off by its method and
its intent rather than by its subject-matter. As a method it
is characterized by thoroughness, persistency, completeness,
generality, and system. As regards its intent, it is characterized
by its freedom from partiality or prejudice, and its interest
in discovering what the facts are, apart from personal
expectations and desires. In the scientific mood we wish to
know what the nature of things is. There are men who seem
to have a boundless, insatiable curiosity, who have a lifelong
passion for acquiring facts and understanding the relationship
between them.
SCIENCE AS EXPLANATION. The satisfactions which scientific
investigators derive from their inquiries are various. There
is, in the first place, the sheer pleasure of gratifying the normal
human impulse of curiosity, developed in some people to an
extraordinary degree. Experience to a sensitive and inquiring
mind is full of challenges and provocations to look
further. The appearance of dew, an eclipse of the sun, a flash
of lightning, a peal of thunder, even such commonplace phenomena
as the falling of objects, or the rusting of iron, the
evaporation of water, the melting of snow, may provoke inquiry,
may suggest the question, "Why?" Experience, as it
comes to us through the senses, is broken and fragmentary.
The connections between the occurrences of Nature seem
casual, and connected, as it were, purely by accident. A
black sky portends rain. But such an inference made by the
untrained mind is merely the result of habit. A black sky
has been followed by rain in the past; the same sequence of
events may be expected in the future. But the connection
between the two is not really understood. Sometimes
experiences seem to contradict each other. The straight stick
looks crooked or broken in water. The apparent anomalies
and contradictions, the welter of miscellaneous facts with
which we come in contact through the experiences of the
senses, are clarified by the generalizations of science. The
world of facts ceases to be random, miscellaneous, and
incalculable. Every phenomenon that occurs is seen to be an
instance of a general law that holds among all phenomena that
resemble it in certain definable respects. Thus the apparent
bending of the stick in water is seen to be a special case of the
laws of the refraction of light; the apparent anomaly or
contradiction of our sense experiences is, as we say, explained.
What seemed to be a contradiction and an exception is seen
to be a clear case of a regular law.
The desire for explanation in some minds is very strong.
Science _explains_ in the sense that _it reduces a phenomenon to
the terms of a general principle, whatever that principle may be._
When we meet a phenomenon that seems to come under no
general law, we are confronted with a mystery and a miracle.
We do not know what to expect from it. But when we can
place a phenomenon under a general law, applicable in a wide
variety of instances, everything that can be said of all the
other instances in which the law applies, applies also to this
particular case.
Think of heat as motion, and whatever is true of motion will be
true of heat; but we have had a hundred experiences of motion for
everyone of heat. Think of the rays passing through this lens as
bending toward the perpendicular, and you substitute for the
comparatively unfamiliar lens the very familiar notion of a particular
change in direction of a line, of which motion every day brings us
countless examples.[1]
[Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 342.]
It must be noticed that the explanation which science gives,
is really in answer to the question, "How?" not the question,
"Why?" We are said to understand phenomena when
we understand the laws which _govern_ them. But to say that
certain given phenomena--the appearance of dew, the falling
of rain, the flash of lightning, the putrefaction of animal
matter--_obey_ certain laws is purely metaphorical. Phenomena
do not _obey_ laws in the sense in which we say the child
follows the commands of his parents, or the soldier those of
his officer. The laws of science simply describe the relations
which have repeatedly been observed to exist between phenomena.
They are laws in the sense that they are invariably
observed successions. When it has been found that
whenever _A_ is present, _B_ is also present, that the presence of
_A_ is always correlated with the presence of _B_, and the
presence of _B_ is always correlated with the presence of _A_, we say
we have discovered a scientific law.
Science thus explains in the sense that it reduces the multiplicity
and variety of phenomena to simple and general laws.
The ideal of unity and simplicity is the constant ideal toward
which science moves, and its success in thus reducing the miscellaneous
facts of experience has been phenomenal. The
history of science in the nineteenth century offers some
interesting examples. The discovery of the conservation of
energy and its transformations has revealed to us the unity
of force. It has shown, for example, that the phenomenon of
heat could be explained by molecular motions. "Electricity
annexed magnetism." Finally the relations of electricity and
light are now known; "the three realms of light, of electricity
and of magnetism, previously separated, form now but one;
and this annexation seems final."
There has been thus an increasing approach toward unity,
toward the summation of phenomena under one simple, general
formula.[1] Poincaré, in reviewing this progress, writes:
[Footnote 1: Poincaré notes also the opposite tendency, for
science to grow more complex. As he says: "And Newton's law
itself? Its simplicity, so long undetected, is perhaps only
apparent. Who knows whether it is not due to some complicated
mechanism, to the impact of some subtile matter animated
by irregular movements, and whether it has not become simple
only through the action of averages and of great numbers? In
any case it is difficult not to suppose that the true law
contains complementary terms, which would become sensible
at small distances." (_Foundations of Science_, p. 132.)]
The better one knows the properties of matter the more one sees
continuity reign. Since the labors of Andrews and Van der Wals, we
get an idea of how the passage is made from the liquid to the gaseous
state and that this passage is not abrupt. Similarly there is no gap
between the liquid and solid states, and in the proceedings of a recent
congress is to be seen, alongside of a work on the rigidity of liquids,
a memoir on the flow of solids....
Finally the methods of physics have invaded a new domain, that
of chemistry; physical chemistry is born. It is still very young, but
we already see that it will enable us to connect such phenomena as
electrolysis, osmosis, and the motions of ions.
From this rapid exposition what shall we conclude?
Everything considered, we have approached unity; we have not
been as quick as we had hoped fifty years ago, we have not always
taken the predicted way; but, finally, we have gained ever so much
ground.[2]
[Footnote 2: Poincaré: _loc. cit._, pp. 153-54.]
The satisfaction which disinterested science gives to the
investigator is thus, in the first place, one of clarification.
Science, by enabling us to see the wide general laws of which
all phenomena are particular instances, emancipates the
imagination. It frees us from being bound by the accidental
suggestions which come to us from mere personal caprice,
habit, and environment, and enables us to observe facts
uncolored by passions and hope, and to discover those laws of
the universe which, in the words of Karl Pearson, "hold for
all normally constituted minds." In ordinary experience,
our impressions and beliefs are the results of inaccurate sense
observation colored by hope and fear, aversion and revulsion,
and limited by accidental circumstance. Through science
we are enabled to detach ourselves from the personal and the
particular and to see the world, as, undistorted, it must
appear to any man anywhere:
The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all
other desires in the interests of the desire to know--it involves
suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective
emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see
it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish
except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be
determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should
like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Mysticism and Logic_, p. 44.]
Besides the satisfactions of system and clarity which the
sciences give, they afford man power and security. "Knowledge
is power," said Francis Bacon, meaning thereby that to
know the connection between causes and effects was to be
able to regulate conditions so as to be able to produce desirable
effects and eliminate undesirable ones. Even the most
disinterested inquiry may eventually produce practical
results of a highly important character. "Science is," as
Bertrand Russell says, "to the ordinary reader of newspapers,
represented by a varying selection of sensational triumphs,
such as wireless telegraphy and aeroplanes, radio-activity,
etc." But these practical triumphs in the control of natural
resources are often casual incidents of patiently constructed
systems of knowledge which were built up without the slightest
reference to their fruits in human welfare. Wireless
telegraphy, for example, was made possible by the disinterested
and abstract inquiry of three men, Faraday, Maxwell,
and Hertz.
In alternating layers of experiment and theory these three men
built up the modern theory of electromagnetism, and demonstrated
the identity of light with electromagnetic waves. The system which
they discovered is one of profound intellectual interest, bringing
together and unifying an endless variety of apparently detached
phenomena, and displaying a cumulative mental power which cannot
but afford delight to every generous spirit. The mechanical details
which remained to be adjusted in order to utilize their discoveries
for a practical system of telegraphy demanded, no doubt, very
considerable ingenuity, but had not that broad sweep and that
universality which could give them intrinsic interest as an object of
disinterested contemplation.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Mysticism and Logic_, p. 34
("Science and Culture").]
SCIENCE AND A WORLD VIEW. One of the values of disinterested
science that is of considerable psychological importance
is the change in attitude it brings about in man's realization
of his place in the universe. Lucretius long ago thought to
free men's minds from terror and superstition by showing
them how regular, ordered, and inevitable was the nature of
things. The superstitious savage walks in dread among natural
phenomena. He lives in a world which he imagines to be
governed by capricious and incalculable forces. To a certain
extent he can, as we have seen, control these. But he is ill at
ease. He is surrounded by vast ambiguous forces, and moves
in a trembling ignorance of what will happen next.
To those educated to the scientific point of view, there is a
solidity and assurance about the frame of things. Beneath
the variability and flux, which they continually perceive, is
the changeless law which they have learned to comprehend.
Although they discover that the processes of Nature move on
indifferent to the welfare of man, they know, nevertheless,
that they are dependable and certain, that they are fixed
conditions of life which, to a certain extent, can be controlled, and
the incidental goods and ills of which are definitely calculable.
Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher, noted the eternal
flux, yet perceived the steady order beneath, so that he could
eventually assert that all things changed save the law of
change. The magnificent regularity of natural processes has
been repeatedly remarked by students of science.
THE ÆSTHETIC VALUE OF SCIENCE. As pointed out in the
chapter on Art, scientific discovery is more than a mere
tabulation of facts. It is also a work of the imagination, and
gives to the worker in the scientific field precisely the same
sense of satisfaction as that experienced by the creative artist.
Of Kelvin his biographer writes:
Like Faraday and the other great masters in science, he was accustomed
to let his thoughts become so filled with the facts on which his
attention was concentrated that the relations subsisting between
the various phenomena gradually dawned upon him, and he _saw_
them, as if by some process of instinctive vision denied to others.
... His imagination was vivid; in his intense enthusiasm, he seemed
to be driven rather than to drive himself. The man was lost in his
subject, becoming as truly inspired as is the artist in the act of
creation.[1]
[Footnote 1: Sylvanus P. Thompson; _The Life of William Thomson,
Baron Kelvin of Largs_, pp. 1125 ff.]
In the working-out of a principle, the systematizing of
many facts under a sweeping generalization, the scientist
finds a creator's joy. He is giving form and significance to
the disordered and chaotic materials of experience. The
scientific imagination differs from the artistic imagination
simply in that it is controlled with reference to facts. The
first flash is subjected to criticism, examination, revision, and
testing. But the grand generalizations of science originate
in just such an unpredictable original vision. The discovery
of the fitting formula which clarifies a mass of facts hitherto
chaotic and contradictory is very closely akin to the process
by which a poet discovers an appropriate epithet or a musician
an apposite chord.
But in its products as well as in its processes, scientific
investigations have a high æsthetic value. There is symmetry,
order, and splendor in the relations which science reveals.
The same formal beauty that appeals to us in a Greek statue
or a Beethoven symphony is to be found in the universe, but
on a far more magnificent scale. There is, in the first place,
the sense of rhythm and regularity:
There comes [to the scientific investigator] a sense of pervading
order. Probably this began at the very dawn of human reason--when
man first discovered the year with its magnificent object-lesson
of regularly recurrent sequences, and it has been growing ever
since. Doubtless the early forms that this perception of order took
referred to somewhat obvious uniformities; but is there any essential
difference between realizing the orderliness of moons and tides, of
seasons and migrations, and discovering Bodes's law of the relations
of the planets, or Mendeléeff's "Periodic Law" of the relations of
the atomic weights of the chemical elements?[1]
[Footnote 1: Thomson: _Introduction to Science_, p. 174.]
Ever since Newton's day the harmony of the spheres has
been a favorite poetic metaphor. The spaciousness of the
solar system has captivated the imagination, as have the time
cycles revealed by the paths of comets and meteors. The
universe seems indeed, as revealed by science, to present that
quality of æsthetic satisfaction which is always derived from
unity in multiplicity. The stars are as innumerable as they
are ordered. And it was Lucretius, the poet of naturalism,
who was wakened to wonder and admiration at the ceaseless
productivity, inventiveness, and fertility of Nature. We find
in the revelations of science again the same examples of delicacy
and fineness of structure that we admire so much in the
fine arts. The brain of an ant, as Darwin said, is perhaps the
most marvelous speck of matter in the universe. Again "the
physicists tell us that the behaviour of hydrogen gas makes it
necessary to suppose that an atom of it must have a constitution
as complex as a constellation, with about eight hundred
separate corpuscles."[2]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 176.]
THE DANGER OF "PURE SCIENCE." The fascinations of
disinterested inquiry are so great that they may lead to a kind of
scientific intemperance. The abstracted scientific interest
may become so absorbed in the working-out of small details
that it becomes over-specialized, narrow, and pedantic. The
pure theorist has always been regarded with suspicion by the
practical man. His concern over details of flora or fauna,
over the precise minutiæ of ancient hieroglyphics, seems
absurdly trivial in comparison with the central passions and
central purposes of mankind. There are workers in every
department of knowledge who become wrapt up in their
specialties, forgetting the forest for the trees. There are men
so absorbed in probing the crevices of their own little niche of
knowledge that they forget the bearings of their researches.
Especially in time of stress, of war or social unrest, men have
felt a certain callousness about the interests of the abstrusely
remote scholar. We shall have occasion to note presently
that it is in this coldness and emancipation from the pressing
demands of the moment that science has produced its most
pronounced eventual benefits for mankind. But an uncontrolled
passion for facts and relations may degenerate into a
mere play and luxury that may have its fascination for the
expert himself, but affords neither sweetness nor light to any
one else. One has but to go over the lists of doctors' dissertations
published by German universities during the late nineteenth
century to find examples of inquiry that seem to afford
not the slightest justification in the way of eventual good to
mankind.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is only fair to say that literary studies have
been marked by more barren and fruitless investigations (purely
philological inquiry, for example) than have the physical sciences.]
PRACTICAL OR APPLIED SCIENCE. Thus far we have been
considering science chiefly as an activity which satisfies some
men as an activity in itself, by the æsthetic, emotional, and
intellectual values they derive from it. But a fact at once
paradoxical and significant in the history of human progress is
that this most impersonal and disinterested of man's activities
has been profoundly influential in its practical fruits.
The practical application of the sciences rests on the utilization
of the exact formulations of pure science. Through these
formulations we can control phenomena by artificially setting
up relations of which science has learned the consequences,
thus attaining the consequences we desire, and avoiding those
we do not.
The _direct_ influence of pure science on practical life is enormous.
The observations of Newton on the relations between a falling stone
and the moon, of Galvani on the convulsive movements of frogs' legs
in contact with iron and copper, of Darwin on the adaptation of
woodpeckers, of tree-frogs, and of seeds to their surroundings, of
Kirchhoff on certain lines which occur in the spectrum of sunlight,
of other investigators on the life-history of bacteria--these and
kindred observations have not only revolutionized our conception
of the universe, but they have revolutionized or are revolutionizing,
our practical life, our means of transit, our social conduct, our
treatment of disease.[1]
[Footnote 1: Karl Pearson: _The Grammar of Science_, pp. 35-36.]
Francis Bacon was one of the first to appreciate explicitly
the possibilities of the control of nature in the interests of
human welfare. He saw the vast possibilities which a careful
and comprehensive study of the workings of nature had in the
enlargement of human comfort, security, and power. In _The
New Atlantis_ he envisages an ideal commonwealth, whose
unique and singular institution is a House of Solomon, a kind
of Carnegie Foundation devoted to inquiry, the fruits of
which might be, as they were, exploited in the interests of
human happiness: "The end of our foundation is the knowledge
of causes and the secret motions of things; and the
enlarging of the bounds of human empire to the effecting
of all things possible."[2]
[Footnote 2: _The New Atlantis_.]
Science sometimes appears so remote and alien to the immediate
concrete objects which meet and interest us in daily
experience that we tend to forget that historically it was out of
concrete needs and practical interests that science arose. Geometry,
seemingly a clear case of abstract and theoretical
science, arose out of the requirements of practical surveying
and mensuration among the Egyptians. In the same way
botany grew out of herb gathering and gardening.
The application of the exact knowledge gained by the pure
sciences, may, if properly directed, immeasurably increase the
sum of human welfare. One has but to review briefly the
history of invention to appreciate this truth with vividness
and detail. The great variety of the "applied sciences"
shows the extent and multiplicity of the fruits of theoretical
inquiry. Astronomy plays an important part in navigation; but
it also earns its living by helping the surveyor and the mapmaker
and by supplying the world with accurate time. Industrial
chemistry offers, perhaps, the most striking examples.
There is, for example, the fixation of nitrogen, which makes
possible the artificial production of ammonia and potash;
the whole group of dye industries made possible through the
chemical production of coal tar; the industrial utilization of
cellulose in the paper, twine, and leather industries; the promise
of eventual production on a large scale of synthetic rubber;
the electric furnace, which, with its fourteen-thousand-degree
range of heat, makes possible untold increase in the effectiveness
of all the chemical industries.
Industrial chemistry is only one instance. The application
of theoretical inquiry in physics has made possible the telegraph,
the telephone, wireless telegraphy, electric motors, and
flying machines. Mineralogy and oceanography have opened
up new stores of natural resources. Biological research has
had diverse applications. Bacteriological inquiry has been
fruitfully applied in surgery, hygiene, agriculture, and the
artificial preservation of food. The principles of Mendelian
inheritance have been used in the practical improvement of
domestic animals and cultivated plants. The list might be
indefinitely extended. The sciences arose as attempts, more
or less successful, to solve man's practical problems. They
became historically cut off, as they may in the case of the pure
scientist still be cut off, from practical considerations. But no
matter how remote and abstract they become, they yield
again practical fruits.
Applied science, if it becomes too narrowly interested in
practical results, limits its own resources. Purely theoretical
inquiry may be of the most immense ultimate advantage. In
a sense the more abstract and remote science becomes, the
more eventual promise it contains. By getting away from the
confusing and irrelevant details of particular situations,
science is enabled to frame generalizations applicable to a wide
array of phenomena differing in detail, but having in common
significant characteristics. Men can learn fruitfully to control
their experience precisely because they can emancipate
themselves from the immediate demands of practical life,
from the suggestions that arise in the course of instinctive and
habitual action. "A certain power of _abstraction_, of
deliberate turning away from the habitual responses to a situation,
was required before men could be emancipated to follow up
suggestions that in the end are fruitful."[1]
[Footnote 1: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 156.]
Too complete absorption in immediate problems may operate
to deprive action of that sweeping and penetrating vision
which a freer inquiry affords. The temporarily important
may be the less important in the long run. A practical
adjustment of detail may produce immediate benefits in the way of
improved industrial processes and more rapid and economical
production, but some seemingly obscure discovery in the most
abstruse reaches of scientific theory may eventually be of
untold practical significance.
Only the extremely ignorant can question the utility of, let us say,
the prolonged application of the Greek intellect to the laws of conic
sections. Whether we think of bridges or projectiles, of the curves
of ships, or of the rules of navigation, we must think of conic sections.
The rules of navigation, for instance, are in part based on astronomy.
Kepler's Laws are foundation stones of that science, but Kepler discovered
that Mars moves in an ellipse round the sun in one of the
foci by a deduction from conic sections.... Yet the historical fact
is that these conic sections were studied as an abstract science for
eighteen centuries before they came to be of their highest use.[2]
[Footnote 2: Thomson: _Introduction to Science_, pp. 239-40.]
Pasteur, whose researches are of such immediate consequence
in human health, began his studies in the crystalline forms
of tartrates. The tremendous commercial uses which have
been made of benzene had their origin "in a single idea,
advanced in a masterly treatise by Auguste Kekule in the year
1865."[1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted by Thomson from an address on "Technical
Chemistry" by C. E. Munroe.]
Practical life has been continually enriched by theoretical
inquiry. Scientific descriptions increase in value as they
become absolutely impersonal, absolutely precise, and especially
as they become condensed general formulas, which will
be applicable to an infinite variety of particular situations.
And such descriptions are necessarily abstract and theoretical.
ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC PROCEDURE. Scientific method is
merely common sense made more thoroughgoing and systematic.
Reflection of a more or less effective kind takes place
in ordinary experience wherever instinctive or habitual action
is not adequate to meet a situation, whenever the individual
has a problem to solve, an adjustment to make. Thinking,
of some kind, goes on continually. Scientific thinking merely
means careful, safeguarded, systematic thinking. It is thinking
alert and critical of its own methods. As contrasted
with ordinary common-sense thinking, it is distinguished by
"caution, carefulness, thoroughness, definiteness, exactness,
orderliness, and methodic arrangement." We think, in any
case, because we have to, being creatures born with a set of
instincts not adequate to meet the conditions of our environment.
We can think carelessly and ineffectively, or carefully
and successfully.
Scientific method, or orderly, critical, and systematic
thinking, is not applicable to one subject-matter exclusively.
Examples are commonly drawn from the physical or chemical
or biological laboratory, but the elements of scientific method
may be illustrated in the procedure of a business man meeting
a practical problem, a lawyer sifting evidence, a statesman
framing a new piece of legislation. In all these cases the
difference between a genuinely scientific procedure and mere
casual and random common sense is the same.
Science is nothing but _trained and organized common sense_,
differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit:
and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the
guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage
wields his club. The primary power is the same in each case, and
perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of the two.
The _real_ advantage lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's
weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the
adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant.
But, after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the
clubman refined and developed.
So, the vast results obtained by science are won by ... no mental
processes, other than those which are practiced by everyone of us,
in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman
discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental
process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals
of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.... Nor does
that process of induction and deduction by which a lady finding a
stain of a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has
upset the inkstand thereon, differ, in any way, in kind, from that by
which Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet.
The man of science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous exactness
the methods which we all, habitually and at every moment, use
carelessly; and the man of business must as much avail himself of
the scientific method--must as truly be a man of science--as the
veriest bookworm of us all.[1]
[Footnote 1: Huxley: _Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews_,
pp. 77, 78 (in "The Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences").]
The scientific procedure becomes, as we shall see, highly
complicated, involving elaborate processes of observation,
classification, generalization, deduction or development of
ideas, and testing. But it remains thinking just the same,
and originates in some problem or perplexity, just as thinking
does in ordinary life.
SCIENCE AND COMMON SENSE. It is profitable to note in
some detail the ways in which scientific method, in spirit and
technique, differs from common-sense thinking. It is more
insistent in the first place on including the whole range of
relevant data, of bringing to light all the facts that bear on a
given problem. In common-sense thinking we make, as we
say, snap judgments; we jump at conclusions. Anything
plausible is accepted as evidence; anything heard or seen is
accepted as a fact. The scientific examiner insists on examining
and subjecting to scrutiny the facts at hand, on searching
for further facts, and on distinguishing the facts genuinely
significant in a given situation from these that happen to be
glaring or conspicuous. This is merely another way of saying
that both accuracy and completeness of observation are
demanded, accuracy in the examination of the facts present,
and completeness in the array of facts bearing on the question
at hand.
Scientific thinking is thus primarily inquiring and skeptical.
It queries the usual; it tries, as we say, to penetrate beneath
the surface. Common sense, for example, gives suction as the
explanation of water rising in a pump. But where, as at a great
height above sea level, this mysterious power of suction does
not operate, or when it is found that it does not raise water
above thirty-two feet, common sense is at a loss. Scientific
thinking tries to analyze the gross fact, and by accurately and
completely observing all the facts bearing on the phenomenon
endeavors to find out "what _special_ conditions are present
when the effect occurs" and absent when it does not occur.
Instead of trying to fit all unusual, contradictory, or exceptional
facts into _a priori_ ideas based on miscellaneous and
unsifted facts, it starts without any _fixed_ conclusions beforehand,
but carefully observes all the facts which it can secure
with reference to a particular problem, deliberately seeking
the exceptional and unusual as crucial instances. Thus in a
sociological inquiry, the scientist, instead of accepting
"common-sense" judgments (based on a variety of miscellaneous,
incomplete, and unsifted facts) that certain races are inferior
or superior, tries, by specific inquiries, to establish the facts
of racial capacities or defects. Instead of accepting proverbial
wisdom and popular estimates of the relative capacities
of men and women, he tries by careful observation and
experiment accurately to discover all the facts bearing on
the question, and to generalize from those facts.
Scientific method thus discounts prejudice or dogmatism.
A prejudice is literally a pre-judgment. Common sense sizes
up the situation beforehand. Instead of examining a situation
in its own terms, and _arriving_ at a conclusion, it _starts_
with one. The so-called hard-headed man of common sense
_knows_ beforehand. He has a definite and stereotyped reaction
for every situation with which he comes in contact.
These rubber-stamp responses, these unconsidered generalizations,
originate in instinctive desires, or in preferences acquired
through habit. Common sense finds fixed pigeon holes
into which to fit all the variety of specific circumstances and
conditions which characterize experience. "When its judgments
happen to be correct, it is almost as much a matter of
good luck as of method.... That potatoes should be planted
only during the crescent moon, that near the sea people are
born at high tide and die at low tide, that a comet is an
omen of danger, that bad luck follows the cracking of a
mirror," all these are the results of common-sense observation.
Matters of common knowledge are thus not infrequently
matters of common misinformation.
Common-sense knowledge is largely a matter of uncritical
belief. When there is absent scientific examination of the
sources and grounds of belief, those judgments and conclusions
are likely to be accepted which happen to have wide
social currency and authority. In an earlier chapter, it was
shown how the mere fact of an opinion prevailing among a
large number of one's group or class gives it great emotional
weight. Where opinions are not determined by intelligent
examination and decision, they are determined by force of
habit, early education, and the social influences to which one
is constantly exposed.
The scientific spirit is a spirit of emancipated inquiry as
contrasted with blind acceptance of belief upon authority.
The phenomenal developments of modern science began
when men ceased to accept authoritatively their beliefs about
man and nature, and undertook to examine phenomena in
their own terms. The phenomenal rise of modern science is
coincident with the collapse of unquestioning faith as the
leading ingredient of intellectual life.
Common sense renders men peculiarly insensitive to the
possibilities of the novel, peculiarly susceptible to the
influence of tradition. It was common sense that credited the
influence of the position of the stars upon men's welfare, the
power of old women as witches, and the unhealthiness of night
air. It was common sense also that ridiculed Fulton's steamboat,
laughed at the early attempts of telegraphy and telephony,
and dismissed the aeroplane as an interesting toy. The
characteristic feature of common sense or empirical thinking
is its excess traditionalism, its wholesale acceptance of authority,[1]
its reliance upon precedent. Where beliefs are not subjected
to critical revision and examination, to the constant
surveillance of the inquiring intelligence, there will be no
criterion by which to estimate the true and the false, the
important and the trivial. All beliefs that have wide social
sanction, or that chime in with immediate sense impressions,
established individual habits, or social customs will be accepted
with the same indiscriminate hospitality. To common sense
the sun _does_ appear to go round the earth; the stick _does_
appear broken in water. Thus "totally false opinions may
appear to the holder of them to possess all the character of
rationally verifiable truth."
[Footnote 1: "Authority" in this sense of social prestige must
be distinguished from "authority" in the sense of scientific
authority. The acceptance of the authority of the expert is the
acceptance of opinions that we have good reason to believe are
the result of scientific inquiry.]
The dangers and falsities of common-sense judgments are
conditioned not only by expectations and standards fixed by
the social environment, but by one's own personal predilections
and aversions. Recent developments in psychology
have made much of the fact that many of our so-called
reasoned judgments are rationalizations, secondary reasons
found after our initial, primary, and deep-seated emotional
responses have been made. They are the result of emotional
"complexes," fears, expectations, and desires of which we are
not ourselves conscious.[1] It is from these limiting conditions
of personal preference and social environment that scientific
method frees us.
[Footnote 1: "When a party politician is called upon to consider
a new measure, his verdict is largely determined by certain
constant systems of ideas and trends of thought, constituting
what is generally known as 'party bias.' We should describe
these systems in our newly acquired terminology as his 'political
complex.' The complex causes him to take up an attitude toward
the proposed measure which is quite independent of any absolute
merits that the latter may possess. If we argue with our politician,
we shall find that the complex will reinforce in his mind those
arguments which support the view of his party, while it will
infallibly prevent him from realizing the force of the arguments
propounded by the opposite side. Now, it should be observed that
the individual himself is probably quite unaware of this mechanism
in his mind. He fondly imagines that his opinion is formed solely
by the logical pros and cons of the measure before him. We see,
in fact, that not only is his thinking determined by a complex
of whose action he is unconscious, but that he believes his
thoughts to be the result of other causes which are in reality
insufficient and illusory. This latter process of self-deception,
in which the individual conceals the real foundation of his
thought by a series of adventitious props, is termed
'rationalization.'
"The two mechanisms which manifest themselves in our example of
the politician, the unconscious origin of beliefs and actions,
and the subsequent process of rationalization to which they are
subjected, are of fundamental importance in psychology."
(Bernard Hart: _The Psychology of Insanity_, pp. 64-66.)]
Again, even where common-sense judgments are not particularly
qualified by such conditions, they are frequently
based upon the observation of purely accidental conjunctions
of circumstances. A sequence once or twice observed is taken
as the basis of a causal relation. This gives rise to what is
known in technical logic as the _post hoc ergo propter hoc_
fallacy; that is, the assumption that because one thing happens
after another, therefore it happens _because_ of it. Many
superstitions probably had their origin in such chance observations,
and belief in them is strengthened by some accidental
confirmation. Thus if a man walks under a ladder one
day and dies the next, the believer in the superstition that
walking under a ladder brings fatal results will find in this
instance a clear ratification of his belief. There seems to be
an inveterate human tendency to seek for causes, and by
those who are not scientific inquirers causes are lightly
assigned. It is easiest and most plausible to assign as a cause
an immediately preceding circumstance. Exceptional or contradictory
circumstances are then either unnoticed or pared
down to fit the belief.
Scientific method does not depend on such chance conjunctions
of circumstance, but controls its observations or
experimentally arranges conditions so as to discover what are
the conditions necessary to produce given effects, or what
effects invariably follow from given causes. It does not
accept a chance conjunction as evidence of an invariable
relation, but seeks, under regulated conditions, to discover what
the genuinely invariable relations are. This method of
controlling our generalizations about the facts of experience, we
shall presently examine in some detail.
CURIOSITY AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY. Curiosity, the instinctive
basis of the desire to know, is the basis of scientific inquiry.
Without this fundamental desire, there could be no sustaining
motive to deep and thoroughgoing scientific research, for
theoretical investigations do not always give promise of immediate
practical benefits. The scientific interest is a development
of that restless curiosity for a knowledge of the world in
which they are living which children so markedly exhibit.
Beginning as a kind of miscellaneous and omnivorous appetite
for facts of whatever description, it grows into a desire to
understand the unsuspected and hidden relations between
facts, to penetrate to the unities discoverable beneath the
mysteries and multiplicities of things.
The scientific mood is thus in the first place a sheer instinctive
curiosity, a basic passion for facts. It is this which sustains
the scientific worker in the sometimes long and dreary
business of collecting specimens, instances, details. Many of
the most notable scientific advances, as Lord Kelvin pointed
out, must be attributed to the most protracted and unmitigated
drudgery in the collection of facts, a thoroughgoing and
trying labor in which the scientific worker could persist only
when fortified by an eager and insistent curiosity. This
"hodman's work" is the basis of the great generalizations
which constitute the framework of the modern scientific
systems. "The monotonous and quantitative work of star-cataloguing
has been continued from Hipparchus, who began
his work more than a century before Christ, work which is
continued even to the present day. This work, uninspiring
as it seems, is yet an essential basis for the applications of
astronomy, the determination of time, navigation, surveying.
Furthermore, without good star places, we can have no theory
of the motions of the solar system, and without accurate
catalogues of the stars we can know nothing of the grander
problems of the universe, the motion of our sun among the
stars, or of the stars among themselves."[1]
[Footnote 1: Hinks: _Astronomy_, p. 162.]
Not only is curiosity a sustaining motive in the drudgery of
collection and research incident and essential to scientific
generalization; it alone makes possible that suspense of
judgment which is necessary to fruitful scientific inquiry. This
suspense is, as we have already seen, difficult for most men.
Action demands immediate decision, and inquiry deliberately
postpones decision. It is only a persistent desire to "get at
the bottom of the matter" that will act as a check upon the
demands of social life and of individual impatience which rush
us to conclusions. In most men, as earlier noted, the sharp
edge of curiosity becomes easily blunted. They are content,
outside their own immediate personal interests, "to take
things for granted." They glide over the surfaces of events,
they cease to query the authenticity of facts, or to examine
their relevance and their significance, or to be concerned about
their completeness. For an example, one has but to listen to
or partake in the average discussion of any political or social
issue of the present day. There are few men who retain, even
as far as middle life, a genuinely inquiring interest in men and
affairs. Their curiosity is dulled by fatigue and the pressure
of their own interests and preoccupations, and they allow
their prejudices and formulas to pass for judgments and conclusions.
The scientist is the man in whom curiosity has
become a permanent passion, who, as long as he lives, is
unwilling to forego inquiry into the processes of Nature, or of
human relations.
THINKING BEGINS WITH A PROBLEM. While the general habit
of inquiry is developed in the satisfaction of the instinct of
curiosity, any particular investigation begins with a felt
difficulty. By difficulty is not meant one of an imperative
and practical kind, but any problem whether theoretical or
practical. For many men, it is true, thinking occurs only
when instinct and habit are inadequate to adjust them to
their environment. Any problem of daily life affords an
example. To borrow an illustration from Professor Dewey:
A man traveling in an unfamiliar region comes to a branching of
the roads. Having no sure knowledge to fall back upon, he is
brought to a standstill of hesitation and suspense. Which road is
right? And how shall the perplexity be resolved? There are but
two alternatives. He must either blindly and arbitrarily take his
course, trusting to luck for the outcome, or he must discover grounds
for the conclusion that a given road is right.[1]
[Footnote l: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 10.]
To the inquiring mind, purely theoretical difficulties or
discrepancies will provoke thought. To the astronomer an
unaccounted-for perturbation in the path of a planet provokes
inquiry; the chemist is challenged by a curious unexplained
reaction of two chemical elements, the biologist, anterior to
the discovery of micro-organisms, by the putrefaction of
animal tissues. The degree to which curiosity persists and
the extent of training a man has had in a given field largely
determine the kind of situations that will provoke inquiry.
"A primrose by the river's brim" may be simply a primrose
to one man, while to another, a botanist, it may suggest an
interesting and complex problem of classification.
But however remote and recondite thinking becomes, however
far removed from immediate practical concerns, it occurs
essentially in a situation analogous to the "forked-road situation"
described above. The situation as it stands is confused,
ambiguous, uncertain. In a practical problem, for example,
there are two or more courses of action open to us, all of them
giving promise as solutions of our difficulties. We aim through
reflection to reduce the uncertainty, to clarify the situation,
to discover more clearly the consequences of the various
alternatives which suggest themselves to us. When action is
unimpeded, suggestions flow on just as they arise in our
minds. This is illustrated best in the reveries of a day-dream
when casual and disconnected fancies follow each other in
random and uncontrolled succession. But when there is a
problem to be settled, an ambiguity to be resolved, suggestions
are held in check and controlled with reference to the
end we have in view; each suggestion is estimated with regard
to its relevance to the problem in hand. Every idea that
arises is, so to speak, queried: "Is it or is it not a solution to
our present difficulty?"
We are indebted to Professor Dewey, for an analysis of the
thought process. Every instance of thinking reveals five
steps:
(1) A felt difficulty, (2) its location and definition, (3)
suggestions of possible solutions, (4) development by reasoning
of the bearings of the most promising suggestion, (5) further
observation or experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection,
that is a conclusion either of belief or disbelief.
When instinct or habit suffices to adjust us to our environment,
action runs along smoothly, freely, uninterruptedly. In
consequence the provocation to thinking may at first be a
mere vague shock or disturbance. We are, as it were, in
trouble without knowing precisely what the trouble is. We
must carefully inquire into the nature of the problem before
undertaking a solution. To take a simple instance, an automobile
may suddenly stop. We know there is a difficulty,
but whether it is a difficulty with the transmission, with the
carburetor, or with the supply of gasoline, we cannot at first
tell. Before we do anything else in solving our problem, we
find out literally and precisely _what the trouble is_. To take a
different situation, a doctor does not undertake to prescribe
for a patient until he has diagnosed the difficulty, found out
precisely what the features of the problem are.
The second step after the situation has been examined and
its precise elements defined, is _suggestion_. That is, we
consider the various possibilities which _suggest_ themselves as
solutions to our problem. There may be several ways of temporarily
repairing our engine; the doctor may think of two or
three possible treatments for a disease. In one sense, suggestion
is uncontrollable. The kind of suggestions that occur to
an individual depend on his "genius or temperament," on his
past experiences, on his hopes or fears or expectations when
that particular situation occurs. We can, however, through
the methods of science, control suggestions indirectly. We
can do this, in the first place, by reëxamining the facts which
give rise to suggestion. If upon close examination, the facts
appear differently from what they did at first, we will derive
different inferences from them. Different suggestions will
arise from the facts _A, B, C_, than from the facts _A', B', C'_.
Again we can regulate the conditions under which credence is
given to the various suggestions that arise. These suggestions
are entertained merely as tentative, and are not accepted
until experimentally verified. "The suggested conclusion as
only tentatively entertained constitutes an idea."
After the variety of suggestions that proffer themselves as
solutions to a problem have been considered, the third step is
the logical development of the idea or suggestion that gives
most promise of solving the difficulty. That is, even before
further facts are sought, the idea that gives promise of being a
solution is followed out to its logical consequences. Thus, for
example, astronomers were for a long time puzzled by unexplained
perturbations in the path of the planet Uranus. The
suggestion occurred that an unseen planet was deflecting it
from the path it should, from observation and calculation,
be following. If this were the case, from the amount of deflection
it was mathematically calculated, prior to any further
observation, that the supposed planet should appear at a certain
point in space. It was by this deductive elaboration that
the planet Neptune was discovered. It was figured out deductively
that a planet deflecting the path of the planet Uranus
by just so-and-so much should be found at just such and such
a particular point in the heavens. When the telescopes were
turned in that direction, the planet Neptune was discovered
at precisely the point deductively forecast.
The elaboration of an idea through reasoning it out may
sometimes lead to its rejection. But in thinking out its
details we may for the first time note its appositeness to the
solution of the problem in hand. The gross suggestion may
seem wild and absurd, but when its bearings and consequences
are logically developed there may be some item in
the development which dovetails into the problem as its
solution. William James gives as the outstanding feature of
reasoning, "sagacity, or the perception of the essence."[1] By
this he meant the ability to single out of a complex situation
or idea the significant or key feature. It is only by a logical
development of a suggested solution to a problem that it is
possible to hit upon the essence of the matter for a particular
situation, to single out of a gross total situation, the key to
the phenomenon. "In reasoning, _A_ may suggest _B_; but _B_,
instead of being an idea which is simply _obeyed_ by us, is an
idea which suggests the distinct additional idea _C_. And
where the train of suggestion is one of reasoning distinctively
so-called as contrasted with mere 'revery,' ... the ideas bear
certain inward relations to each other which we must carefully
examine. The result _C_ yielded by a true act of reasoning
is apt to be a thing voluntarily _sought_, such as the means
to a proposed end, the ground for an observed effect, or the
effect of an assumed cause."[2] Thus what at first sight might
seem a fantastic suggestion may, when its bearings are logically
followed out, be seen in one of its aspects to be the key
to the solution of a problem. To primitive man it might have
seemed absurd to suggest that flowing water might be used
as power; to the man in Franklin's day that the same force
that was exhibited in the lightning might be used in transportation
and in lighting houses.[1]
[Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 343.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 329.]
[Footnote 1: James gives an illuminating passage on the importance
of the effectiveness of _reasoning_ things out: "I have a
student's lamp, of which the flame vibrates most unpleasantly unless
the collar which bears the chimney be raised about a sixteenth of
an inch. I learned the remedy after much torment by accident, and
now always keep the collar up with a small wedge. But my procedure
is a mere association of two totals, diseased object and remedy.
One learned in pneumatics could have named the _cause_ of the
disease, and thence inferred the remedy immediately. By many
measurements of triangles, one might find their area always equal
to their height multiplied by half their base, and one might
formulate an empirical law to that effect. But a reasoner saves himself
all this trouble, by seeing that it is the essence (_pro hac vice_)
of a triangle to be the half of a parallelogram whose area is the height
into the entire base. To see this he must invent additional lines; and
the geometer must often draw such to get at the essential properties
he may require in a figure. The essence consists in some _relation
of the figure to the new lines_, a relation not obvious at all until
they are put in. The geometer's sagacity lies in the invention of the
new lines." (_Psychology_, vol. II, pp. 339-40.)]
But no thinking is conclusive until after the experimental
certification and warranting of the idea which has been held
in mind as the solution of the problem. By deduction, by
logical elaboration of an idea, we find its adoption involves
certain consequences. Some of the logical consequences
which follow from an idea may indicate that it is a plausible
solution of our problem. But no matter how plausible a
suggestion looks, until it is verified by observation or experiment
the thinking process is not concluded, is not finished,
as we say, _conclusively_. When an idea or a suggestion has
been developed, and seen to involve--as an idea--certain
inevitable logical consequences, the idea must be tested by
further observation and experiment. Suggestions arise _from_
facts and must be tested _by_ them. Until the suggestion is
verified, it remains merely a suggestion, a theory, a hypothesis,
an idea. It is only when the consequences implied logically
in the very idea itself are found in the actual situation
that the idea is accepted as a solution to the problem. Sometimes
the suggestion may be verified by observation; sometimes
conditions must be deliberately arranged for testing its
adequacy. In either case it is only when the facts of the
situation correspond to the conditions theoretically involved that
the tentative idea is accepted as a conclusion.
Thus a treatment that is regarded by the doctor as a possible
cure can be called an actual cure only when its beneficent
results are observed. The supposition about the planet
Neptune is only verified when the planet is actually observed
in the heavens. Thinking ends, as it begins, in observation.
At the beginning the facts are carefully examined to see
precisely where the difficulty lies; at the end they are again
examined to see whether an idea, an entertained hypothesis,
a suggested solution, can be verified in actual observable
results.
THE QUALITY OF THINKING--SUGGESTION. The quality of thinking
varies, first, with the fertility of suggestion of the analyzing
mind. Ease of suggestion, in the first place, depends on innate
individual differences. There are some minds so constituted
that every fact provokes a multitude of suggestions.
Readiness in responding with "ideas" to any experience is
dependent primarily on initial differences in resilience and
responsiveness. But differences in training and past experience
are also contributory. A man who has much experience
in a given field, say in automobile repairing, will, given a
difficulty, not only think of more suggestions, but think more
rapidly in that field.
Again persons differ in range or number of suggestions that
occur. The quality of the thinking process and of the results
it produces depends, in part, on the variety of suggestions which
occur to an individual in the solution of a given problem. If
too few suggestions occur one may fail to hit upon any promising
solution. If too many suggestions occur one may be
too confused to arrive at any conclusion at all. Whether an
individual has few or many suggestions depends largely on
native differences. It depends, also, however in part, on
acquaintance with a given field. And the fertility of suggestions
may be increased by a careful survey and re-survey of
the facts at hand, and by the deliberate searching-out of
further facts from which further suggestions may be derived.
Suggestions differ, finally, in regard to depth or significance;
by nature and by training, individuals produce ideas of varying
degrees of significance in the solution of problems. Ease
and versatility of suggestion not infrequently connote
superficiality; to make profound and far-reaching suggestions takes
time.
It is further requisite, as already pointed out, that the analyzing
mind be free from prejudice. Thinking is continually
qualified, as we have seen, by preferences and aversions.
Every prejudice, every _a priori_ belief we have, literally
prejudges the inquiry. Whenever we are moved by a "predominant
passion," we cannot survey the facts impartially.
It is hard to think clearly and justly about people whom we
love or hate, or to estimate with precision the morality of
actions toward which we are moved by very strong impulses.
It is only the mind that remains resolutely emancipated from
the compulsions of habit and circumstances, that persists in
surveying facts as they are, letting the chips, so to speak, fall
where they will, that can be really effective in thinking. In
the physical sciences it is comparatively easy to start with no
prejudices; in social inquiries where we are bound by traditions,
loyalties, and antipathies it is much more difficult.
Not the least essential to effective thinking is persistence
and thoroughness of investigation. Since we are primarily
creatures of action, we crave definiteness and immediacy of
decision, and there is a constant temptation to rush to a
conclusion. In order to attain genuine completeness of the facts
and certainty and accuracy as to what the facts are, long,
unwavering persistence is required. There must be persistence,
moreover, not merely because of the length of time and the
amount of labor involved in the collection of data; steadiness
is required in holding in mind the end or purpose of the investigation.
Too often in inquiry into the facts of human relations,
the specific problem is forgotten and facts are collected
with an indiscriminate omnivorousness. There is in such
cases plodding, but of an unenlightened and fruitless sort.
Not only _persistency_ but _consistency_ is required. The
investigation must be steadily carried on with persistent and
unwavering reference to the specific business in hand.
Effective thinking depends further on familiarity with the
field of facts under investigation. Even the most ready and
fertile of minds, the most orderly habits of thought, are at a
loss without a store of material; that is, facts from which
suggestions may arise. And this store of materials can only
be attained through a thoroughgoing acquaintance with the
particular field of inquiry. Thinking aims to explain the
relations between facts, and an intimate acquaintance with
facts involved in a given situation is prerequisite to any
generalization whatsoever.
While the native fertility of given minds cannot be controlled,
suggestions can be controlled indirectly. Suggestions
arise from the data at hand, but the data themselves change
under more precise conditions of observation, and the suggestions
that arise from them change in consequence. The
whole elaborate apparatus of science, its instruments of
precision, are designed to yield an exact determination of the
precise nature of the data at hand. The scientist attempts to
prevent "reading-in" of meanings. "Reading-in" of meanings
may be due to various causes. In the first place there
may be purely physical causes: a dim light, a fog, a cracked
window-pane are examples of how ordinary observation may
lead us astray. Again, physiological causes may be at work
to distort sensations: imperfection's in the sense organs,
fatigue, illness, and the like are examples. But not least among
the causes of error must be set psychological causes. That is,
we read facts differently in the light of what we fear or hope,
like or dislike, expect or recall. We see things the way we
want them to be, or the way previous experience has taught
us to expect them to be.
Both physiological and psychological causes may be checked
up by instruments. Indeed, one of the chief utilities of
instruments of precision is that they do serve to check up personal
error. They prevent scientific inquirers from reading in
meanings to which they are led by hope, fear, preference, or
aversion. They help us to see the facts as they are, not as for
various social and personal reasons we want or expect them
to be. They help to give precise and permanent impressions
which are not dependent for their discovery or for their preservation
on the precariousness of human observation or memory.
CLASSIFICATION. Next only in importance to accurate
observation of the facts is their classification. Objects of
experience as they come to us through the senses appear in a
sequence which is random and chaotic. But in order to deal
effectively with our experience we must arrange facts according
to their likenesses and differences. Whenever we discover
certain striking similarities between facts, we classify
them, place them in a class, knowing that what will apply to
one will apply to all. Some logicians go so far as to say that
science cannot go any further than accurate classification.
In the words of Poincaré:
The most interesting facts are those which may serve many times;
these are the facts which have a chance of coming up again. We
have been so fortunate as to have been born in a world where there
are such. Suppose that instead of sixty chemical elements there
were sixty milliards of them, that they were not some common, the
others rare, but that they were equally distributed. Then, every
time we picked up a new pebble there would be great probability of
its being formed of some unknown substance; all that we knew of
other pebbles would be worthless for it; before each new object we
should be as the new-born babe; like it we could only obey our
caprices or our needs. Biologists would be just as much at a loss if
there were only individuals and no species, and if heredity did not
make sons like their fathers.[1]
[Footnote 1: Poincaré: _Foundations of Science_, p. 363.]
The aim of classification in science is grouping in such a way
as to make manifest at once similarities in the behavior of
objects. That characteristic is selected as a basis of classification
with which is correlated the greatest number of other
characteristics belonging to the facts in question. It would
be possible to classify all living things according to color, but
such a classification would be destitute of scientific value.
Biology offers some interesting examples of how an illuminating
classification may be made on the basis of a single characteristic.
It has been found, for example, that the differences
or resemblances of animals are correlated with corresponding
differences or resemblances in their teeth. In general, the
function of classification may be summarized in Huxley's
definition as modified by Jevons:
By the classification of any series of objects is meant the actual
or ideal arrangement together of those things which are like and the
separation of those things which are unlike, the purpose of the
arrangement being, primarily, to disclose the correlations or laws of
union of properties and circumstances, and, secondarily, to facilitate
the operations of the mind in clearly conceiving and retaining in
memory the characters of the object in question.
It should be noted that the object of classification is not
simply to indicate similarities but to indicate distinctions or
differences. In scientific inquiry, differences are as crucial in
the forming of generalizations as similarities. It is only possible
to classify a given fact under a scientific generalization
when the given fact is set off from other facts, when it is seen
to be the result of certain special conditions.
If a man infers from a single sample of grain as to the grade of
wheat of the car as a whole, it is induction, and under certain
circumstances, a _sound_ induction; other cases are resorted to simply for the
sake of rendering that induction more guarded and correct. In the
case of the various samples of grain, it is the fact that the samples
are unlike, at least in the part of the carload from which they are
taken, that is important. Were it not for this unlikeness, their likeness
in quality would be of no avail in assisting inference.[1]
[Footnote 1: Dewey: _How We Think_, pp. 89-90.]
EXPERIMENTAL VARIATION OF CONDITIONS. In forming our
generalizations from the observation of situations as they occur
in Nature, we are at a disadvantage. If we observe cases
just as we find them, there is much present that is irrelevant
to our problem; much that is of genuine importance in its
solution is hidden or obscure. In experimental investigation
we are, in the words of Sir John Herschel, "active observers";
we deliberately invent crucial or test cases. That is, we
deliberately arrange conditions so that every factor is definitely
known and recognized. We then introduce into this set of
completely known conditions one change, one new circumstance,
and observe its effect. In Mill's phrase, we "take a
phenomenon home with us," and watch its behavior. Mill
states clearly the outstanding advantage of experimentation
over observation:
When we can produce a phenomenon artificially, we can take it, as
it were, home with us, and observe it in the midst of circumstances
with which in all other respects we are accurately acquainted. If
we desire to know what are the effects of the cause _A_, and are able to
produce _A_ by means at our disposal, we can generally determine at
our own discretion ... the whole of the circumstances which shall
be present along with it; and thus, knowing exactly the simultaneous
state of everything else which is within the reach of _A's_ influence,
we have only to observe what alteration is made in that state by the
presence of _A_.
For example, by the electric machine we can produce, in the midst
of known circumstances, the phenomena which Nature exhibits on
a grander scale in the form of lightning and thunder. Now let any
one consider what amount of knowledge of the effects and laws of
electric agency mankind could have obtained from the mere observation
of thunderstorms, and compare it with that which they have
gained, and may expect to gain, from electrical and galvanic
experiments....
When we have succeeded in isolating the phenomenon which is
the subject of inquiry, by placing it among known circumstances,
we may produce further variations of circumstances to any extent,
and of such kinds as we think best calculated to bring the laws of the
phenomenon into a clear light. By introducing one well-defined
circumstance after another into the experiment, we obtain assurance
of the manner in which the phenomenon behaves under an indefinite
variety of possible circumstances. Thus, chemists, after having
obtained some newly discovered substance in a pure state, ... introduce
various other substances, one by one, to ascertain whether it
will combine with them, or decompose them, and with what result;
and also apply heat or electricity or pressure, to discover what will
happen to the substance under each of these circumstances.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mill: _Logic_ (London, 1872), vol. I, pp. 441-42.]
Through experiment, we are thus enabled to observe the
relation of specific elements in a situation. We are, furthermore,
enabled to observe phenomena which are so rare in occurrence
that it is impossible to form generalizations from
them or improbable that we should even notice them: "We
might have to wait years or centuries to meet accidentally
with facts which we can readily produce at any moment in a
laboratory; and it is probable that many of the chemical
substances now known, and many excessively useful products,
would never have been discovered at all, by waiting till Nature
presented them spontaneously to our observation." And
phenomena, such as that of electricity, which can only be
understood when the conditions of their occurrence are varied,
are presented to us in Nature most frequently in a
fixed and invariable form.
GENERALIZATIONS, THEIR ELABORATION AND TESTING. So far
we have been concerned with the steps in the control of
suggestion, the reëxamination of the facts so that significant
suggestions may be derived, and the elimination of the
significant from the insignificant in the elements of the situation
as it first confronts us. In logically elaborating a suggestion,
as we have already seen, we trace out the bearings of a given
situation. We expand it; we see what it _implies_, what it
means. Thus, if we came, for example, to a meeting that
had been scheduled, and found no one present, we might
have several solutions arise in our minds. The meeting, we
might suppose, had been transferred to another room. If
that were the case, there would probably be some notice
posted. In all cases of deductive elaboration, we go through
what might be called the If-Then process. If _such-and-such_ is
the case, then _such-and-such_ will follow. We can then verify
our suggested solution to a problem, by going back to the
facts, to see whether they correspond with the implications
of our suggestion. We may, to take another example, think
that a man who enters our office is an insurance agent, or a
book solicitor who had said he would call upon us at a definite
date. If such is the case, he will say such-and-such things.
If he does say them, then our suggestion is seen to be correct.
The advantages of developing a suggestion include the fact
that some link in the logical chain may bear a more obvious
relation to our problem than did the undeveloped suggestion
itself.
The systematic sciences consist of such sets of principles
so related that any single term implies certain others, which
imply certain others and so on _ad infinitum_.
After the facts have been elaborated, the generalization,
however plausible it may seem, must be subjected to experimental
corroboration. That is, if a suggestion is found
through local elaboration to mean _A, B, C_, then the situation
must be reëxamined to see if the facts to be found tally with
the facts deduced. In the case cited, the suggestion that the
man who entered the room was the insurance agent we expected
would be verified if he immediately broached the subject
and the fact, say, of a previous conversation. In the case
of disease, if the illness is typhoid, we shall find certain specific
conditions in the patient. If these are found, the suggestion
of typhoid is verified.
The _reliability_ of generalizations made by this scientific
procedure varies according to several factors. It varies, in
the first place, according to the correspondence of the predictions
made on the basis of the generalization, with subsequent
events. The reason we say the law of gravitation holds
true is because in every instance where observations or
experiments have been made, the results have tallied precisely
with expectations based upon the generalization. We can, to
a certain extent, determine the reliability of a generalization
before comparing our predictions with subsequent events.
If a generalization made contradicts laws that have been
established in so many instances that they are practically
beyond peradventure, it is suspect. A law, for example, that
should be an exception to the laws of motion or gravitation,
is _a priori_ dubious.
If an induction conflicts with stronger inductions, or with conclusions
capable of being correctly deduced from them, then, unless on
reconsideration it should appear that some of the stronger inductions
have been expressed with greater universality than their evidence
warrants, the weaker one must give way. The opinion so long prevalent
that a comet, or any other unusual appearance in the heavenly
regions, was the precursor of calamities to mankind, or to those at
least who witnessed it; the belief in the veracity of the oracles of
Delphi or Dodona; the reliance on astrology, or on the weather
prophecies in almanacs, were doubtless inductions supposed to be
grounded on experience.... What has really put an end to these
insufficient inductions is their inconsistency with the stronger
inductions subsequently obtained by scientific inquiry, respecting the
causes on which terrestrial events really depend.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mill: _Logic_ (London, 1872), vol. I, pp. 370-71.]
THE QUANTITATIVE BASIS OF SCIENTIFIC PROCEDURE. Science _is_
science, some scientists insist, in so far as it is mathematical.
That is, in the precise determination of facts, and in their
repetition with a view to their exact determination, quantities
must be known. The sciences have developed in exactness,
in so far as they have succeeded in expressing their
formulations in numerical terms. The physical sciences, such
as physics and chemistry, which have been able to frame their
generalizations from precise quantities, have been immeasurably
more certain and secure than such sciences as psychology
and sociology, where the measurement of exact quantities is
more difficult and rare. Jevons writes in his _Principles of
Science_:
As physical science advances, it becomes more and more accurately
quantitative. Questions of simple logical fact resolve themselves
after a while into questions of degree, time, distance, or weight.
Forces hardly suspected to exist by one generation are clearly
recognized by the next, and precisely measured by the third generation.[1]
[Footnote 1: Jevons: _Principles of Science_, p. 270.]
The history of science exhibits a constant progress from
rude guesses to precise measurement of quantities. In the
earliest history of astronomy there were attempts at quantitative
determinations, very crude, of course, in comparison
with the exactness of present-day scientific methods.
Every branch of knowledge commences with quantitative notions
of a very rude character. After we have far progressed, it is often
amusing to look back into the infancy of the science, and contrast
present with past methods. At Greenwich Observatory in the present
day, the hundredth part of a second is not thought an inconsiderable
portion of time. The ancient Chaldreans recorded an eclipse to
the nearest hour, and the early Alexandrian astronomers thought it
superfluous to distinguish between the edge and center of the sun.
By the introduction of the astrolabe, Ptolemy, and the later
Alexandrian astronomers could determine the places of the heavenly
bodies within about ten minutes of arc. Little progress then ensued
for thirteen centuries, until Tycho Brahe made the first great step
toward accuracy, not only by employing better instruments, but
even more by ceasing to regard an instrument as correct.... He
also took notice of the effects of atmospheric refraction, and
succeeded in attaining an accuracy often sixty times as great as that of
Ptolemy. Yet Tycho and Hevelius often erred several minutes in
the determination of a star's place, and it was a great achievement of
Roemer and Flamsteed to reduce this error to seconds. Bradley, the
modern Hipparchus, carried on the improvement, his errors in right
ascension, according to Bessel, being under one second of time, and
those of declination under four seconds of arc. In the present day
the average error of a single observation is probably reduced to the
half or the quarter of what it was in Bradley's time; and further
extreme accuracy is attained by the multiplication of observations,
and their skillful combination according to the theory of error. Some
of the more important constants... have been determined within
a tenth part of a second of space.[2]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 271-72.]
The precise measurement of quantities is important because
we can, in the first place, only through quantitative determinations
be sure we have made accurate observations, observations
uncolored by personal idiosyncrasies. Both errors of
observation and errors of judgment are checked up and
averted by exact quantitative measurements. The relations
of phenomena, moreover, are so complex that specific causes
and effects can only be understood when they are given precise
quantitative determination. In investigating the solubility
of salts, for example, we find variability depending on
differences in temperature, pressure, the presence of other salts
already dissolved, and the like. The solubility of salt in
water differs again from its solubility in alcohol, ether, carbon,
bisulphide. Generalization about the solubility of salt,
therefore, depends on the exact measurement of the phenomenon
under all these conditions.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Jevons, p, 279 ff.]
The importance of exact measurement in scientific discovery
and generalization may be illustrated briefly from one
instance in the history of chemistry. The discovery of the
chemical element _argon_ came about through some exact measurements
by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay of the
nitrogen and the oxygen in a glass flask. It was found that
the nitrogen derived from air was not altogether pure; that
is, there were very minute differences in the weighings of
nitrogen made from certain of its compounds and the weight
obtained by removing oxygen, water, traces of carbonic acid,
and other impurities from the atmospheric air. It was found
that the very slightly heavier weight in one case was caused
by the presence of argon (about one and one third times as
heavy as nitrogen) and some other elementary gases. The
discovery was here clearly due to the accurate measurement
which made possible the discovery of this minute discrepancy.
It must be noted in general that accuracy in measurement
is immediately dependent on the instruments of precision
available. It has frequently been pointed out that the Greeks,
although incomparably fresh, fertile, and direct in their thinking,
yet made such a comparatively slender contribution to
scientific knowledge precisely because they had no instruments
for exact measurement. The thermometer made possible the
science of heat. The use of the balance has been in large part
responsible for advances in chemistry.
The degree to which sciences have attained quantitative
accuracy varies among the physical sciences. The phenomena
of light are not yet subject to accurate measurement;
many natural phenomena have not yet been made the subject
of measurement at all. Such are the intensity of sound, the
phenomena of taste and smell, the magnitude of atoms, the
temperature of the electric spark or of the sun's atmosphere.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Jevons, p. 273.]
The sciences tend, in general, to become more and more
quantitative. All phenomena "exist in space and involve
molecular movements, measurable in velocity and extent."
The ideal of all sciences is thus to reduce all phenomena to
measurements of mass and motion. This ideal is obviously
far from being attained. Especially in the social sciences
are quantitative measurements difficult, and in these sciences
we must remain therefore at best in the region of shrewd
guesses or fairly reliable probability.
STATISTICS AND PROBABILITY. While in the social sciences,
exact quantitative measurements are difficult, they are to an
extent possible, and to the extent that they are possible we
can arrive at fairly accurate generalizations as to the probable
occurrence of phenomena. There are many phenomena where
the elements are so complex that they cannot be analyzed
and invariable causal relations established.
In a study of the phenomena of the weather, for example, the phenomena
are so exceedingly complex that anything approaching a
complete statement of their elements is quite out of the question.
The fallibility of most popular generalizations in these fields is
evidence of the difficulty of dealing with such facts. Must we be
content then simply to guess at such phenomena? ... In instances of
this sort, another method ... becomes important: The Method of
Statistics. In statistics we have an _exact_ enumeration of cases. If
a small number of cases does not enable us to detect the causal
relations of a phenomenon, it sometimes happens that a large number,
accurately counted, and taken from a field widely extended in time
and space, will lead to a solution of the problem.[1]
[Footnote 1: Jones; _Logic, Inductive and Deductive_, p. 190.]
If we find, in a wide variety of instances, two phenomena
occurring in a certain constant correlation, we infer a causal
relation. If the variations in the frequency of one correspond
to variations in the frequency of the other, there is probability
of more than connection by coincidence.
The correlation between phenomena may be measured
mathematically; it is possible to express in figures the exact
relations between the occurrence of one phenomenon and
the occurrence of another. The number which expresses this
relation is called the coefficient of correlation. This
coefficient expresses relationship in terms of the mean values of the
two series of phenomena by measuring the amount each individual
phenomenon varies from its respective mean. Suppose,
for example, that in correlating crime and unemployment,
the coefficient of correlation were found to be .47. If in
every case of unemployment crime were found and in every
case of crime, unemployment, the coefficient of correlation
would be +1. If crime were never found in unemployment,
and unemployment never in crime, the coefficient of correlation
would be -1, indicating a perfect inverse relationship.
A coefficient of 0 would indicate that there is no relationship.
The coefficient of .47 would accordingly indicate a significant
but not a "high" correlation between crime and unemployment.
We cannot consider here all the details of statistical methods,
but attention may be called to a few of the more significant
features of the process. Statistics is a science, and consists
in much more than the mere counting of cases.
With the collection of statistical data, only the first step has been
taken. The statistics in that condition are only raw material showing
nothing. They are not an instrument of investigation any more
than a kiln of bricks is a monument of architecture. They need to
be arranged, classified, tabulated, and brought into connection with
other statistics by the statistician. Then only do they become an
instrument of investigation, just as a tool is nothing more than a
mass of wood or metal, except in the hands of a skilled workman.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mayo-Smith: _Statistics and Sociology_, p. 18.]
The essential steps in a statistical investigation are: (1) the
collection of material, (2) its tabulation, (3) the summary,
and (4) a critical examination of the results. The terms are
almost self-explanatory. There are, however, several general
points of method to be noted.
In the collection of data a wide field must be covered, to be
sure that we are dealing with invariable relations instead of
with mere coincidences, "or overemphasizing the importance
of one out of a number of coöperating causes." Tabulation
of the data collected is very important, since classification of
the data does much to suggest the causal relations sought.
The headings under which data will be collected depend on
the purposes of the investigation. In general, statistics can
suggest generalizations, rather than establish them. They
indicate probability, not invariable relation.[2]
[Footnote 2: See Jones: _Logic_, pp. 213-25, for a discussion
of Probability.]
SCIENCE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF HUMAN PROGRESS. We have, in
an earlier section of this chapter, referred to the practical
value of science. "Man's power of deliberate control of his
own affairs depends upon ability to direct energies to use; an
ability which is, in turn, dependent upon insight into nature's
processes. Whatever natural science may be for the specialist,...
it is knowledge of the conditions of human action."[3]
And the wider, the more complete and the more penetrating
our knowledge of the world in which we live, the more extended
become the boundaries of human action. Through
a knowledge of natural processes, men have passed from a
frightened subjection to Nature to its conscious control. And
the fruits of that control are, as we have already had occasion
to notice, all-pervading in practical life. That complete
transformation of life known as the Industrial Revolution,
which came about with such swiftness and completeness in
the early nineteenth century, and whose effects have not yet
ceased to accumulate, was the direct outcome of the application
of the experimental science which had begun in the
sixteenth. Some of the consequences of the application of
theoretical investigation to practical life have already been
noted. There are first the more obvious facts of the inventions,
great and small--the railways, steamships, electric
transportation, automobiles, and telephones--which have
changed in countless details our daily life. There are the
profound and all-pervasive changes which have been brought
about in industrial and social relations: the building-up of
our vast industrial centers, the change from small-scale
handicrafts to large-scale machine production, the factory
system, with its concomitants of immensely increased resources
and immensely complicated problems of human
life. Science in the short span of three centuries has shown
how rapid and immediate could be the fruits of human control
of Nature, and its further fruits are incalculable.
[Footnote 3: Dewey: _Democracy and Education_, p. 267.]
Science has indeed already begun to affect men's attitude
towards experience as well as their material progress. It is
only when men set out with the conscious realization that
intelligence does make a difference in the world, that science
becomes articulate. Science is the guarantee of progress. It
has shown men that the future is to some extent in their own
hands; that by dint of a laborious and detailed application of
intelligence to the processes of nature, those processes can be
controlled in the interests of human welfare.
Science has led men to look to the future instead of the past. The
coincidence of the ideal of progress with the advance of science is not
a mere coincidence. Before this advance men placed the golden age
in remote antiquity. Now they face the future with a firm belief
that intelligence properly used can do away with evils once thought
inevitable. To subjugate devastating disease is no longer a dream;
the hope of abolishing poverty is not Utopian.[1]
[Footnote 1: Dewey: _Democracy and Education_, pp. 262-63.]
But science may be used for any end. It reveals the relations
of phenomena, relations which hold for all men. It
shows what causes are connected with what consequents, and,
as already pointed out, in the knowledge of causes lies the
possible control of effects. We can secure the results we
desire, by discovering what antecedents must first be established.
Science is thus a fund of common resources. Specific causes
are revealed to be connected with specific effects, and men, by
making a choice of antecedents, can secure the consequences
they desire. But which effects they will desire depends on the
instincts, standards, and habits of the individual, and the
traditions and ideals of the group. A knowledge of chemistry
may be used for productive industrial processes, or in the
invention of poison gas. Expert acquaintance with psychology
and educational methods may be used to impress upon a
nation an arbitrary type of life (an accusation justly brought
against the Prussian educational system), or to promote the
specific possibilities that each individual displays.
Not only are the fruits of scientific inquiry used in different
ways by different individuals and groups, but scientific inquiry
is itself affected by the prevailing interests and mode
of life. What inquiries shall be furthered depends on _what_
the individual or group feels it important to know. From
a social point of view, certain scientific developments are of
more urgency and imperativeness than others. During an
emergency, as during the Great War, it might be necessary
to turn all the energies of scientific men into immediately
productive pursuits. And, since the pursuit of inquiry on a
large scale demands large resources, those researches which
give promise of beneficent human consequences will the more
readily command social sanction and approval and will be
developed at the expense of more remote speculations however
intrinsically interesting these latter may be.
Science has proved so valuable a human instrument that it
has attained a moral responsibility. Men have increasingly
come to realize that the pressing problems of our industrial
life require for their solution not the confusions and incompetences
of passion and prejudice, but an application of the
fruits of scientific inquiry. Science has already so completely
demonstrated its vast fruitfulness in human welfare, that it
must be watched with jealous vigilance. It must result as it
began, in the improvement of human welfare.[1] But what
constitutes human welfare is a question which leads us into
the final activity of the Career of Reason, Morals and Moral
Valuation, man's attempt to determine what happiness is,
and how he may attain it.
[Footnote 1:
We have already noted the danger of too complete a commitment of
science to immediately practical results. This narrows instead of broadening
possibility. As Mr. F. P. Keppel points out in a recent article, "Scholarship
in War" (_Columbia University Quarterly_, July, 1919), some of the most
important and immediately practical contributions during the Great War came
from the ranks of those who would be regarded as "pure theorists."]
CHAPTER XV
MORALS AND MORAL VALUATION
THE PRE-CONDITIONS OF MORALITY--INSTINCT, IMPULSE, AND
DESIRE. In Art and Science, man attempts to transform the
world of nature into conditions more in conformity with his
desires. In the enterprise of Morals, man attempts to discover
how to control his own nature in the attainment of happiness.
We have already had occasion to see that Art, in the
broad sense of human contrivance, is made necessary by the
incongruity between nature and human nature. We shall
examine now the conditions which make it necessary and
make it possible for man to consider and to control those
elementary impulses with which he is endowed.
The origin of the moral problem will become clearer after
a brief recapitulation of those elements of original nature
which form the basis of all human action. We have seen
that human beings are equipped, apart from education or
training, with certain tendencies to act in certain definite
ways, given certain definite stimuli. Any single activity of
an average human being in a modern civilized community is
compounded of so many modifications of original tendencies
to action that these latter seem often altogether obliterated.
The conditions of civilized life, moreover, place continual
checks on the free activity of any given impulse, and there
are so many stimuli playing upon an individual at once that
the responses called out tend to inhibit each other. The
particular thing we say to an acquaintance we happen to
meet is not determined by a single original impulse, by love
or hate, fear or sympathy, pugnacity or pity. It is a compound
of some or of most of these. On the other hand, no
matter how complicated or sophisticated human action
becomes, it is built out of these same impulses, which were
operative when human beings had not yet passed out of
savagery. We may check and control our responses through
habitual repressions, through deliberate forethought, through
conscious or mechanical acquiescence in the ways of the
group among which we live. But these original impulses are
still the mainspring of our activities.
The complex, highly artificial character of our civilization
often obscures the presence of these powerful instinctive
tendencies, but that they _are_ present and powerful several
facts bear witness. They manifest themselves, as the newer
psychology of the subconscious has repeatedly pointed out,
in roundabout ways; they are, in the technical phrase, sublimated.
Instincts find, as it were, substitute realizations.
This process of sublimation of unfulfilled desire has been
noted particularly with regard to the sex instinct, but the
principle applies to the others.
The continual suppression of instincts results in various
forms of morbidity, in what Graham Wallas calls "baulked
dispositions." To say that instincts are repressed, is to say
there is a maladjustment between the individual as he comes
into the world, and the world as he finds it. This maladjustment
may vary in intensity. It may be exhibited in nothing
more serious than boredom, or petulance, or hyper-sensitiveness.
It may be a chronic sense of not fitting in, of being
lost in a blind alley. One has but to review one's list of
acquaintances to see how many people there are who feel
somehow frustrated in the work they happen to be doing,
who feel themselves inexplicably at odds with the world.
Graham Wallas well describes the situation when he writes:
For we cannot in Saint Paul's sense mortify our dispositions. If
they are not stimulated, they do not therefore die, nor is the human
being what he would be if they had never existed. If we leave
unstimulated, or, to use a shorter term, if we "baulk" any one of our
main dispositions, Curiosity, Property, Trial and Error, Sex, and the
rest, we produce in ourselves a state of nervous strain. It may be
desirable in any particular case of conduct that we should do so, but
we ought to know what we are doing.
The baulking of each disposition produces its own type of strain;
but the distinctions between the types are, so far, unnamed and
unrecognized, and a trained psychologist would do a real service to
civilized life if he would carefully observe and describe them.[1]
[Footnote 1: Wallas: _The Great Society_, p. 65.]
The presence of instinctive activities is seen in stark immediacy
and directness every now and then in civilized life.
Lynchings and mob violence in general are illustrations of
what happens when groups throw to the winds the multiple
inhibitions of custom and law. And the records of the criminal
courts exhibit more cases than are commonly realized of
sheer crimes of violence. In some instances these can be set
down as pathological, but in many more they are normal
instincts breaking through the fixed channels set by public
opinion, tradition, and legal compulsion. On a smaller scale
an outburst of anger, a fit of temper, sulk or spleen, exhibits
the enduring though often obscured presence of instinctive
tendencies in civilized life.