to primitive and inveterate tendencies in humanity and gratifies,
under the guise of humility, our hungering for self-importance. The
mediaeval thinker, however freely he might exercise his powers of
logical analysis in rationalizing the Christian Epic, never permitted
himself to question its general anthropocentric and mystical view of
the world. The philosophic mystic assumes the role of a docile child.
He feels that all vital truth transcends his powers of discovery. He
looks to the Infinite and Eternal Mind to reveal it to him through the
prophets of old, or in moments of ecstatic communion with the Divine
Intelligence. To the mystic all that concerns our deeper needs
transcends logic and defies analysis. In his estimate the human reason
is a feeble rushlight which can at best cast a flickering and
uncertain ray on the grosser concerns of life, but which only serves
to intensify the darkness which surrounds the hidden truth of God.
In order that modern science might develop it is clear that a wholly
new and opposed set of fundamental convictions had to be substituted
for those of the Middle Ages. Man had to cultivate another kind of
self-importance and a new and more profound humility. He had come to
believe in his capacity to discover important truth through thoughtful
examination of things about him, and he had to recognize, on the other
hand, that the world did not seem to be made for him, but that
humanity was apparently a curious incident in the universe, and its
career a recent episode in cosmic history. He had to acquire a taste
for the simplest possible and most thoroughgoing explanation of
things. His whole mood had to change and impel him to reduce
everything so far as possible to the commonplace.
This new view was inevitably fiercely attacked by the mystically
disposed. They misunderstood it and berated its adherents and accused
them of robbing man of all that was most precious in life. These, in
turn, were goaded into bitterness and denounced their opponents as
pig-headed obscurantists.
But we must, after all, come to terms in some way with the emotions
underlying mysticism. They are very dear to us, and scientific
knowledge will never form an adequate substitute for them. No one need
fear that the supply of mystery will ever give out; but a great deal
depends on our taste in mystery; that certainly needs refining. What
disturbs the so-called rationalist in the mystic's attitude is his
propensity to see mysteries where there are none and to fail to see
those that we cannot possibly escape. In declaring that one is not a
mystic, one makes no claim to be able to explain everything, nor does
he maintain that all things are explicable in scientific terms.
Indeed, no thoughtful person will be likely to boast that he can fully
explain anything. We have only to scrape the surface of our
experiences to find fundamental mystery. And how, indeed, as
descendants of an extinct race of primates, with a mind still in the
early stages of accumulation, should we be in the way of reaching
ultimate truth at any point? One may properly urge, however, that as
sharp a distinction as possible be made between fictitious mysteries
and the unavoidable ones which surround us on every side. How milk
turned sour used to be a real mystery, now partially solved since the
discovery of bacteria; how the witch flew up the chimney was a
gratuitous mystery with which we need no longer trouble ourselves. A
"live" wire would once have suggested magic; now it is at least
partially explained by the doctrine of electrons.
It is the avowed purpose of scientific thought to reduce the number of
mysteries, and its success has been marvelous, but it has by no means
done its perfect work as yet. We have carried over far too much of
mediaeval mysticism in our views of man and his duty toward himself
and others.
We must now recall the method adopted by students of the natural
sciences in breaking away from the standards and limitations of the
mediaeval philosophers and establishing new standards of their own.
They thus prepared the way for a revolution in human affairs in the
midst of which we now find ourselves. As yet their type of thinking
has not been applied on any considerable scale to the solution of
social problems. By learning to understand and appreciate the
scientific frame of mind as a historical victory won against
extraordinary odds, we may be encouraged to cultivate and popularize a
similar attitude toward the study of man himself.
NOTES.
[20] St. Ethelred, returning from a pious visit to Citeaux in the days
of Henry II, encountered a great storm when he reached the Channel. He
asked himself what _he_ had done to be thus delayed, and suddenly
thought that he had failed to _fulfill_ a promise to write a poem on
St. Cuthbert. When he had completed this, "wonderful to say, the sea
ceased to rage and became tranquil".--_Surtees Society Publications_,
i, p. 177.
* * * * *
VI
Narrabo igitur primo opera artis et naturae miranda.... ut videatur
quod omnis magica potestas sit inferior his operibus et indigna.
--ROGER BACON.
I do not endeavor either by triumphs of confutation, or pleadings
of antiquity, or assumption of authority, or even, by the veil of
obscurity, to invest these inventions of mine with any majesty....
I have not sought nor do I seek either to force or ensnare men's
judgments, but I lead them to things themselves and the concordances
of things, that they may see for themselves what they have, what
they can dispute, what they can add and contribute to the common
stock.--FRANCIS BACON (_Preface to the Great Instauration_).
12. THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
At the opening of the seventeenth century a man of letters, of
sufficient genius to be suspected by some of having written the plays
of Shakespeare, directed his distinguished literary ability to the
promotion and exaltation of natural science. Lord Bacon was the chief
herald of that habit of scientific and critical thought which has
played so novel and all-important a part in the making of the modern
mind. When but twenty-two years old he was already sketching out a
work which he planned to call _Temporis Partus Maximus (The Greatest
Thing Ever)_. He felt that he had discovered why the human mind,
enmeshed in mediaeval metaphysics and indifferent to natural
phenomena, had hitherto been a stunted and ineffective thing, and how
it might be so nurtured and guided as to gain undreamed of strength
and vigor.
And never has there been a man better equipped with literary gifts to
preach a new gospel than Francis Bacon. He spent years in devising
eloquent and ingenious ways of delivering learning from the
"discredits and disgraces" of the past, and in exhorting man to
explore the realms of nature for his delight and profit. He never
wearied of trumpeting forth the glories of the new knowledge which
would come with the study of common things and the profitable uses to
which it might be put in relieving man's estate. He impeached the
mediaeval schoolmen for spinning out endless cobwebs of learning,
remarkable for their fineness, but of no substance or spirit. He urged
the learned to come out of their cells, study the creations of God,
and build upon what they discovered a new and true philosophy.
Even in his own day students of natural phenomena had begun to carry
out Bacon's general program with striking effects. While he was urging
men to cease "tumbling up and down in their own reason and conceits"
and to spell out, and so by degrees to learn to read, the volume of
God's works, Galileo had already begun the reading and had found out
that the Aristotelian physics ran counter to the facts; that a body
once in motion will continue to move forever in a straight line unless
it be stopped or deflected. Studying the sky through his newly
invented telescope, he beheld the sun spots and noted the sun's
revolution on its axis, the phases of Venus, and the satellites of
Jupiter. These discoveries seemed to confirm the ideas advanced long
before by Copernicus--the earth was not the center of the universe and
the heavens were not perfect and unchanging. He dared to discuss these
matters in the language of the people and was, as everyone knows,
condemned by the Inquisition.
This preoccupation with natural phenomena and this refusal to accept
the old, established theories until they had been verified by an
investigation of common fact was a very novel thing. It introduced a
fresh and momentous element into our intellectual heritage. We have
recalled the mysticism, supernaturalism, and intolerance of the Middle
Ages, their reliance on old books, and their indifference to everyday
fact except as a sort of allegory for the edification of the Christian
pilgrim. In the mediaeval universities the professors, or "schoolmen",
devoted themselves to the elaborate formulation of Christian doctrine
and the interpretation of Aristotle's works. It was a period of
revived Greek metaphysics, adapted to prevailing religious
presuppositions. Into this fettered world Bacon, Galileo, Descartes,
and others brought a new aspiration to promote investigation and
honest, critical thinking about everyday things.
_These founders of modern natural science realized that they would
have to begin afresh. This was a bold resolve, but not so bold as must
be that of the student of mankind to-day if he expects to free himself
from the trammels of the past_. Bacon pointed out that the old days
were not those of mature knowledge, but of youthful human ignorance.
"_These_ times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and
not those we count ancient, _ordine retrogrado_, by a computation
backward from ourselves." In his _New Atlantis_ he pictures an ideal
State which concentrated its resources on systematic scientific
research, with a view to applying new discoveries to the betterment of
man's lot.
Descartes, who was a young man when Bacon was an old one, insisted on
the necessity, if we proposed to seek the truth, of questioning
_everything_ at least once in our lives. To all these leaders in the
development of modern science doubt, not faith, was the beginning of
wisdom. They doubted--and with good reason--what the Greeks were
supposed to have discovered; they doubted all the old books and all
the university professors' lecture notes. They did not venture to
doubt the Bible, but they eluded it in various ways. They set to work
to find out exactly what happened under certain circumstances. They
experimented individually and reported their discoveries to the
scientific academies which began to come into existence.
As one follows the deliberations of these bodies it is pathetic to
observe how little the learning of previous centuries, in spite of its
imposing claims, had to contribute to a fruitful knowledge of common
things. It required a century of hard work to establish the most
elementary facts which would now be found in a child's book. How water
and air act, how to measure time and temperature and atmospheric
pressure, had to be discovered. The microscope revealed the complexity
of organic tissues, the existence of minute creatures, vaguely called
infusoria, and the strange inhabitants of the blood, the red and white
corpuscles. The telescope put an end to the flattering assumption that
the cosmos circled around man and the little ball he lives on.
Without a certain un-Greek, practical inventive tendency which, for
reasons not easily to be discovered, first began to manifest itself in
the thirteenth century, this progress would not have been possible.
The new thinkers descended from the magisterial chair and patiently
fussed with lenses, tubes, pulleys, and wheels, thus weaning
themselves from the adoration of man's mind and understanding. They
had to devise the machinery of investigation as investigation itself
progressed.
Moreover, they did not confine themselves to the conventionally noble
and elevated subjects of speculation. They addressed themselves to
worms and ditch water in preference to metaphysical subtleties. They
agreed with Bacon that the mean and even filthy things deserve study.
All this was naturally scorned by the university professors, and the
universities consequently played little or no part in the advance of
natural science until the nineteenth century.
Nor were the moral leaders of mankind behind the intellectual in
opposing the novel tendencies. The clergy did all they could to
perpetuate the squalid belief in witchcraft, but found no place for
experimental science in their scheme of learning, and judged it
offensive to the Maker of all things. But their opposition could do no
more than hamper the new scientific impulse, which was far too potent
to be seriously checked.
So in one department of human thought--the investigation of natural
processes--majestic progress has been made since the opening of the
seventeenth century, with every promise of continued and startling
advance. The new methods employed by students of natural science have
resulted in the accumulation of a stupendous mass of information in
regard to the material structure and operation of things, and the
gradual way in which the earth and all its inhabitants have come into
being. The nature and workings of atoms and molecules are being
cleared up, and their relation to heat, light, and electricity
established. The slow processes which have brought about the mountains
and valleys, the seas and plains, have been exposed. The structure of
the elementary cell can be studied under powerful lenses; its
divisions, conjunctions, differentiation, and multiplication into the
incredibly intricate substance of plants and animals can be traced.
In short, man is now in a position, for the first time in his history,
to have some really clear and accurate notion of the world in which he
dwells and of the living creatures which surround him and with which
he must come to terms. It would seem obvious that this fresh knowledge
should enable him to direct his affairs more intelligently than his
ancestors were able to do in their ignorance. He should be in a
position to accommodate himself more and more successfully to the
exigencies of an existence which he can understand more fully than any
preceding generation, and he should aspire to deal more and more
sagaciously with himself and his fellow-men.
13. HOW SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE HAS REVOLUTIONIZED THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE
But while our information in regard to man and the world is
incalculably greater than that available a hundred, even fifty years
ago, we must frankly admit that the knowledge is still so novel, so
imperfectly assimilated, so inadequately co-ordinated, and so feebly
and ineffectively presented to the great mass of men, that its
_direct_ effects upon human impulses and reasoning and outlook are as
yet inconsiderable and disappointing. We _might_ think in terms of
molecules and atoms, but we rarely do. Few have any more knowledge of
their own bodily operations than had their grandparents. The farmer's
confidence in the phases of the moon gives way but slowly before
recent discoveries in regard to the bacteria of the soil. Few who use
the telephone, ride on electric cars, and carry a camera have even the
mildest curiosity in regard to how these things work. It is only
_indirectly_, through _invention_, that scientific knowledge touches
our lives on every hand, modifying our environment, altering our daily
habits, dislocating the anciently established order, and imposing the
burden of constant adaptation on even the most ignorant and lethargic.
Unlike a great part of man's earlier thought, modern scientific
knowledge and theory have not remained matter merely for academic
discourse and learned books, but have provoked the invention of
innumerable practical devices which surround us on every hand, and
from which we can now scarce escape by land or sea. Thus while
scientific knowledge has not greatly affected the thoughts of most of
us, its influence in the promotion of modern invention has served to
place us in a new setting or environment, the novel features of which
it would be no small task to explain to one's great-great-grandfather,
should he unexpectedly apply for up-to-date information. So even if
modern scientific _knowledge_ is as yet so imperfect and ill
understood as to make it impossible for us to apply much of it
directly and personally in our daily conduct, we nevertheless cannot
neglect the urgent effects of scientific _inventions_, for they are
constantly posing new problems of adjustment to us, and sometimes
disposing of old ones.
Let us recall a few striking examples of the astonishing way in which
what seemed in the beginning to be rather trivial inventions and
devices have, with the improvements of modern science, profoundly
altered the conditions of life.
Some centuries before the time of Bacon and Galileo four discoveries
were made which, supplemented and elaborated by later insight and
ingenuity, may be said to underlie our modern civilization. A writer
of the time of Henry II of England reports that sailors when caught in
fog or darkness were wont to touch a needle to a bit of magnetic iron.
The needle would then, it had been found, whirl around in a circle and
come to rest pointing north. On this tiny index the vast extension of
modern commerce and imperialism rests.
That lentil-shaped bits of glass would magnify objects was known
before the end of the thirteenth century, and from that little fact
have come microscopes, telescopes, spectroscopes, and cameras; and
from these in turn has come a great part of our present knowledge of
natural processes in men, animals, and plants and our comprehension of
the cosmos at large.
Gunpowder began to be used a few decades after the lens was discovered;
it and its terrible descendants have changed the whole problem of human
warfare and of the public defense.
The printing press, originally a homely scheme for saving the labor of
the copyist, has not only made modern democracy and nationality
possible, but has helped by the extension of education to undermine
the ancient foundations upon which human industry has rested from the
beginnings of civilization.
In the middle of the eighteenth century the steam engine began to
supplant the muscular power of men and animals, which had theretofore
been only feebly supplemented by windmills and water wheels. And now
we use steam and gas engines and water power to generate potent
electric currents which do their work far from the source of supply.
Mechanical ingenuity has utilized all this undreamed-of energy in
innumerable novel ways for producing old and new commodities in
tremendous quantities and distributing them with incredible rapidity
throughout the earth.
Vast factories have sprung up, with their laborious multitudes engaged
on minute contributions to the finished article; overgrown cities
sprawl over the neighboring green fields and pastures; long freight
trains of steel cars thunder across continents; monstrous masses of
wealth pile up, are reinvested, and applied to making the whole system
more and more inconceivably intricate and interdependent; and
incidentally there is hurry and worry and discontent and hazard beyond
belief for a creature who has to grasp it all and control it all with
a mind reared on that of an animal, a child, and a savage.
As if these changes were not astounding enough, now has come the
chemist who devotes himself to making not new _commodities_ (or old
ones in new ways), but new _substances_. He juggles with the atoms of
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and the rest, and far
outruns the workings of nature. Up to date he has been able to produce
artfully over two hundred thousand compounds, for some of which
mankind formerly depended on the alchemy of animals and plants. He can
make foodstuffs out of sewage; he can entrap the nitrogen in the air
and use it to raise wheat to feed, or high explosives to slaughter,
his fellows. He no longer relies on plants and animals for dyes and
perfumes. In short, a chemical discovery may at any moment devastate
an immemorial industry and leave both capital and labor in the lurch.
The day may not be far distant when, should the chemist learn to
control the incredible interatomic energy, the steam engine will seem
as complete an anachronism as the treadmill.
The uttermost parts of the earth have been visited by Europeans, and
commerce has brought all races of the globe into close touch. We have
now to reckon with every nation under heaven, as was shown in the
World War. At the same time steam and electrical communication have
been so perfected that space has been practically annihilated as
regards speech, and in matters of transportation reduced to perhaps a
fifth. So all the peoples of the earth form economically a loose and,
as yet, scarcely acknowledged federation of man, in which the fate of
any member may affect the affairs of all the others, no matter how
remote they may be geographically.
All these unprecedented conditions have conspired to give business for
business' sake a fascination and overwhelming importance it has never
had before. We no longer make things for the sake of making them, but
for money. The chair is not made to sit on, but for profit; the soap
is no longer prepared for purposes of cleanliness, but to be sold for
profit. Practically nothing catches our eye in the way of writing that
was written for its own sake and not for money. Our magazines and
newspapers are our modern commercial travelers proclaiming the gospel
of business competition. Formerly the laboring classes worked because
they were slaves, or because they were defenseless and could not
escape from thraldom--or, mayhap, because they were natural artisans;
but now they are coming into a position where they can combine and
bargain and enter into business competition with their employers. Like
their employers, they are learning to give as little as possible for
as much as possible. This is good business; and the employer should
realize that at last he has succeeded in teaching his employees to be
strictly businesslike. When houses were built to live in, and wheat
and cattle grown to eat, these essential industries took care of
themselves. But now that profit is the motive for building houses and
raising grain, if the promised returns are greater from manufacturing
automobiles or embroidered lingerie, one is tempted to ask if there
are any longer compelling reasons for building houses or raising food?
Along with the new inventions and discoveries and our inordinately
pervasive commerce have come two other novel elements in our
environment--what we vaguely call "democracy" and "nationality". These
also are to be traced to applied science and mechanical contrivances.
The printing press has made popular education possible, and it is our
aspiration to have every boy and girl learn to read and write--an
ideal that the Western World has gone far to realize in the last
hundred years. General education, introduced first among men and then
extended to women, has made plausible the contention that all adults
should have a vote, and thereby exercise some ostensible influence in
the choice of public officials and in the direction of the policy of
the government.
Until recently the mass of the people have not been invited to turn
their attention to public affairs, which have been left in the control
of the richer classes and their representatives and agents, the
statesmen or politicians. Doubtless our crowded cities have
contributed to a growing sense of the importance of the common man,
for all must now share the street car, the public park, the water
supply, and contagious diseases.
But there is a still more fundamental discovery underlying our
democratic tendencies. This is the easily demonstrated scientific
truth that nearly all men and women, whatever their social and
economic status, may have much greater possibilities of activity and
thought and emotion than they exhibit in the particular conditions in
which they happen to be placed; that in all ranks may be found
evidence of unrealized capacity; that we are living on a far lower
scale of intelligent conduct and rational enjoyment than is necessary.