Part 8

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.

NOTE

"I fear I have very imperfectly succeeded in expressing my strong conviction that, before a rigorous logical scrutiny, the Reign of Law will prove to be an unverified hypothesis, the Uniformity of Nature an ambiguous expression, the certainty of our scientific inferences to a great extent a delusion." (Stanley Jevons, _Principles of Science_, p. ix.)

FOOTNOTES:

[17] See note, p. 119.

[18] Since the above was written there has certainly been a great change, and the dogmatic confidence in the verity of the scientific "laws" has now (1920) almost disappeared.

[19] Such fictions, however, are (I need not say) quite necessary as our only means of thinking out, however imperfectly, the problems before us (1920).

[20] It is not generally realised how feeble a force gravitation is. It is calculated (Encycl. Brit., Art. Gravitation) that two masses, each weighing 415,000 tons, and placed a mile apart, would exert on each other an attractive force of only one pound. If one, therefore, was as far from the other as the moon is from the earth, their attraction would only amount to 1/57,600,000,000th of a pound. This is a small force to govern the movement of a body weighing 415,000 tons! and it is easy to see that a slight variation in the law of the force might for a long period pass undetected, though in the course of hundreds of centuries it might become of the greatest importance.

[21] As another instance of the same thing, let me quote a passage from Maxwell's _Theory of Heat_, p. 31; the italics are mine: "In our description of the physical properties of bodies as related to heat we have begun with solid bodies, as those which we can _most easily handle_, and have gone on to liquids, which we can keep in open vessels, and have now come to gases, which will escape from open vessels, and which are generally _invisible_. This is the order which is most natural in our first study of these different states. But as soon as we have been made familiar with the most prominent features of these different conditions of matter the most _scientific_ course of study is in the _reverse_ order, beginning with gases, on account of the greater simplicity of their laws, then advancing to liquids, the more complex laws of which are much more imperfectly known, and concluding with the little that has been hitherto discovered about the constitution of solid bodies." That is to say that Science finds it easier to work among gases--which are invisible and which we can know little about--than among solids, which we are familiar with and which we can easily handle! This seems a strange conclusion, but it will be found to represent a common procedure of Science--the truth probably being that the laws of gases are not one whit _simpler_ than the laws of liquids and solids, but that on account of our knowing so much less about gases it is easier for us to _feign_ laws in their case than in the case of solids, and less easy for our errors to be detected.

[22] All our thoughts, theories, "laws," etc., may perhaps be said to _touch_ Nature--as the tangent touches the curve--at a point. They give a direction--and are true--at that point. But make the slightest move, and they all have to be reconstructed. The tangents are infinite in number, but the curve is one. This may not only illustrate the relation of Nature to Science, but also of Art to the materials it uses. The poet radiates thoughts: but he sets no store by them. He knows his thoughts are not true in themselves, but they _touch_ the Truth. His lines are the envelope of the curve which is his poem.

[23] See the report of the joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, November 6, 1919, when Einstein's theory was discussed.

[24] It is obvious that the Einstein theory, in which Time enters as a kind of fourth dimension in relation to Space, removes us at once out of the whole field of ordinary scientific reasoning and lands us, so to speak, in a new world. The nature of Space (or of the universal medium, whatever it is) in any region--its possible fundamental accelerations there, its "curvature" or non-Euclidean character, and so forth--is supposed, according to this theory, to vary with the amount of matter in, or density of, that region; and the movements of bodies are consequently supposed to take on the characters (accelerations, etc.,) which we ascribe to the action of Gravitation. Gravitation in fact in any region is the manifestation in Time of the attributes of the universal Medium in that region--which latter again is dependent on the degree of Matter present. Thus, Matter, Time, and Space are _one phenomenon_.

The whole Einstein theory, in fact, is a device to present these three Protean and variable elements of all material existence (Matter, Time and Space) as so far involved and interlaced in each other that they form always an absolute and complete unity. As such the theory is no doubt suggestive, and along the line of future speculation: but it awaits corroboration. If corroborated it will point the way to a new conception of the Universe.

[25] J. S. Mill.

[26] See Stallo's excellent _Concepts of Modern Physics_.

[27] See, for instance, the last new thing in this style--the Helmholtz molecule as improved upon by Sir William Thomson; it is described as follows: "A heavy mass connected by massless springs with a massless enclosing shell; or there may be several shells enclosing each other connected by springs with a dense mass in the centre (far more dense than the ether)." It is not, of course, seriously maintained that this nonsensical creation exists--but that if it did exist it would account for certain unexplained phenomena in the dispersion of light, etc.

Later still (1920) we have the following delightful verdict on the Structure of the Atom, given by Sir Ernest Rutherford--and which I commend to all lovers of clear thinking:--

"The Bakerian Lecture was delivered yesterday before the Royal Society by Sir Ernest Rutherford, whose subject was 'The Nuclear Construction of the Atom.' He said that during recent years much attention had been paid to the nature and structure of atoms. The atomic theory of matter had been definitely proved. The mass of the individual atoms, and the number in any given weight of matter, were now known with considerable accuracy. Not only was matter known to be made up of atoms, but electricity was also atomic in nature, and there was a definite unit of electrical charge which could not further be subdivided. The negative electron, which was a constituent of all atoms of matter, was probably nothing more than an isolated unit of negative electricity, and its small mass was electrical in origin. It had long been considered probable that the atom is an electrical structure, consisting of positive and negative particles, held in equilibrium by electric or magnetic forces. In recent years evidence had accumulated that an atom consists of a positively charged nucleus surrounded at a distance by a distribution of electrons to make it electrically neutral." (From _The Morning Post_ of June 4, 1920.)

[28] The very fact alone that the degrees on a thermometer are _equal_ space divisions shows that they must bear a _varying_ relation to the total volume of liquid as that expands from one end of the tube to the other.

[29] A statement obviously applying--from what has been already said--at only one point in the scale.

[30] I am not, of course, here arguing against the use of thermometers or other instruments for practical purposes. This is certainly the legitimate field of Science. But (as in the case of _prediction_ before mentioned) the exactness of results obtained is a very different matter from the truth of the generalities which are supposed to underlie these results. In using a thermometer you need not even mention the word "temperature."

THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE: A FORECAST

Once let that [the human ideal] slip out of the thought, and science is of no more use than the invocations in the Egyptian papiri.--RICHARD JEFFERIES.

It would appear then, from the preceding paper, that in some sense a mistake has been made in the method of modern scientific work; not that the vast amount of labour expended in it has been altogether wasted, for in return for this there is a mass of practical results and detailed observations to show; but that in attempting to solve the problem of science by the intellect alone, a radical mistake has been made which _could_ only land us in absurdity, and that this mistake has for the time being also vitiated the results that have been attained. For--in reference to this last point--the divorce of the intellectual from the emotional has caused a great portion of our scientific observations to become merely pedantic and trifling; while it has turned the practical results--as industrial and military machinery, etc.--into engines of evil as often as into engines of good.

Science in searching for a permanently valid and purely intellectual representation of the universe has, as already said, been searching for a thing which does not exist. The very facts of Nature, as we call them, are at least half feeling. If we try to clean the feeling out of a fact and to produce a statement which shall be devoid of the human or sense element, it simply amounts to cleaning the meaning out; and though our resulting statement may be exact it is nugatory and of no value. We might as well try to take the clay out of a brick. It must never be forgotten that the logical processes--important as they are--cannot stand by themselves, have no standing ground of their own. They presuppose assumptions and are the expression of things that are unreasoning, perhaps illogical. The strictest logic is a mere hooking together of links in a chain, and the last link is of no use--you can put no stress on it--unless the first is secured somewhere. The strength of the intellectual chain is no greater than that of the staple from which it hangs--and that is a human feeling The strength of Euclid is no greater than that of the axioms--and _they_ are feelings; they are unreasoning statements of which all that we can say is, "I _feel_ like that." In fact all the propositions of Geometry are nothing but the analysis and elaborate expression, so to speak, of these primary convictions--and the Geometry-structure stands and falls with them. There is no such thing as intellectual truth--that is, I mean, a truth which can be stated as existing apart from feeling. If, for instance, a proposition in Geometry can be really shown to be based on the axioms, it is true, not intellectually or absolutely, but as an expression of my primary Geometrical sense; and if my giving a few pence to a crossing sweeper is based not on a mere impression of duty, or an anxiety to appear charitable, or wish to escape his importunity, but on genuine regard for the man, then it is true, not in any absolute signification, but just as an expression of what it professes to represent--namely my primary sense of humanity. Indeed the truest truth is that which is the expression of the deepest feeling, and if there is an absolute truth it can only be known and expressed by him who has the absolute feeling or Being within himself.

This being so--and the nature of the intellectual processes being, like the links in a chain, transitional--it becomes obvious that the intellectual results may figure as a _means_ but never as an end in themselves. To hang any weight of reliance on them in the latter sense is like the Chinese Trick--described by Marco Polo--of throwing a rope's end up in the air and then climbing up the rope. Hence it appears that our scientific theories are perfectly legitimate, as long as they are formed as a means towards _practical_ applications. In that sense they are transitional; they are formed, not as substantial truths, but merely as links in a chain towards some definite practical result. For this purpose we may form whatever theories are convenient: if we are calculating the strength of bridges, we may adopt what generalisations we like concerning mechanical structure, as long as they give us actual and practical results; if we are predicting eclipses, we may make use of any theory that will do. The theory does not matter, as long as it hauls the practical result after it, just as it does not matter whether your cable is of iron or hemp or silk, as long as you can get your ship into dock with it. In this sense our Modern Science is, I conceive, admirable. For practical results and brief predictions it affords a quantity of useful generalisations--shorthand notes and conventional symbols and pocket summaries of phenomena--which bear about the same relation to the actual world that a map does to the country it is supposed to represent. It cannot be said to have any resemblance to the real thing--but, when you understand the principle on which it is formed, it is exceedingly useful for finding your way about. As long as Science therefore keeps the practical end in view, and starting from sense seeks to return to sense again, its intermediate theorising is perfectly legitimate; but the moment it credits its theory with a positive and authoritative existence, as an actual representation of facts--and endeavours to pass by means of it into unverifiable and abstract regions, as of invisible germs or atoms, or far distances of space, or the remote past or future--it is simply throwing its rope's end into the sky and trying to climb up! That "the wish is father to the thought" is in its wide sense profoundly true. In the individual, feeling precedes thinking--as the body precedes the clothes. In history, the Rousseau precedes the Voltaire. There is, I believe, a physiological parallel; for behind the brain and determining its action stands the great sympathetic nerve--the organ of the emotions. In fact here the brain appears as distinctly transitional. It stands between the nerves of sense on the one hand and the great sympathetic on the other.

Change the feeling in an individual, and his whole method of thinking will be revolutionised; change the axiom or primary sensation in a science, and the whole structure will have to be re-created. The current Political Economy is founded on the axiom of individual greed; but let a new axiomatic emotion spring up (as of justice or fair play instead of unlimited grab), and the base of the science will be altered, and will necessitate a new construction.

So when people argue (on politics, morality, art, etc.) it will generally be found that they differ at the _base_; they go out, perhaps quite unconsciously, from different axioms and hence they _cannot_ agree. Occasionally of course a strict examination will show that, while agreeing at the base, one of them has made a false step in deduction; in that case his thought does _not_ represent his primary feeling, and when this is pointed out he is forced to alter it. But more often it is found that the difference lies deep down at a point beyond the reach of reason; and they disagree to the end. In this case neither is right and neither is wrong. They simply feel differently; they are different persons.

The Thought then is the expression, the outgrowth, the covering of underlying Feeling. And in the great life of Man as a whole, as in the lesser life of the individual, his continual new birth and inward growth causes his thought-systems also continually to change and be replaced by new ones. Like the bud-sheaths and husks in a growing plant or tree they give form for a time to the life within; then they fall off and are replaced. The husk prepares the bud underneath, which is to throw it off. The thought prepares and protects the feeling underneath, which growing will inevitably reject it; and when a thought has been formed it is already _false_, _i.e._, ready to fall.

We are now, then, in a position to come back to the question of a genuine Science, truly so-called.

As there is no invariable and absolute datum on the fringe of Humanity--no definable flying atom on which we can found our reasonings--and as Modern Science, considered as an actual representation of the universe, falls miserably to pieces in consequence--is it possible that we have made a mistake in the _direction_ in which we have sought for our datum; and may it be that we should look for that in the very Centre of Humanity instead of in its remotest circumference? In that direction evidently, if we could penetrate, we should expect to find, not a shadowy intellectual generalisation, but the very opposite of that--an intense immutable _feeling_ or state, an axiomatic condition of Being. Is it possible that here, blazing like a sun (if we could only see it--and the sun is its allegory in the physical world), there exists within us absolutely such a thing--the one _fact_ in the universe, of which all else are shadows, _to_ which everything has relation, and round which, itself unanalysable, all thought circles and all phenomena stand as indirect modes of expression?

Is it possible? That is the question--the question which each one of us has to solve. At any rate, let us throw this out as a suggestion. Let us suggest that as we have got nothing satisfactory by cleaning the sense-element out of phenomena, we should take the opposite course and put as much sense into them as we can!

"Facts" are, at least, half feelings. Let us acknowledge this and not empty the feeling out of them, but deepen and enlarge that which we already have in them. Who knows whether we have ever _seen_ the blue sky? Who knows whether we have ever seen each other? Is it not a commonplace to say that one man sees in the common objects of Nature what another is wholly unconscious of? "The primrose on the river's brim a yellow primrose is to him--and nothing more." To what extent may the facts of Nature thus be deepened and made more substantial to us--and whither will this process lead us?