[Greek: panti logô logos isos antikeitai.]
It is one of the difficulties which meet anyone who suggests that modern
science is not wholly satisfactory, that it is immediately assumed that
the writer is covertly defending what Ingersoll calls the "rib-story,"
or that he wishes to restore belief in the literal inspiration of the
Bible. But, religious controversy apart, and while admitting that
Science has done a great work in cleaning away the kitchen-middens of
superstition and opening the path to clearer and saner views of the
world, it is possible--and there is already a growing feeling that
way--that her positive contributions to our comprehension of the order
of the universe have in late times been disappointing, and that even her
methods are only of limited applicability. After a glorious burst of
perhaps fifty years, amid great acclamations and good hopes that the
crafty old universe was going to be caught in her careful net, Science,
it must be confessed, now finds herself in almost every direction in
the most hopeless quandaries; and, whether the rib-story be true or not,
has at any rate provided no very satisfactory substitute for it. And the
reason of this failure is very obvious. It goes with a certain defect in
the human mind, which, as we have pointed out (note, p. 57), necessarily
belongs to the Civilisation-period--the tendency, namely, to separate
the logical and intellectual part of man from the emotional and
instinctive, and to give it a _locus standi_ of its own. Science has
failed, because she has attempted to carry out the investigation of
nature from the intellectual side alone--neglecting the other
constituents necessarily involved in the problem. She has failed,
because she has attempted an impossible task; for the discovery of a
permanently valid and purely _intellectual_ representation of the
universe is simply impossible. Such a thing does not exist.
The various theories and views of nature which we hold are merely the
fugitive envelopes of the successive stages of human growth--each set of
theories and views belonging organically to the moral and emotional
stage which has been reached, and being in some sort the expression of
it; so that the attempt at any given time to set up an explanation of
phenomena which shall be valid in itself and without reference to the
mental condition of those who set it up, necessarily ends in failure;
and the present state of confusion and contradiction in which modern
Science finds itself is merely the result of such attempt.
Of course this limitation of the validity of Science has been
recognised by most of those who have thought about the matter;[17] but
it is so commonly overlooked, and latterly the notion has so far gained
ground that the "laws" of science are immutable facts and eternal
statements of verity, that it may be worth while to treat the subject a
little more in detail.
The method of Science is the method of all mundane knowledge; it is that
of limitation or actual ignorance. Placed in face of the great
uncontained unity of Nature we can only deal with it in thought by
selecting certain details and isolating those (either wilfully or
unconsciously) from the rest. That is right enough. But in doing so--in
isolating such and such details--we practically beg the question we are
in search of; and, moreover, in supposing such isolation we suppose what
is false, and therefore vitiate our conclusion. From these two radical
defects of all intellectual inquiry we cannot escape. The views of
Science are like the views of a mountain; each is only possible as long
as you limit yourself to a certain standpoint. Move your position, and
the view is changed.[18]
Perhaps the word "species" will illustrate our meaning as well as any
word; and, in a sense, the word is typical of the method of Science. I
see a dog for the first time. It is a fox-hound. Then I see a second
fox-hound, and a third and a fourth. Presently I form from these few
instances a general conception of "dog." But after a time I see a
grey-hound and a terrier and a mastiff, and my old conception is
destroyed. A new one has to be formed, and then a new one and a new one.
Now I overlook the whole race of civilised dogs and am satisfied with my
wisdom; but presently I come upon some wild dogs, and study the habits
of the wolf and the fox. Geology turns me up some links, and my
conception of dog melts away like a lump of ice into surrounding water.
My species exists no more. As long as I knew a few of the facts I could
talk very wise about them; or if I limited myself arbitrarily, as we
will say, to a study only of animals in England at the present day, I
could classify them; but widen the bounds of my knowledge, the area of
observation, and all my work has to be done over again. My species is
not a valid fact of Nature, but a fiction arising out of my own
ignorance or arbitrary isolation of the objects observed.
Or to take an instance from Astronomy. We are accustomed to say that the
path of the moon is an ellipse. But this is a very loose statement. On
enquiry we find that, owing to perturbations said to be produced by the
sun, the path deviates considerably from an ellipse. In fact in strict
calculations it is taken as being a certain ellipse only for an
instant--the next instant it is supposed to be a portion of another
ellipse. We might then call the path an irregular curve somewhat
resembling an ellipse. This is a new view. But on further enquiry it
appears that, while the moon is going round the earth, the earth itself
is speeding on through space about the sun--in consequence of which the
actual path of the moon does not in the least resemble an ellipse!
Finally the sun itself is in motion with regard to the fixed stars, and
_they_ are in movement too. What then is the path of the moon? No one
knows; we have not the faintest idea--the word itself ceases to have any
assignable meaning. It is true that if we agree to ignore the
perturbations produced by the sun--as in fact we _do_ ignore
perturbations produced by the planets and other bodies--and if we agree
to ignore the motion of the earth, and the flight of the solar system
through space, and even the movement of any centre round which that may
be speeding, we may then _say_ that the moon moves in an ellipse. But
this has obviously nothing to do with actual facts. The moon _does_ not
move in an ellipse--not even "relatively to the earth"--and probably
never has done and never will do so. It may be a convenient view or
fiction to say that it would do so under such and such
circumstances--but it is still only a fiction. To attempt to isolate a
small portion of the phenomena from the rest in a universe of which the
_unity_ is one of Science's most cherished convictions, is obviously
self-stultifying and useless.
But you say it can be proved by mathematics that the ellipse would be
the path under these conditions; to which I reply that the mathematical
proof, though no doubt cogent to the human mind (as at present
constituted in most people), is open to the same objection that it does
not deal with actual facts. It deals with a mental supposition, _i.e._,
that there are only two bodies acting on each other--a case which never
has occurred and never can occur--and then, assuming the law of
gravitation (which is just the thing which has to be proved), it arrives
at a mental formula, the ellipse. But to argue from this process that
the ellipse is really a thing in Nature, and that the heavenly bodies do
move or even tend to move in ellipses, is obviously a most unwarrantable
leap in the dark. Finally you argue that the leap is warranted because,
by assuming that the moon and planets move in ellipses, you can actually
foretell things that happen, as for instance the occurrences of
eclipses; and in reply to that I can only say that Tycho Brahé foretold
eclipses almost as well by assuming that the heavenly bodies moved in
epicycles, and that modern astronomers do apply the epicycle theory in
their mathematical formulæ. The epicycles were an assumption made for a
certain purpose, and the ellipses are an assumption made for the same
purpose. In some respects the ellipse is a more convenient fiction than
the epicycle, but it is no less a fiction.
In other words--with regard to this "path of the moon" (as with regard
to any other phenomenon of Nature)--our knowledge of it must be either
absolute or relative. But we cannot know the absolute path; and as to
the relative, why all we can say is that it does not exist (any more
than species exists)--we cannot break up Nature so; it is not a thing in
Nature, but in our own minds--it is a view and a fiction.[19]
Again, let us take an example from Physics--Boyle's law of the
compressibility of gases. This law states that, the temperature
remaining constant, the volume of a given quantity of gas is inversely
proportional to its pressure. It is a law which has been made a good
deal of, and at one time was thought to be true, _i.e._, it was thought
to be a statement of fact. A more extended and careful observation,
however, shows that it is only true under so many limitations, that,
like the ellipse in Astronomy, it must be regarded as a convenient
fiction and nothing more. It appears that air follows the supposed law
pretty well, but not by any means exactly except within very narrow
limits of pressure; other gases, such as carbonic acid and hydrogen,
deviate from it very considerably--some more than others, and some in
one direction and some in the opposite. It was found, among other
things, that the nearer a gas was to its liquefying point, the greater
was the deviation from the supposed law, and the conclusion was jumped
at that the law was true for _perfect_ gases only. This idea of a
perfect gas of course involved the assumption that gases, as they get
farther and farther removed from their liquifying point, reach at last a
fixed and stable condition, when no further change in their qualities
takes place--at any rate for a very long time--and Boyle's law was
supposed to apply to this condition. Since then, however, it has been
discovered that there is an ultra-gaseous state of matter, and on all
sides it is becoming abundantly clear that the change in the condition
of matter from the liquid state to the ultra-gaseous state is perfectly
continuous--through all modifications of liquidity and condensation and
every degree of perfection and imperfection of gasiness to the utmost
rarity of the fourth state. At what point, then, does Boyle's law really
apply? Obviously it applies _exactly_ at only one point in this long
ascending scale--at one metaphysical point--and at every other point it
is incorrect. But no gas in Nature remains or can be maintained just at
one point in the scale of its innumerable changes. Consequently, all we
can say is that out of the innumerable different states that gases are
capable of, and the innumerable different laws of compressibility which
they therefore follow, we could theoretically find one state to which
would correspond the law of compressibility called Boyle's law; and
that, _if_ we could preserve a gas in that state (which we can't),
Boyle's law really _would_ be true just for that case. In other words,
the law is metaphysical. It has no real existence. It is a convenient
view or fiction, arising in the first place out of ignorance, and only
tenable as long as further observation is limited or wilfully ignored.
This then is the Method of Science. It consists in forming a law or
statement by only looking at a small portion of the facts; then, when
the other facts come in, the law or statement gradually fades away
again. Conrad Gessner and other early zoologists began by classifying
animals according to the number of their horns! Political Economy begins
by classifying social action under a law of Supply and Demand. When
people believed that the earth was flat, they generalised the facts
connected with the fall of heavy bodies into a conception of "up and
down." These were two opposite directions in space. Heavy bodies took
the "downward"; it was their nature. But in time, and as fresh facts
came in, it became impossible to group animals any longer by their
horns; "up and down" ceased to have a meaning when it was known that the
earth was round. Then fresh laws and statements had to be formed. In the
last-mentioned case--it being conceived that the earth was the centre of
the universe--the new law supposed was that all heavy bodies tended to
the centre of the earth as such. This was all right and satisfactory for
a while; but presently it appeared that the earth was _not_ the centre
of the universe, and that some heavy bodies--such as the satellites of
Jupiter--did not in fact tend to the centre of the earth at all. Another
lump of ignorance (which had enabled the old generalisation to exist)
was removed, and a new generalisation, that of universal gravitation,
was after a time formed. But it is probable that this law is only
conceived of as true through our ignorance; nay it is certain that
belief in its truth presents the gravest difficulties.
In fact here we come upon an important point. It is sometimes said that,
granting the above arguments and the partiality and defectiveness of the
laws of Science, still they are approximations to the truth, and as each
fresh fact is introduced the consequent modification of the old law
brings us _nearer and nearer_ to a limit of rigorous exactness which we
shall reach at last if we only have patience enough. But is this so?
What kind of rigorous statement shall we reach when we have got _all_
the facts in? Remembering that Nature is _one_, and that if we try to
get a rigorous statement for one set of phenomena (as say the lunar
theory) by isolating them from the rest, we are thereby condemning
ourselves beforehand to a false conclusion, is it not evident that our
limit is at all times infinitely far off? If one knew all the facts
relating to a given inquiry except two or three, one might reasonably
suppose that one was near a limit of exactness in one's knowledge; but
seeing that in our investigation of Nature we only know two or three, so
to speak, out of a million, it is obvious that at any moment the fresh
law arising from increased experience may completely upset our former
calculations. There is a difference between approximating to a wall and
approximating to the North Star. In the one case you are tending to a
speedy conclusion of your labours, in the other case you are only _going
in a certain direction_. The theories of Science generally belong under
the second head. They mark the direction which the human mind is taking
at the moment in question, but they mark no limits. At each point the
_appearance_ of a limit is introduced--which becomes, like a mirage in
the desert, an object of keen pursuit; but the limit is not really
there--it is only an effect of the standpoint, and disappears again
after a time as the observer moves. In the case of gravitation there is
for the moment an appearance of finality in the law of the inverse
square of the distance, but this arises probably from the fact that the
law is derived from a limited area of observation only, namely the
movements (at great distances from each other) of some of the heavenly
bodies.[20] The Cavendish and Schehallien experiments do not show more
than that the law at ordinary distances on the earth's surface does not
vary _very_ much from the above; while the so-called molecular forces
compel us (unless we make the very artificial assumption that a variety
of attractions and repulsions co-exist in matter alongside of, and yet
totally distinct from, the attraction of gravitation) to suppose very
_great_ modifications of the law for small distances. In fact, as we saw
of Boyle's law before--the Newtonian law is probably metaphysical--true
under certain limited conditions--and the appearance of finality has
been given to it by the fact that our observations have been made under
such or similar conditions. When we extend our observation into quite
other regions of space, the law of the inverse square ceases to appear
as even an approximation to the truth--as, for instance, the law of the
inverse _fifth_ power has been thought to be nearer the mark for small
molecular distances.
And indeed the state of the great theories of Science in the present
day--the confusion in which the Atomic theory of physics finds itself,
the dismal insufficiency of the Darwin theory of the survival of the
fittest; the collapse in late times of one of the fundamental theories
of Astronomy, namely that of the stability of the lunar and planetary
orbits; the cataclysms and convulsions which Geology seems just now to
be undergoing; the appalling and indeed insurmountable difficulties
which attach to the Undulatory theory of Light; the final wreck and
abandonment of the Value-theory, the foundation-theory of Political
Economy--all these things do not seem to point to very near limits of
rigorous exactness! An impregnable theory, or one nearing the limit of
impregnability, is in fact as great an absurdity as an impregnable
armour-plate. Certainly, given the cannon-balls, you can generally find
an armour-plate which will be proof against them; but given the
armour-plate, you can always find cannon-balls which will smash it up.
The method of Science, as being a method of artificial limitation or
actual ignorance, is curiously illustrated by a consideration of its
various branches. I have taken some examples from Astronomy, which is
considered the most exact of the physical sciences. Now does it not seem
curious that _Astronomy_--the study of the heavenly bodies, which are
the most distant from us of all bodies, and most difficult to
observe--should yet be the most perfect of the sciences? Yet the reason
is obvious. Astronomy is the most perfect science _because we know least
about it_--because our ignorance of the actual phenomena is most
profound. Situated in fact as we are, on a speck in space, with our
observations limited to periods of time which, compared with the
stupendous flights of the stars, are merely momentary and evanescent, we
are in somewhat the position of a mole surveying a railway track and the
flight of locomotives. And as a man seeing a very small arc of a very
vast circle easily mistakes it for a straight line, so we are easily
satisfied with cheap deductions and solutions in Astronomy which a more
extensive experience would cause us to reject. The man may have a long
way to go along his "straight line" before he discovers that it is a
curve; he may have much farther to go along his curve before he
discovers that it is not a circle; and much farther still to go before
he finds out whether it is an ellipse or a spiral or a parabola, or none
of these; yet _what_ curve it is will make an enormous difference in his
ultimate destination. So with the astronomer; and yet Astronomy is
allowed to pass as an exact science![21]
Well then, as in Astronomy we get an "exact science," because the facts
and phenomena are on such a tremendous scale that we only see a minute
portion of them--just a few details so to speak--and our ignorance
therefore allows us to dogmatise; so at the other end of the scale in
Chemistry and Physics we get quasi-exact sciences, because the facts and
phenomena are on such a _minute_ scale that we overlook _all the
details_ and see only certain general effects here and there. When a
solution of cupric sulphate is treated with ammonia, a mass of
flocculent green precipitate is formed. No one has the faintest notion
of all the various movements and combinations of the molecules of these
two fluids which accompany the appearance of the precipitate. They are
no doubt very complex. But among all the changes that are taking place,
one change has the advantage of being visible to the eye, and the
chemist singles that out as the main phenomenon. So chemistry at large
consists in a few, very few, facts taken at random as it were (or
because they happen to be of such a nature as to be observable) out of
the enormous mass of facts really concerned: and because of their
fewness the chemist is able to arrange them, as he thinks, in some
order, that is, to generalise about them. But it is certain as can be
that he only has to extend the number of his facts, or his powers of
observation, to get all his generalisations upset. The same may be said
of magnetism, light, heat, and the other physical sciences; but it is
not necessary to prove in detail what is sufficiently obvious.
But now, roughly speaking, there is a third region of human
observation--a region which does not, like Astronomy (and Geology), lie
so far beyond and above us that we only see a very small portion of it;
nor, like Chemistry and Physics, so far below us and under such minute
conditions of space and time that we can only catch its general effects;
but which lies more on a level with man himself--the so-called organic
world--the study of man, as an individual and in society, his history,
his development, the study of the animals, the plants even, and the laws
of life--the sciences of Biology, Sociology, History, Psychology, and
the rest. Now this region is obviously that which man knows most of. I
don't say that he generalises most about it, but he knows the facts
best. For one observation that he makes of the habits and behaviour of
the stars, or of chemical solutions--for one observation in the remote
regions of Astronomy or Chemistry--he makes thousands and millions of
the habits and behaviour of his fellowmen, and hundreds and thousands of
those of the animals and plants. Is it not curious then that in this
region he is least sure, least dogmatic, most doubtful whether there be
a law or no? Or, rather, is it not quite in accord with our contention,
namely that Science, like an uninformed boy, is most definite and
dogmatic just where actual knowledge is least.
It will however be replied that the phenomena of living beings are far
more complex than the phenomena of Astronomy or Physics--and that is
the reason why exact science makes so little way with them. Though man
knows many million times more about the habits of his fellow-men than
about the habits of the stars, yet the former subject is so many million
times more complicated than the latter that all his additional knowledge
does not avail him. This is the plea. Yet it does not hold water. It is
an entire assumption to say that the phenomena of Astronomy are less
complicated than the phenomena of vitality. A moment's thought will show
that the phenomena of Astronomy are in reality infinitely complex. Take
the movement of the moon: even with our present acquaintance with that
subject we know that it has some relation to the position and mass of
the earth, including its ocean tides; also to the position and mass of
the sun; also to the position and mass of every one of the planets; also
of the comets, numerous and unknown as they are; also the meteoric
rings; and finally of all the stars! The problem, as everyone knows, is
absolutely insoluble even for the shortest period; but when the element
of Time enters in, and we consider that to do anything like justice to
the problem in an astronomical sense we should have to solve it for at
least a million years--during which interval the earth, sun, and other
bodies concerned would themselves have been changing their relative
positions, it becomes obvious that the whole question is infinitely
complex--and yet this is only a small fragment of Astronomy. To debate,
therefore, whether the infinite complexity of the movements of the
stars is greater or less than the infinite complexity of the phenomena
of life, is like debating the precedence of the three persons of the
Trinity, or whether the Holy Ghost was begotten or proceeding: we are
talking about things which we do not understand.
Nature is one; she is not, we may guess, less profound and wonderful in
one department than another; but from the fact that we live under
certain conditions and limitations we see most deeply into that portion
which is, as it were, on the same level with us. In humanity we look her
in the face; there our glance pierces, and we see that she is profound
and wonderful beyond all imagination; what we learn there is the most
valuable that we can learn. In the regions where Science rejoices to
disport itself we see only the skirts of her garments, so to speak, and
though we measure them never so precisely, we still see them and nothing
more.
There is another point, however, of which much is often made as a plea
for the substantial accuracy of the scientific laws and generalisations,
namely that they enable us to _predict_ events. But this need not detain
us long. J. S. Mill in his "Logic" has pointed out--and a little thought
makes it obvious--that the success of a prediction does not prove the
truth of the theory on which it is founded. It only proves the theory
was good enough for that prediction.
There was a time when the sun was a god going forth in his chariot every
morning, and there was a time when the earth was the centre of the
universe, and the sun a ball of fire revolving round it. In those times
men could predict with certainty that the sun would rise next morning,
and could even name the hour of its appearance; but we do not therefore
think that their theories were true. When Adams and Leverrier foretold
the appearance of Neptune in a certain part of the sky, they made a
brief prediction to an unknown planet from the observed relations of the
movements of the known planets; that does not show, however, that the
grand generalisation of these movements, called the "law of
gravitation," is correct. It merely shows that it did well enough for
this very brief step--brief indeed compared with the real problems of
Astronomy, for which latter it is probably quite inadequate.
Tycho Brahé, excellent astronomer as he was, kept as we saw to the
epicycle theory. He imagined that the moon's path round the earth was a
fixed combination of cycle and epicycle. Kepler introduced the
conception of the ellipse. Later on the motion of the perigee and other
deviations compelled the abandonment of the ellipse and the supposition
of an endless curve, similar to an ellipse at any one point, and
maintaining a fixed mean distance from the earth, but never returning on
itself or making a definite closed figure of any kind. Finally the
researches of Mr. George Darwin have destroyed the conception of the
fixed mean distance, and introduced that of a continually enlarging
spiral. Certainly no four theories could well be more distinct from
each other than these; yet if an eclipse had to be calculated for next
year it would scarcely matter which theory was used. The truth is that
the actual problem is so vast that a prediction of a few years in
advance only touches the fringe of it so to speak; yet if the fulfilment
of the prediction were taken as a proof of the theory in each of these
different cases, it would lead in the end to the most hopelessly
contradictory results.
The success of a prediction therefore only shows that the theory on
which it is founded has had practical value so far as a working
hypothesis. As working hypotheses, and as long as they are kept down to
brief steps _which can be verified_, the scientific theories are very
valuable--indeed we could not do without them; but when they are treated
as objective facts--when, for instance, the "law of
gravitation"--derived as it is from a brief study of the heavenly
bodies--has a universal truth ascribed to it, and is made to apply to
phenomena extending over millions of years, and to warrant unverifiable
prophecies about the planetary orbits, or statements about the age of
the earth and the duration of the solar system--all one can say is that
those who argue so are flying off at a tangent from actual facts. For as
the tangent represents the direction of a curve over a small arc, so
these theories represent the bearing of facts well enough over a small
region of observation; but as following the tangent we soon lose the
curve, so following these theories for any distance beyond the region
of actual observation we speedily part company with facts.[22]
To proceed with a few more words about the general method of Science.
Science passes from phenomena to laws, from individual details which can
be seen and felt to large generalisations of an intangible and
phantom-like character. That is to say, that for convenience of thought
we classify objects. How is this classification effected? It is effected
through the perception of identity amid difference. Among a lot of
objects I perceive certain attributes in common; this group of common
attributes serves, so to speak, as a band to tie these objects together
with--into a bundle convenient for thought. I give a name to the band,
and that serves to denote any unit of the bundle by. Thus perceiving
common attributes among a lot of dogs--as in an example already given--I
give the name foxhound to this group of attributes, and thenceforth use
the name foxhound to connect these objects by in my mind; again
perceiving other common attributes among other similar objects, I
invent the word greyhound to denote these latter by. The concept
foxhound differs from the objects which it denotes, in this respect that
these latter are (as we say) _real_ dogs with thousands and thousands of
attributes each: one of them has a broken tooth, another is nearly all
white, another answers to the name "Sally," and so on; while the concept
is only an imaginary form in my mind, with only a few attributes and no
individual peculiarities--a kind of tiny G.C.M. arising from the
contemplation of a long row of big figures.
Now having created these concepts "foxhound," "greyhound," and a lot of
other similar ones, I find that they in their turn have a few attributes
in common and thus give rise to a new concept "dog." Of course this
"dog" is more of an abstraction than ever, the concept of a concept. In
fact the peculiarity of this whole process is that, as sometimes stated,
the broader the generalisation becomes the less is its depth; or in
other words and obviously, that as the number of objects compared
increases, the number of attributes common to them all decreases.
Ultimately as we saw at the beginning, when a sufficient number of
objects are taken in, the concept ("dog" or whatever it may be) fades
away and ceases to have any meaning. This therefore is the dilemma of
Science and indeed of all human knowledge, that in carrying out the
process which is peculiar to it, it necessarily leaves the dry ground of
reality for the watery region of abstractions, which abstractions
become ever more tenuous and ungraspable the farther it goes, and
ultimately fade into mere ghosts. Nevertheless the process is a quite
necessary one, for only by it can the mind deal with things.
To dwell for a moment over this last point: it is clear that every
object has relation to every other object in the world--exists in fact
only in virtue of such relation to other objects; it has therefore an
infinite number of attributes. The mind consequently is powerless to
deal with such object--it cannot by any possibility think it. In order
to deal with it, the mind is forced to single out a _few_ of its
attributes (the _method of ignorance_ or abstraction already alluded
to)--that is a few of its relations to other objects, and to think them
first. The others it will think afterwards--all in good time. In thus
stripping or abstracting the great mass of its attributes from our
object, and leaving only a few, which it combines into a concept, the
mind practically abandons the real article and takes up with a shadow;
but in return for this it gets something which it can handle, which is
light to carry about, and which, like paper-money, _for the time and
under certain conditions_ does really represent value. The only danger
is lest it--the mind--carried away by the extensive applicability of the
partial concept which it has thus formed, should credit it with an
actual value--should project it on the background of the external world
and ascribe to it that reality which belongs only to objects
themselves, _i.e._, to things embodying an _infinite_ range of
attributes.
The peculiar method of Science is now clear to us, and can be abundantly
illustrated from modern results. Our experience consists in sensations,
we feel the weight of heavy bodies, we see them fall when let go, we
have sensations of heat and cold, light and darkness, and so forth. But
these sensations are more or less local and variable from man to man,
and we naturally seek to find some common measure of them, by which we
can talk about and describe them _exactly_, and independently of the
peculiarities of individual observers. Thus we seek to find some common
phenomenon which underlies (as we say) the sensations of heat and cold,
or of light and darkness, or something which explains (_i.e._, is always
present in) the case of falling bodies--and to do this we adopt the
method of generalisation above described, _i.e._, we observe a great
number of individual cases and then see what qualities or attributes
they have in common. So far good. But it is just here that the fallacy
of the ordinary scientific procedure comes in; for, forgetting that
these common qualities are mere abstractions from the real phenomena we
credit _them_ with a real existence, and regard the actual phenomena as
secondary results, "effects" or what-not of these "causes." This in
plain language is putting the cart before the horse--or rather the
shadow before the man. Thus finding that a vast number of variously
shaped and coloured bodies tend to fall towards the earth, we erect
this common attribute of falling into an independent existence which we
call "attraction" or "gravitation"--and ultimately posit a universal
gravitation _acting_ on all bodies in Nature!--or finding that a number
of different substances, such as water, air, wood, etc., convey to us
the sensation we call sound, and that in all these cases the common
element is vibration, we detach the attribute vibration, credit it with
a separate existence, and speak of it as the cause of sound. But though
we may thus _think_ of the shadow as separate from the man, the shadow
cannot _be_ separate from the man; and though we may try to think of the
falling or the vibration as separate from the wood or the stone, such
falling and vibration cannot exist apart from these and other such
materials, and the effort to speak of it as so existing ends in mere
nonsense. More strange still is the fatuity, when, as in the case of the
undulatory Theory of light or the Atomic theory of physics, the concepts
thus erected into actualities are composed of purely imaginary
attributes--of which no one has had any experience--an undulatory ether
in the one case, a hard and perfectly elastic atom in the other. The
total result is of course--just what we see--Science landing itself in
pure absurdities in every direction. Beginning by detaching the
attribute of falling from the bodies that fall--beginning that is by an
abstraction, which of course is also a falsity--it generalises and
generalises this abstraction till at last it reaches a perfectly
generalised absurdity and thing without any meaning--the law of
gravitation.[23] The statement that "every particle in the universe
attracts every other particle with a force proportional to the mass of
the attracting particle and inversely proportional to the square of the
distance between the two" is devoid of meaning--the human mind can give
no definite meanings to the words "mass," "attract," and "force," which
do not overlap and stultify each other. The law in every way baffles
intelligence. Newton, who invented it, declared that no philosophic mind
would suppose that bodies could thus act on one another "without the
mediation of anything else by and through which their action might be
conveyed;" scientific men to-day are fain to see that a material
mediation of this kind would only make the law still more remote from
our comprehension than it already is, while, on the other hand, an
immaterial mediation or a fourth-dimensional mediation, such as some
propose, would simply remove the problem out of the regions of
scientific analysis.[24] Again, the form of the law is declared to be
the inverse square of the distance; but this is the law by the nature of
space itself of any perfect radiation, and if true of gravitation
involves the conclusion that that radiation of force (whatever its
nature may be) takes place without loss or dissipation of any kind. This
would make gravitation absolutely unique among phenomena. More than
this, its propagation is supposed to be _instantaneous_ over the most
enormous distances of space, and to take place always unhindered and
unretarded, whatever be the number or the nature of the bodies between!
What can be more clear than that the law is simply metaphysical--a
projection into a monstrous universality and abstraction, of partially
understood phenomena in a particular region of observation--a
Brocken-shadow on the background of Nature of the observer's own
momentary attitude of thought?
Again, the undulatory theory of Light. Studying the phenomena of a vast
number of coloured and bright bodies, Science finds that it can think
about these phenomena--can generalise and tie them into bundles best by
_assuming_ that the bodies are all in a state of vibration; a vibration
so minute that (unlike the vibrations connected with Sound) it cannot be
directly perceived. So far good. There is no harm in the assumption of
vibration, as long as it is understood to be a mere assumption for a
temporary convenience of thought. But now Science goes farther than
this, and not only supposes a common attribute to all visible bodies,
but credits this common attribute with a real existence independent of
the visible bodies in which it was supposed to inhere--and makes this
the _cause_ of their visibility! Obviously now a common and universal
medium is required for this common and universal assumed vibration (just
as Newton required a medium for his universal "falling")--and so, hey
presto! we have the Undulatory Ether. And having got it we find that to
fulfil our requirements it must have a pressure of 17 million million
pounds on the square inch, and yet be so rare and tenuous as not to
hinder the lightest breath of air; that while it is thus rare enough to
surpass all our powers of direct scrutiny, its vibrations must yet be
capable of agitating and breaking up the solidest bodies; that it must
pass freely through some dense and close structures like glass, and yet
be excluded by some light and porous, like cork, and so on and on! In
fact we find that it is unthinkable. Against this adamantine, impalpable
Ether, as against this instantaneous, untranslatable gravitation,
Science bangs its devoted head in vain. Having created these absurdities
by the method of "personification of abstractions"[25] or the
"reification of concepts,"[26] it seriously and in all good faith tries
to understand them; having dressed up its own Mumbo Jumbo (which it once
jeered at religion for doing) it piously shuts its eyes and endeavours
to believe in it.
The Atomic Theory affords a good example of the "method of ignorance."
When we try to think about material objects generally--to generalise
about them--that is, to find some attribute or attributes common to
them, we are at first puzzled. They present such an immense variety. But
after a time, by dint of stripping off or abstracting all such
attributes or qualities as we think we perceive in one body and not in
another--as for example, redness, blueness, warmth, saltness, life,
intelligence, or what not--we find an attribute left, namely resistance
to touch, which is common to _all_ material bodies. This quality in the
body we call "mass," and since it is only known by motion, mass and
motion become correlative attributes which we find useful to class
bodies by, not because they represent the various bodies particularly
well, but because they are found in all bodies; just as you might class
people by their boots--not because boots are a very valuable method of
classification, but simply because every one wears boots of one kind or
another. So far there is no great harm done. But now having by the
method of ignorance _thought away_ all the qualities of bodies, except
the two correlatives of mass and motion, we set about to _explain_ the
phenomena of Nature generally by these two "thinks" that are left. We
credit these "thinks" (mass and motion) with an independent existence
and proceed to derive the rest of phenomena from them. The proceeding of
course is absurd, and ends by exposing its own absurdity. Thinking of
mass and motion as existing in the various bodies _apart_ from colour,
smell, and so forth--which of course is not the case--we combine the two
attributes into one concept, the atom, which we thus assume to exist in
all bodies. The atom has neither colour, smell, warmth, taste, life or
intelligence; it has only mass and motion; for it came by the method of
divesting our thought of everything _but_ mass and motion. It is a
projection of a "think" upon the background of nature. And it is an
absurdity. No such thing exists in all the wide universe as mass and
motion divested from colour, smell, warmth, life and intelligence. The
atom is unthinkable. It is perfectly hard and it is perfectly
elastic--which is the same as saying that it bends and it doesn't bend
at the same time; it has form, and it hasn't form; it has affinities and
yet is perfectly indifferent. To justify to men the ways of their Mumbo
Jumbo has sorely exercised the votaries of the Atom. One philosopher
says that it is mere matter, passive, exercising no force but
resistance; another says that it is a centre of force, without matter; a
third suggests that it is not itself matter, but only a vortex in other
matter! All agree that it is not an object of sense, and there remains
no conclusion but that it is nonsense![27]
And so on in all directions. Human thought flying off at its tangents
from Nature lands itself in infinite nothings afar off, poor ghostly
skeletons and abstractions from Nature--which indeed is all right, for
human thought as yet can only see ghosts and not realities; but let
there be no mistake, let these ghosts not be mistaken for realities--for
they are not even compatible with each other. The Atom that suits the
physicist does not suit the chemist. The Ether that does for the vehicle
of Light will not do for the vehicle of universal Gravitation.
It would be hardly worth while entering into these criticisms, were it
not evident that Science in modern times, either tacitly or explicitly,
has been seeking, as I said at the beginning, to enounce facts
independent of Man, the observer. Seeing that the ordinary statements of
daily life are obviously inexact and relative to the observer--charged
with human sensation in fact--Science has naturally tried to produce
something which should be exact and independent of human sensation; but
here it has of course condemned itself beforehand to failure; for no
statement of isolated phenomena or groups of phenomena _can_ be exact
except by the method of ignorance aforesaid, and no statement obviously
can be really independent of human sensation. When a man says _It is
cold_, his statement, it must be confessed, is deplorably human and
vague. _It_--what is that? _Is_--do you mean _is_? or do you mean
_feels_, _appears_? _Cold_--in what sense? Cold to yourself, or to
other people, or to polar bears, or by the thermometer? And so on.
Science therefore steps in with an air of authority and sets him right.
It says _the temperature is_ 30° _Fahrenheit_, as if to settle the
matter. But does this really settle the matter? _Temperature_--who knows
what that is? What is the scientific definition of it? I find
(Clerk-Maxwell's Theory of Heat, p. 2.) "the temperature of a body is a
quantity which indicates how hot or how cold the body is." This sounds
very much like saying, "the colour of a body is a quantity which
indicates how blue, red, or yellow the body is." It does not bring us
much farther on our way. But in the next paragraph Maxwell shows the
object of his definition (which of course is only preliminary) by
saying, "By the use, therefore, of the word temperature, we fix in our
minds the conviction that it is possible not only to feel, but to
_measure_, how hot a body is." That is to say he clearly maintains that
it is possible to find an absolute standard of hotness or coldness--or
rather of the unknown thing called temperature--outside of ourselves and
independent of human sensation. When the man said he was cold he was
probably just describing his own sensations, but here Science indicates
that it is in search of something which has an independent existence of
its own, and which therefore when found we can measure exactly and once
for all. What then is that thing? _What_ is temperature? say, what is
it?
We cudgel our brains in vain. Perhaps the remainder of the sentence
will help us. "The temperature is 30° Fahrenheit." "The unknown thing is
thirty degrees." What then is a degree? That is the next question. When
the Theory of Heat went out from sensation and left it behind, one of
its first landing places was in the expansion of liquids--as in
thermometer tubes. Here for some time was thought to be a satisfactory
register of "temperature." But before long it became apparent that the
degree--Fahrenheit, Réaumur, or what-not--was an entirely arbitrary
thing, also that it was not the _same_[28] thing at one end of the scale
as the other, and finally that the scale itself had no starting point!
This was awkward, so a move was made to the air thermometer, and there
was some talk about an absolute zero and absolute temperatures; it was
thought that the Unknown thing showed itself most clearly and simply in
the expansion of air and other gases, and that the "degree" might fairly
be measured in terms of this expansion. But in a little time this kind
of thermometer--chiefly because no gas turned out to be "theoretically
perfect"--broke down, absolute zero and all, and another step had to be
made--namely, to the dynamical theory. It was announced that the Unknown
thing might be measured in terms of mechanical energy, and Joule at
Manchester proclaimed that the work done by any quantity of water
falling there a distance of 772 feet is capable of raising that water
one degree Fahrenheit.[29] Here seemed something definite. To measure
temperature by mass and velocity, to measure a degree by the flight of a
stone, or the heat in the human body by the fall of a factory
chimney--if rather roundabout and elusive of the main question--seemed
at any rate promising of exact results! Unfortunately the difficulty was
to pass from the theory to its application. The complicated nature of
the problem, the "imperfection" of the gases and other bodies under
consideration, the latent and specific heats to be allowed for, the
elusive nature of heat in experiment, and the variable value of the
degree itself--all render the conclusions on this subject most
precarious; and the general equations connecting the Fahrenheit or other
temperatures with a thermo-dynamic scale--while they become so unwieldy
as to be practically useless--are themselves after all only approximate.
Finally, to give a last form to the mechanical theory of heat, the
conception of flying atoms or molecules was introduced, and a number of
neat generalisations were deduced from dynamical considerations. Of
course it was inevitable, having once started with a mechanical theory,
that one should arrive at the Atom some time or other--and (from what
has already been said) it was also inevitable that the result should be
unsatisfactory. It is sufficient to say that the molecular theory of
heat is _not_ in accordance with facts. Such things as the law of
Charles and the law of Boyle, which according to it should be strictly
accurate and of general application, are known to be true only over a
most limited range. This failure of the theory may be said to arise
partly from its being pursued by the statistical method; but if, on the
other hand, we were to try and follow out the individual movement of
each molecule we should be landed in a problem far exceeding in
complexity the wildest flights of Astronomy, and should have exchanged
for the original difficulty about "temperature" a difficulty far
greater.
The result of all this has been that notwithstanding the talk about
energy and atoms, Science has sadly to confess that it can still give no
valid meaning to the word temperature: the unknown thing is still
unknown, the independent existence round the corner still escapes us. By
the very effort to arrive at something independent of human sensation,
Science has, in a roundabout way, arrived at an absurdity. When the man
said he was cold, his statement--deplorably vague as it certainly
was--had some meaning; he was describing his feelings, or possibly he
had seen some snow or some ice on the road; but when, in the endeavour
to leave out the human and to say something absolute, Science declared
that the temperature was thirty degrees, it committed itself to a remark
which possibly was exact in form, but to which it has never given and
never can give any definite meaning.[30]
Similarly with other generalities of Science: the "law" of the
Conservation of Energy, the "law" of the Survival of the Fittest--the
more you think about them the less possible is it to give any really
intelligible sense to them. The very word Fittest really begs the
question which is under consideration, and the whole Conservation law is
merely an attenuation of the already much attenuated "law" of
Gravitation. The Chemical Elements themselves are nothing but the
projection on the external world of concepts consisting of three or four
attributes each: they are not more real, but very much less real than
the individual objects which they are supposed to account for; and their
"elementary" character is merely fictional. It probably is in fact as
absurd to speak of pure carbon or pure gold, as of a pure monkey or a
pure dog. There are no such things, except as they may be arrived at by
arbitrary definition and the method of ignorance.
In the search for exactness, then, Science has been continually led on
to discard the human and personal elements in phenomena, in the hope of
finding some residuum as it were behind them which should not be
personal and human but absolute and invariable. And the tendency has
been (hitherto) in all the sciences to get rid of such terms as blue,
red, light, heavy, hot, cold, concord, discord, health, vitality, right,
wrong, etc., and to rely on any less human elements discoverable in each
case; as for instance in Sound, to deal less and less with the judgments
and sensations of the ear, and to rely more and more on measurements of
lengths of strings, numbers of vibrations, etc. Each science has been
(as far as possible) reduced to its lowest terms. Ethics has been made a
question of utility and inherited experience. Political Economy has been
exhausted of all conceptions of justice between man and man, of charity,
affection, and the instinct of solidarity; and has been founded on its
lowest discoverable factor, namely self-interest. Biology has been
denuded of the force of personality in plants, animals, and men; the
"self" here has been set aside, and the attempt made to reduce the
science to a question of chemical and cellular affinities, protoplasm,
and the laws of osmose. Chemical affinities, again, and all the
wonderful phenomena of Physics are emptied down into a flight of atoms;
and the flight of atoms (and of astronomic orbs as well) is reduced to
the laws of dynamics--which the student sitting in his chamber may write
down on a piece of paper. Thus the idea, formulated by Comte, of a great
scale of sciences arising from the simplest to the most complex, has
tacitly underlain modern scientific work. It--Science--has sought to
"explain" each stage by reference to a lower stage--"blueness" by
vibrations, and vibrations by flying atoms--the human always by the
sub-human. Going out from humanity dissatisfied, it has wandered through
the animal and vegetable kingdoms, through the regions of Chemistry and
Physics, into that of Mechanics. "Here at last, in Mechanics, is
something outside humanity, something exact in itself, something
substantial," it has said. "Let us build again on this as on a
foundation, and in time we shall find out what humanity is." This I say
has been the dream of Modern Science; yet the fallacy of it is obvious.
We have not got outside the human, but only to the outermost verge of
it. Mass and motion, which in this process are taken to be real entities
and the first progenitors of all phenomena, are simply the last
abstractions of sensible experience, and our emptiest concepts. The
_material_ explanation of the universe is simply an attempt to account
for phenomena by those attributes which appear to us to be common to
them all--which is, as said before, like accounting for men by their
boots:--it may be possible to get an exact formula this way, but its
contents have little or no meaning.
The whole process of Science and the Comtian classification of its
branches--regarded thus as an attempt to explain Man by Mechanics--is a
huge vicious circle. It professes to start with something simple, exact,
and invariable, and from this point to mount step by step till it comes
to Man himself; but indeed it starts with Man. It plants itself on
sensations low down (mass, motion, etc.), and endeavours by means of
them to explain sensations high up, which reminds one of nothing so much
as that process vulgarly described as "climbing up a ladder to comb your
hair." In truth Science has never left the great world, or cosmos, of
Man, nor ever really found a _locus standi_ without it; but during the
last two or three centuries it has gone in this _direction_, outwards,
continually. Leaving the central basis and facts of humanity as too vast
and unmanageable, and also as apparently variable from man to man and
therefore affording no certain consent to work upon, it has wandered
gradually outwards, seeking something of more definite and universal
application Discarding thus one by one the interior phases of
sensation--as the sense of personal relationship, the sense of justice,
duty, fitness in things or what-not (as too uncertain, or perhaps
developed to an unequal degree in different persons, embryonic in one
and matured in another), drifting past the more specialised bodily
senses, of colour, sound, taste, smell, etc., as for similar reasons
unavailable--Science at last in the primitive consciousness of muscular
contraction and its abstraction "mass" or "matter" comes to a pause.
Here in this last sense, common probably to man and the lowest animals,
it finds its widest, most universal ground--its farthest limit from the
Centre. It has reached the outermost shell, as it were, of the great
Man-cosmos.
Even this shell is partially human; it is not entirely osseous, and so
far not entirely exact and invariable; but Science can go no
farther--and there, for the present, it may remain!
Some day perhaps, when all this showy vesture of scientific theory
(which has this peculiarity that only the learned can see it) has been
quasi-completed, and Humanity is expected to walk solemnly forth in its
new garment for all the world to admire--as in Anderssen's story of the
Emperor's New Clothes--some little child standing on a door-step will
cry out: "But he has got nothing on at all," and amid some confusion it
will be seen that the child is right.