THE CENTURY OF GENIUS
The previous chapters were devoted to the antecedent conditions which
prepared the soil for the scientific outburst of the seventeenth
century. They traced the various elements of thought and instinctive
belief, from their first efflorescence in the classical civilisation of
the ancient world, through the transformations which they underwent in
the Middle Ages, up to the historical revolt of the sixteenth century.
Three main factors arrested attention,—the rise of mathematics, the
instinctive belief in a detailed order of nature, and the unbridled
rationalism of the thought of the later Middle Ages. By this rationalism
I mean the belief that the avenue to truth was predominantly through a
metaphysical analysis of the nature of things, which would thereby
determine how things acted and functioned. The historical revolt was the
definite abandonment of this method in favour of the study of the
empirical facts of antecedents and consequences. In religion, it meant
the appeal to the origins of Christianity; and in science it meant the
appeal to experiment and the inductive method of reasoning.
A brief, and sufficiently accurate, description of the intellectual life
of the European races during the succeeding two centuries and a quarter
up to our own times is that they have been living upon the accumulated
capital of ideas provided for them by the genius of the seventeenth
century. The men of this epoch inherited a ferment of ideas attendant
upon the historical revolt of the sixteenth century, and they bequeathed
formed systems of thought touching every aspect of human life. It is the
one century which consistently, and throughout the whole range of human
activities, provided intellectual genius adequate for the greatness of
its occasions. The crowded stage of this hundred years is indicated by
the coincidences which mark its literary annals. At its dawn Bacon’s
_Advancement of Learning_ and Cervantes’ _Don Quixote_ were published in
the same year (1605), as though the epoch would introduce itself with a
forward and a backward glance. The first quarto edition of _Hamlet_
appeared in the preceding year, and a slightly variant edition in the
same year. Finally Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day, April
23, 1616. In the spring of this same year Harvey is believed to have
first expounded his theory of the circulation of the blood in a course
of lectures before the College of Physicians in London. Newton was born
in the year that Galileo died (1642), exactly one hundred years after
the publication of Copernicus’ _De Revolutionibus_. One year earlier
Descartes published his _Meditationes_ and two years later his
_Principia Philosophiae_. There simply was not time for the century to
space out nicely its notable events concerning men of genius.
I cannot now enter upon a chronicle of the various stages of
intellectual advance included within this epoch. It is too large a topic
for one lecture, and would obscure the ideas which it is my purpose to
develop. A mere rough catalogue of some names will be sufficient, names
of men who published to the world important work within these limits of
time: Francis Bacon, Harvey, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal,
Huyghens, Boyle, Newton, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz. I have limited the
list to the sacred number of twelve, a number much too small to be
properly representative. For example, there is only one Italian there,
whereas Italy could have filled the list from its own ranks. Again
Harvey is the only biologist, and also there are too many Englishmen.
This latter defect is partly due to the fact that the lecturer is
English, and that he is lecturing to an audience which, equally with
him, owns this English century. If he had been Dutch, there would have
been too many Dutchmen; if Italian, too many Italians; and if French,
too many Frenchmen. The unhappy Thirty Years’ War was devastating
Germany; but every other country looks back to this century as an epoch
which witnessed some culmination of its genius. Certainly this was a
great period of English thought; as at a later time Voltaire impressed
upon France.
The omission of physiologists, other than Harvey, also requires
explanation. There were, of course, great advances in biology within the
century, chiefly associated with Italy and the University of Padua. But
my purpose is to trace the philosophic outlook, derived from science and
presupposed by science, and to estimate some of its effects on the
general climate of each age. Now the scientific philosophy of this age
was dominated by physics; so as to be the most obvious rendering, in
terms of general ideas, of the state of physical knowledge of that age
and of the two succeeding centuries. As a matter of fact, these concepts
are very unsuited to biology; and set for it an insoluble problem of
matter and life and organism, with which biologists are now wrestling.
But the science of living organisms is only now coming to a growth
adequate to impress its conceptions upon philosophy. The last half
century before the present time has witnessed unsuccessful attempts to
impress biological notions upon the materialism of the seventeenth
century. However this success be estimated, it is certain that the root
ideas of the seventeenth century were derived from the school of thought
which produced Galileo, Huyghens and Newton, and not from the
physiologists of Padua. One unsolved problem of thought, so far as it
derives from this period, is to be formulated thus: Given configurations
of matter with locomotion in space as assigned by physical laws, to
account for living organisms.
My discussion of the epoch will be best introduced by a quotation from
Francis Bacon, which forms the opening of Section (or ‘Century’) IX of
his _Natural History_, I mean his _Silva Silvarum_. We are told in the
contemporary memoir by his chaplain, Dr. Rawley, that this work was
composed in the last five years of his life, so it must be dated between
1620 and 1626. The quotation runs thus:
“It is certain that all bodies whatsoever, though they have no sense,
yet they have perception; for when one body is applied to another, there
is a kind of election to embrace that which is agreeable, and to exclude
or expel that which is ingrate; and whether the body be alterant or
altered, evermore a perception precedeth operation; for else all bodies
would be like one to another. And sometimes this perception, in some
kind of bodies, is far more subtile than sense; so that sense is but a
dull thing in comparison of it: we see a weatherglass will find the
least difference of the weather in heat or cold, when we find it not.
And this perception is sometimes at a distance, as well as upon the
touch; as when the loadstone draweth iron; or flame naphtha of Babylon,
a great distance off. It is therefore a subject of a very noble enquiry,
to enquire of the more subtile perceptions; for it is another key to
open nature, as well as the sense; and sometimes better. And besides, it
is a principal means of natural divination; for that which in these
perceptions appeareth early, in the great effects cometh long after.”
There are a great many points of interest about this quotation, some of
which will emerge into importance in succeeding lectures. In the first
place, note the careful way in which Bacon discriminates between
_perception_, or _taking account of_, on the one hand, and _sense_, or
_cognitive experience_, on the other hand. In this respect Bacon is
outside the physical line of thought which finally dominated the
century. Later on, people thought of passive matter which was operated
on externally by forces. I believe Bacon’s line of thought to have
expressed a more fundamental truth than do the materialistic concepts
which were then being shaped as adequate for physics. We are now so used
to the materialistic way of looking at things, which has been rooted in
our literature by the genius of the seventeenth century, that it is with
some difficulty that we understand the possibility of another mode of
approach to the problems of nature.
In the particular instance of the quotation which I have just made, the
whole passage and the context in which it is embedded, are permeated
through and through by the experimental method, that is to say, by
attention to ‘irreducible and stubborn facts’, and by the inductive
method of eliciting general laws. Another unsolved problem which has
been bequeathed to us by the seventeenth century is the rational
justification of this method of Induction. The explicit realisation of
the antithesis between the deductive rationalism of the scholastics and
the inductive observational methods of the moderns must chiefly be
ascribed to Bacon; though, of course, it was implicit in the mind of
Galileo and of all the men of science of those times. But Bacon was one
of the earliest of the whole group, and also had the most direct
apprehension of the full extent of the intellectual revolution which was
in progress. Perhaps the man who most completely anticipated both Bacon
and the whole modern point of view was the artist Leonardo Da Vinci, who
lived almost exactly a century before Bacon. Leonardo also illustrates
the theory which I was advancing in my last lecture, that the rise of
naturalistic art was an important ingredient in the formation of our
scientific mentality. Indeed, Leonardo was more completely a man of
science than was Bacon. The practice of naturalistic art is more akin to
the practice of physics, chemistry and biology than is the practice of
law. We all remember the saying of Bacon’s contemporary, Harvey, the
discoverer of the circulation of the blood, that Bacon ‘wrote of science
like a Lord Chancellor.’ But at the beginning of the modern period Da
Vinci and Bacon stand together as illustrating the various strains which
have combined to form the modern world, namely, legal mentality and the
patient observational habits of the naturalistic artists.
In the passage which I have quoted from Bacon’s writings there is no
explicit mention of the method of inductive reasoning. It is unnecessary
for me to prove to you by any quotations that the enforcement of the
importance of this method, and of the importance, to the welfare of
mankind, of the secrets of nature to be thus discovered, was one of the
main themes to which Bacon devoted himself in his writings. Induction
has proved to be a somewhat more complex process than Bacon anticipated.
He had in his mind the belief that with a sufficient care in the
collection of instances the general law would stand out of itself. We
know now, and probably Harvey knew then, that this is a very inadequate
account of the processes which issue in scientific generalisations. But
when you have made all the requisite deductions, Bacon remains as one of
the great builders who constructed the mind of the modern world.
The special difficulties raised by induction emerged in the eighteenth
century, as the result of Hume’s criticism. But Bacon was one of the
prophets of the historical revolt, which deserted the method of
unrelieved rationalism, and rushed into the other extreme of basing all
fruitful knowledge upon inference from particular occasions in the past
to particular occasions in the future. I do not wish to throw any doubt
upon the validity of induction, when it has been properly guarded. My
point is, that the very baffling task of applying reason to elicit the
general characteristics of the immediate occasion, as set before us in
direct cognition, is a necessary preliminary, if we are to justify
induction; unless indeed we are content to base it upon our vague
instinct that of course it is all right. Either there is something about
the immediate occasion which affords knowledge of the past and the
future, or we are reduced to utter scepticism as to memory and
induction. It is impossible to over-emphasise the point that the key to
the process of induction, as used either in science or in our ordinary
life, is to be found in the right understanding of the immediate
occasion of knowledge in its full concreteness. It is in respect to our
grasp of the character of these occasions in their concreteness that the
modern developments of physiology and of psychology are of critical
importance. I shall illustrate this point in my subsequent lectures. We
find ourselves amid insoluble difficulties when we substitute for this
concrete occasion a mere abstract in which we only consider material
objects in a flux of configurations in time and space. It is quite
obvious that such objects can tell us only that they are where they are.
Accordingly, we must recur to the method of the school-divinity as
explained by the Italian medievalists whom I quoted in the first
lecture. We must observe the immediate occasion, and _use reason_ to
elicit a general description of its nature. Induction presupposes
metaphysics. In other words, it rests upon an antecedent rationalism.
You cannot have a rational justification for your appeal to history till
your metaphysics has assured you that there _is_ a history to appeal to;
and likewise your conjectures as to the future presuppose some basis of
knowledge that there _is_ a future already subjected to some
determinations. The difficulty is to make sense of either of these
ideas. But unless you have done so, you have made nonsense of induction.
You will observe that I do not hold Induction to be in its essence the
derivation of general laws. It is the divination of some characteristics
of a particular future from the known characteristics of a particular
past. The wider assumption of general laws holding for all cognisable
occasions appears a very unsafe addendum to attach to this limited
knowledge. All we can ask of the present occasion is that it shall
determine a particular community of occasions, which are in some
respects mutually qualified by reason of their inclusion within that
same community. That community of occasions considered in physical
science is the set of happenings which fit on to each other—as we say—in
a common space-time, so that we can trace the transitions from one to
the other. Accordingly, we refer to _the_ common space-time indicated in
our immediate occasion of knowledge. Inductive reasoning proceeds from
the particular occasion to the particular community of occasions, and
from the particular community to relations between particular occasions
within that community. Until we have taken into account other scientific
concepts, it is impossible to carry the discussion of induction further
than this preliminary conclusion.
The third point to notice about this quotation from Bacon is the purely
qualitative character of the statements made in it. In this respect
Bacon completely missed the tonality which lay behind the success of
seventeenth century science. Science was becoming, and has remained,
primarily quantitative. Search for measurable elements among your
phenomena, and then search for relations between these measures of
physical quantities. Bacon ignores this rule of science. For example, in
the quotation given he speaks of action at a distance; but he is
thinking qualitatively and not quantitatively. We cannot ask that he
should anticipate his younger contemporary Galileo, or his distant
successor Newton. But he gives no hint that there should be a search for
quantities. Perhaps he was misled by the current logical doctrines which
had come down from Aristotle. For, in effect, these doctrines said to
the physicist ‘_classify_’ when they should have said ‘_measure_.’
By the end of the century physics had been founded on a satisfactory
basis of measurement. The final and adequate exposition was given by
Newton. The common measurable element of _mass_ was discerned as
characterising all bodies in different amounts. Bodies which are
apparently identical in substance, shape, and size have very
approximately the same mass: the closer the identity, the nearer the
equality. The force acting on a body, whether by touch or by action at a
distance, was [in effect] defined as being equal to the mass of the body
multiplied by the rate of change of the body’s velocity, so far as this
rate of change is produced by that force. In this way the force is
discerned by its effect on the motion of the body. The question now
arises whether this conception of the magnitude of a force leads to the
discovery of simple quantitative laws involving the alternative
determination of forces by circumstances of the configuration of
substances and of their physical characters. The Newtonian conception
has been brilliantly successful in surviving this test throughout the
whole modern period. Its first triumph was the law of gravitation. Its
cumulative triumph has been the whole development of dynamical
astronomy, of engineering, and of physics.
This subject of the formation of the three laws of motion and of the law
of gravitation deserves critical attention. The whole development of
thought occupied exactly two generations. It commenced with Galileo and
ended with Newton’s _Principia_; and Newton was born in the year that
Galileo died. Also the lives of Descartes and Huyghens fall within the
period occupied by these great terminal figures. The issue of the
combined labours of these four men has some right to be considered as
the greatest single intellectual success which mankind has achieved. In
estimating its size, we must consider the completeness of its range. It
constructs for us a vision of the material universe, and it enables us
to calculate the minutest detail of a particular occurrence. Galileo
took the first step in hitting on the right line of thought. He noted
that the critical point to attend to was not the motion of bodies but
the changes of their motions. Galileo’s discovery is formularised by
Newton in his first law of motion:—“Every body continues in its state of
rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, except so far as it may
be compelled by force to change that state.”
This formula contains the repudiation of a belief which had blocked the
progress of physics for two thousand years. It also deals with a
fundamental concept which is essential to scientific theory; I mean, the
concept of an ideally isolated system. This conception embodies a
fundamental character of things, without which science, or indeed any
knowledge on the part of finite intellects, would be impossible. The
‘isolated’ system is not a solipsist system, apart from which there
would be nonentity. It is isolated as within the universe. This means
that there are truths respecting this system which require reference
only to the remainder of things by way of a uniform systematic scheme of
relationships. Thus the conception of an isolated system is not the
conception of substantial independence from the remainder of things, but
of freedom from casual contingent dependence upon detailed items within
the rest of the universe. Further, this freedom from casual dependence
is required only in respect to certain abstract characteristics which
attach to the isolated system, and not in respect to the system in its
full concreteness.
The first law of motion asks what is to be said of a dynamically
isolated system so far as concerns its motion as a whole, abstracting
from its orientation and its internal arrangement of parts. Aristotle
said that you must conceive such a system to be at rest. Galileo added
that the state of rest is only a particular case, and that the general
statement is ‘either in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a
straight line.’ Accordingly, an Aristotelean would conceive the forces
arising from the reaction of alien bodies as being quantitatively
measurable in terms of the velocity they sustain, and as directively
determined by the direction of that velocity; while the Galilean would
direct attention to the magnitude of the acceleration and to its
direction. This difference is illustrated by contrasting Kepler and
Newton. They both speculated as to the forces sustaining the planets in
their orbits. Kepler looked for tangential forces pushing the planets
along, whereas Newton looked for radial forces diverting the directions
of the planets’ motions.
Instead of dwelling upon the mistake which Aristotle made, it is more
profitable to emphasise the justification which he had for it, if we
consider the obvious facts of our experience. All the motions which
enter into our normal everyday experience cease unless they are
evidently sustained from the outside. Apparently, therefore, the sound
empiricist must devote his attention to this question of the sustenance
of motion. We here hit upon one of the dangers of unimaginative
empiricism. The seventeenth century exhibits another example of this
same danger; and, of all people in the world, Newton fell into it.
Huyghens had produced the wave theory of light. But this theory failed
to account for the most obvious facts about light as in our ordinary
experience, namely, that shadows cast by obstructing objects are defined
by rectilinear rays. Accordingly, Newton rejected this theory and
adopted the corpuscular theory which completely explained shadows. Since
then both theories have had their periods of triumph. At the present
moment the scientific world is seeking for a combination of the two.
These examples illustrate the danger of refusing to entertain an idea
because of its failure to explain one of the most obvious facts in the
subject matter in question. If you have had your attention directed to
the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed
that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness
when they are first produced.
Returning to the laws of motion, it is noticeable that no reason was
produced in the seventeenth century for the Galilean as distinct from
the Aristotelian position. It was an ultimate fact. When in the course
of these lectures we come to the modern period, we shall see that the
theory of relativity throws complete light on this question; but only by
rearranging our whole ideas as to space and time.
It remained for Newton to direct attention to _mass_ as a physical
quantity inherent in the nature of a material body. Mass remained
permanent during all changes of motion. But the proof of the permanence
of mass amid chemical transformations had to wait for Lavoisier, a
century later. Newton’s next task was to find some estimate of the
magnitude of the alien force in terms of the mass of the body and of its
acceleration. He here had a stroke of luck. For, from the point of view
of a mathematician, the simplest possible law, namely the product of the
two, proved to be the successful one. Again the modern relativity theory
modifies this extreme simplicity. But luckily for science the delicate
experiments of the physicists of to-day were not then known, or even
possible. Accordingly, the world was given the two centuries which it
required in order to digest Newton’s laws of motion.
Having regard to this triumph, can we wonder that scientists placed
their ultimate principles upon a materialistic basis, and thereafter
ceased to worry about philosophy? We shall grasp the course of thought,
if we understand exactly what this basis is, and what difficulties it
finally involves. When you are criticising the philosophy of an epoch,
do not chiefly direct your attention to those intellectual positions
which its exponents feel it necessary explicitly to defend. There will
be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant
systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions
appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because
no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these
assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are
possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the
epoch.
One such assumption underlies the whole philosophy of nature during the
modern period. It is embodied in the conception which is supposed to
express the most concrete aspect of nature. The Ionian philosophers
asked, What is nature made of? The answer is couched in terms of stuff,
or matter, or material,—the particular name chosen is indifferent—which
has the property of simple location in space and time, or, if you adopt
the more modern ideas, in space-time. What I mean by matter, or
material, is anything which has this property of _simple location_. By
simple location I mean one major characteristic which refers equally
both to space and to time, and other minor characteristics which are
diverse as between space and time.
The characteristic common both to space and time is that material can be
said to be _here_ in space and _here_ in time, or _here_ in space-time,
in a perfectly definite sense which does not require for its explanation
any reference to other regions of space-time. Curiously enough this
character of simple location holds whether we look on a region of
space-time as determined absolutely or relatively. For if a region is
merely a way of indicating a certain set of relations to other entities,
then this characteristic, which I call simple location, is that material
can be said to have just these relations of position to the other
entities without requiring for its explanation any reference to other
regions constituted by analogous relations of position to the same
entities. In fact, as soon as you have settled, however you do settle,
what you mean by a definite place in space-time, you can adequately
state the relation of a particular material body to space-time by saying
that it is just there, in that place; and, so far as simple location is
concerned, there is nothing more to be said on the subject.
There are, however, some subordinate explanations to be made which bring
in the minor characteristics which I have already mentioned. First, as
regards time, if material has existed during any period, it has equally
been in existence during any portion of that period. In other words,
dividing the time does not divide the material. Secondly, in respect to
space, dividing the volume does divide the material. Accordingly, if
material exists throughout a volume, there will be less of that material
distributed through any definite half of that volume. It is from this
property that there arises our notion of density at a point of space.
Anyone who talks about density is not assimilating time and space to the
extent that some extremists of the modern school of relativists very
rashly desire. For the division of time functions, in respect to
material, quite differently from the division of space.
Furthermore, this fact that the material is indifferent to the division
of time leads to the conclusion that the lapse of time is an accident,
rather than of the essence, of the material. The material is fully
itself in any sub-period however short. Thus the transition of time has
nothing to do with the character of the material. The material is
equally itself at an instant of time. Here an instant of time is
conceived as in itself without transition, since the temporal transition
is the succession of instants.
The answer, therefore, which the seventeenth century gave to the ancient
question of the Ionian thinkers, ‘What is the world made of?’ was that
the world is a succession of instantaneous configurations of matter,—or
of material, if you wish to include stuff more subtle than ordinary
matter, the ether for example.
We cannot wonder that science rested content with this assumption as to
the fundamental elements of nature. The great forces of nature, such as
gravitation, were entirely determined by the configurations of masses.
Thus the configurations determined their own changes, so that the circle
of scientific thought was completely closed. This is the famous
mechanistic theory of nature, which has reigned supreme ever since the
seventeenth century. It is the orthodox creed of physical science.
Furthermore, the creed justified itself by the pragmatic test. It
worked. Physicists took no more interest in philosophy. They emphasized
the anti-rationalism of the Historical Revolt. But the difficulties of
this theory of materialistic mechanism very soon became apparent. The
history of thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is
governed by the fact that the world had got hold of a general idea which
it could neither live with nor live without.
This simple location of instantaneous material configurations is what
Bergson has protested against, so far as it concerns time and so far as
it is taken to be the fundamental fact of concrete nature. He calls it a
distortion of nature due to the intellectual ‘spatialisation’ of things.
I agree with Bergson in his protest: but I do not agree that such
distortion is a vice necessary to the intellectual apprehension of
nature. I shall in subsequent lectures endeavour to show that this
spatialisation is the expression of more concrete facts under the guise
of very abstract logical constructions. There is an error; but it is
merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete.
It is an example of what I will call the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced
Concreteness.’ This fallacy is the occasion of great confusion in
philosophy. It is not necessary for the intellect to fall into the trap,
though in this example there has been a very general tendency to do so.
It is at once evident that the concept of simple location is going to
make great difficulties for induction. For, if in the location of
configurations of matter throughout a stretch of time there is no
inherent reference to any other times, past or future, it immediately
follows that nature within any period does not refer to nature at any
other period. Accordingly, induction is not based on anything which can
be observed as inherent in nature. Thus we cannot look to nature for the
justification of our belief in any law such as the law of gravitation.
In other words, the order of nature cannot be justified by the mere
observation of nature. For there is nothing in the present fact which
inherently refers either to the past or to the future. It looks,
therefore, as though memory, as well as induction, would fail to find
any justification within nature itself.
I have been anticipating the course of future thought, and have been
repeating Hume’s argument. This train of thought follows so immediately
from the consideration of simple location, that we cannot wait for the
eighteenth century before considering it. The only wonder is that the
world did in fact wait for Hume before noting the difficulty. Also it
illustrates the anti-rationalism of the scientific public that, when
Hume did appear, it was only the religious implications of his
philosophy which attracted attention. This was because the clergy were
in principle rationalists, whereas the men of science were content with
a simple faith in the order of nature. Hume himself remarks, no doubt
scoffingly, ‘Our holy religion is founded on faith.’ This attitude
satisfied the Royal Society but not the Church. It also satisfied Hume
and has satisfied subsequent empiricists.
There is another presupposition of thought which must be put beside the
theory of simple location. I mean the two correlative categories of
Substance and quality. There is, however this difference. There were
different theories as to the adequate description of the status of
space. But whatever its status, no one had any doubt but that the
connection with space enjoyed by entities, which are said to be in
space, is that of simple location. We may put this shortly by saying
that it was tacitly assumed that space is the locus of simple locations.
Whatever is in space is _simpliciter_ in some definite portion of space.
But in respect to substance and quality the leading minds of the
seventeenth century were definitely perplexed; though, with their usual
genius, they at once constructed a theory which was adequate for their
immediate purposes.
Of course, substance and quality, as well as simple location, are the
most natural ideas for the human mind. It is the way in which we think
of things, and without these ways of thinking we could not get our ideas
straight for daily use. There is no doubt about this. The only question
is, How concretely are we thinking when we consider nature under these
conceptions? My point will be, that we are presenting ourselves with
simplified editions of immediate matters of fact. When we examine the
primary elements of these simplified editions, we shall find that they
are in truth only to be justified as being elaborate logical
constructions of a high degree of abstraction. Of course, as a point of
individual psychology, we get at the ideas by the rough and ready method
of suppressing what appear to be irrelevant details. But when we attempt
to justify this suppression of irrelevance, we find that, though there
are entities left corresponding to the entities we talk about, yet these
entities are of a high degree of abstraction.
Thus I hold that substance and quality afford another instance of the
fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Let us consider how the notions of
substance and quality arise. We observe an object as an entity with
certain characteristics. Furthermore, each individual entity is
apprehended through its characteristics. For example, we observe a body;
there is something about it which we note. Perhaps, it is hard, and
blue, and round, and noisy. We observe something which possesses these
qualities: apart from these qualities we do not observe anything at all.
Accordingly, the entity is the substratum, or substance, of which we
predicate qualities. Some of the qualities are essential, so that apart
from them the entity would not be itself; while other qualities are
accidental and changeable. In respect to material bodies, the qualities
of having a quantitative mass, and of simple location somewhere, were
held by John Locke at the close of the seventeenth century to be
essential qualities. Of course, the location was changeable, and the
unchangeability of mass was merely an experimental fact except for some
extremists.
So far, so good. But when we pass to blueness and noisiness a new
situation has to be faced. In the first place, the body may not be
always blue, or noisy. We have already allowed for this by our theory of
accidental qualities, which for the moment we may accept as adequate.
But in the second place, the seventeenth century exposed a real
difficulty. The great physicists elaborated transmission theories of
light and sound, based upon their materialistic views of nature. There
were two hypotheses as to light: either it was transmitted by the
vibratory waves of a materialistic ether, or—according to Newton—it was
transmitted by the motion of incredibly small corpuscles of some subtle
matter. We all know that the wave theory of Huyghens held the field
during the nineteenth century, and that at present physicists are
endeavouring to explain some obscure circumstances attending radiation
by a combination of both theories. But whatever theory you choose, there
is no light or colour as a fact in external nature. There is merely
motion of material. Again, when the light enters your eyes and falls on
the retina, there is merely motion of material. Then your nerves are
affected and your brain is affected, and again this is merely motion of
material. The same line of argument holds for sound, substituting waves
in the air for waves in the ether, and ears for eyes.
We then ask in what sense are blueness and noisiness qualities of the
body. By analogous reasoning, we also ask in what sense is its scent a
quality of the rose.
Galileo considered this question, and at once pointed out that, apart
from eyes, ears, or noses, there would be no colours, sounds, or smells.
Descartes and Locke elaborated a theory of primary and secondary
qualities. For example, Descartes in his ‘Sixth Meditation’ says:[4]
“And indeed, as I perceive different sorts of colours, sounds, odours,
tastes, heat, hardness, etc., I safely conclude that there are in the
bodies from which the diverse perceptions of the senses proceed, certain
varieties corresponding to them, although, perhaps, not in reality like
them;....”
Footnote 4:
Translation by Professor John Veitch.
Also in his _Principles of Philosophy_, he says: “That by our senses we
know nothing of external objects beyond their figure [or situation],
magnitude, and motion.”
Locke, writing with a knowledge of Newtonian dynamics, places mass among
the primary qualities of bodies. In short, he elaborates a theory of
primary and secondary qualities in accordance with the state of physical
science at the close of the seventeenth century. The primary qualities
are the essential qualities of substances whose spatio-temporal
relationships constitute nature. The orderliness of these relationships
constitutes nature. The orderliness of these relationships constitutes
the order of nature. The occurrences of nature are in some way
apprehended by minds, which are associated with living bodies.
Primarily, the mental apprehension is aroused by the occurrences in
certain parts of the correlated body, the occurrences in the brain, for
instance. But the mind in apprehending also experiences sensations
which, properly speaking, are qualities of the mind alone. These
sensations are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies
in external nature. Thus the bodies are perceived as with qualities
which in reality do not belong to them, qualities which in fact are
purely the offspring of the mind. Thus nature gets credit which should
in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent: the
nightingale for his song: and the sun for his radiance. The poets are
entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and
should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of
the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless,
colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly.
However you disguise it, this is the practical outcome of the
characteristic scientific philosophy which closed the seventeenth
century.
In the first place, we must note its astounding efficiency as a system
of concepts for the organisation of scientific research. In this
respect, it is fully worthy of the genius of the century which produced
it. It has held its own as the guiding principle of scientific studies
ever since. It is still reigning. Every university in the world
organises itself in accordance with it. No alternative system of
organising the pursuit of scientific truth has been suggested. It is not
only reigning, but it is without a rival.
And yet—it is quite unbelievable. This conception of the universe is
surely framed in terms of high abstractions, and the paradox only arises
because we have mistaken our abstractions for concrete realities.
No picture, however generalised, of the achievements of scientific
thought in this century can omit the advance in mathematics. Here as
elsewhere the genius of the epoch made itself evident. Three great
Frenchmen, Descartes, Desargues, Pascal, initiated the modern period in
geometry. Another Frenchman, Fermat, laid the foundations of modern
analysis, and all but perfected the methods of the differential
calculus. Newton and Leibniz, between them, actually did create the
differential calculus as a practical method of mathematical reasoning.
When the century ended, mathematics as an instrument for application to
physical problems was well established in something of its modern
proficiency. Modern pure mathematics, if we except geometry, was in its
infancy, and had given no signs of the astonishing growth it was to make
in the nineteenth century. But the mathematical physicist had appeared,
bringing with him the type of mind which was to rule the scientific
world in the next century. It was to be the age of ‘Victorious
Analysis.’
The seventeenth century had finally produced a scheme of scientific
thought framed by mathematicians, for the use of mathematicians. The
great characteristic of the mathematical mind is its capacity for
dealing with abstractions; and for eliciting from them clear-cut
demonstrative trains of reasoning, entirely satisfactory so long as it
is those abstractions which you want to think about. The enormous
success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand
_matter_ with its _simple location_ in space and time, and on the other
hand _mind_, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has
foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete
rendering of fact.
Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated in a
complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists, who
accept matter and mind as on equal basis, and the two varieties of
monists, those who put mind inside matter, and those who put matter
inside mind. But this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the
inherent confusion introduced by the ascription of _misplaced
concreteness_ to the scientific scheme of the seventeenth century.