Part 3

Preserving the spirit of Spencer's teaching we must regard all modes of relatedness which are disclosed by scientific research as part and parcel of the constitution of nature, from whatever Source, knowable or unknowable, that constitution be derived. Of these modes there are many; indeed, if we deal with all concrete cases, their number is legion. For purposes of illustration, however, we may reduce them, rather drastically, to three main types. There are relations of the physico-chemical type,[53] which we may provisionally follow Spencer in regarding as ubiquitous; there are those of the vital type, which are restricted to living organisms; there are those of the cognitive type, which seem to be much more narrowly restricted. How we deal with these is of crucial importance. Denoting them by the letters A, B, C we find that there are progressively ascending modes of relatedness within any given type. There is evolution within each type. Within the physico-chemical type A, for example, atoms, molecules, and synthetic groups of molecules follow in logical order of evolution. Now the successive products, in which this physico-chemical type of relatedness obtains, have certain _new and distinctive properties_ which are not merely the algebraic sum of the properties of the component things prior to synthesis. We may speak of them as constitutive of the products in a higher stage of relatedness, thus distinguishing constitutive from additive properties.[54] Similarly when B, the vital relations, are evolved, the living products, in which these specific relations obtain, have new constitutive properties, on the importance of which vitalists are right in insisting, though I emphatically dissent from some of the conclusions they draw from their presence. For if, beyond the physico-chemical, a special agency be invoked to account for the presence of new constitutive properties, then, in the name of logical consistency, let us invoke special agencies to account for the constitutive properties within the physico-chemical--for radio-active properties for example. If a Source of phenomena be postulated, why not postulate One Source of all phenomena from the very meanest to the very highest? There remains the case of C--the synthetic whole in which cognitive relatedness obtains. This is unquestionably more difficult of scientific interpretation. But I believe that like statements may be made in this case also. What we have, I conceive, is just a new and higher type of relatedness with specific characters of its own. But of this more in the sequel.

It must be remembered that A, B, C stand for _relationships_ and that the related things are progressively more complex within more complex relational wholes. Relationships are every whit as real as are the terms they hold in their grasp. I do not say more real; but I say emphatically as real. And if this be so, then they ought somehow to be introduced into our formulae, instead of being taken for granted. We give H{2}O as the formula for a molecule of water. But that molecule is something very much more than two atoms of hydrogen + one atom of oxygen. The absolutely distinctive feature of the molecule is the specific relatedness of these atoms. This constitutive mode of relatedness is, however, just taken for granted. And it is scarcely matter for surprise that, when we find not less specific modes of vital relatedness in the living organism, they are too apt to be just ignored!

Revert now to the empirical outcome of scientific research, for as such I regard it, that new constitutive properties emerge when new modes and types of relatedness occur, and when new products are successively formed in evolutional synthesis. This, it will be said, involves the acceptance of what is now commonly called creative evolution. I am far from denying that, in the universe of discourse where Source is under consideration, the adjective is justifiable. But, in the universe of discourse of science, I regard it as inappropriate. What we have is just plain evolution; and we must simply accept the truth--if, as I conceive, it be a truth--that in all true evolution there is more in the conclusion than is given in the premises; which is only a logical way of saying that there is more in the world to-day than there was in the primitive fire-mist. Not more 'matter and energy', but more varied relationships and new properties, quite unpredictable from what one may perhaps speak of as the fire-mist's point of view. This is no new doctrine, though it has received of late a new emphasis. Mill, dealing with causation,[55] speaks of a 'radical and important distinction'. There are, he says in substance, some cases in which the joint effect of the several causes is the algebraical sum of their separate effects. He speaks of this as the 'composition of causes', and illustrates it from the 'composition of forces' in dynamics. 'But in the other description of cases', he says, 'the agencies which are brought together cease entirely, and a totally different set of phenomena arise.' In these cases 'a concurrence of causes takes place which calls into action new laws bearing no analogy to any that we can trace in the separate operation of the causes'. They might, he suggests, be termed 'heteropathic laws'. G. H. Lewes, too,[56] in his _Problems of Life and Mind_, drew the distinction between properties which are _resultant_ and those which are _emergent_. These suggestions were open to Spencer's consideration long before the last edition of _First Principles_ appeared. They were, however, too foreign to the established lines of his thought to call for serious consideration.

But if new relationships and new properties appear in the course of evolutionary progress, where is the opportunity for that unification of scientific knowledge which, according to Spencer, is the goal of philosophy? To be frank, I am by no means sure that this question can be answered in a manner that is other than tentative. Perhaps we have not yet reached the stage at which more than provisional unification is possible. Such provisional unification as is suggested by a survey of the facts is that of seemingly uniform correlation in a hierarchy of logical implication. There are certain modes of relatedness which belong to the cognitive type. It would seem that whenever these obtain they may be correlated with other modes of relatedness which are of the vital or physiological type; and that these, in turn, may be correlated with those that are physico-chemical. Thus C implies B, and B implies A. The order cannot be reversed. Physico-chemical relations, _as a class_, do not imply those that are physiological.[57] The implication is not symmetrical. Spencer was within sight of this when he spoke[58] of the abstract-concrete sciences as 'instrumental' with respect to the concrete sciences, though the latter are not 'instrumental' in the same sense with respect to the former. But unfortunately he regarded the 'chasm' between the two groups as 'absolute'. And for him the proper home of properties--of all properties it would appear--is the abstract-concrete group--mechanics, physics, and chemistry. This seemingly leaves no place for a specific type of properties connected with vital relatedness as such. In fact Spencer's method of treatment reduces all modes of relatedness to the A type, the laws of which are, for him, the primary 'causes' of all kinds of differentiation and integration. Hence the laws of biology and psychology can ultimately be expressed and explained, he thinks, in mechanical or mechanistic terms. But in the doctrine of implication they are just the laws of B and C respectively, though laws of A may underlie them in a logical sense. And as we ascend the evolutionary plane from A to AB and thence to ABC--from the physico-chemical to the vital and thence to the cognitive--we find new modes of relatedness, new forms of more complex integration and synthesis, new properties successively appearing in serial order. This seems to me simply to express, in outline, the net result of interpretation based on empirical observation--though much, very much, requires to be filled in by future research. And the new properties are not merely additive of preceding properties; they are constitutive, and characterize the higher evolutionary products as such. Why they are thus constitutive, science is unable to say. Spencer, of course, calls in the Unknowable to supply the required nexus.[59] Otherwise, in each case, he confesses that 'we can learn nothing more than that here is one of the uniformities in the order of phenomena'.[60] None the less we may be able some day to establish an ordinal correlation[61] of cognitive processes with physiological processes, and an ordinal correlation of these physiological processes with those of the physico-chemical type. That I conceive to be the ideal of strictly scientific interpretation if it is to be raised progressively to a level approaching that of the exact sciences. It certainly is not yet attained. But I see no reason why we should not regard it as attainable. It will involve the very difficult determination of many correlation coefficients and constants--and for some of these our data are, it must be confessed, both scanty and unreliable.

We must here note a much-discussed departure on Spencer's part from his earlier position. On the first page of the _Biology_ in the earlier editions, and in the last, we are told:

'The properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by combination are not destroyed in reality. It follows from the persistence of force that the properties of a compound are resultants of the properties of its components, resultants in which the properties of the components are severally in full action, though mutually obscured.'

There is no hint here of Mill's heteropathic laws nor of Lewes's emergents. But in the last edition a special chapter is inserted on the Dynamic Element in Life. We here find a tardy recognition of the presence of specific vital characters.

'The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible as the results of any physical actions known to us.... In brief, then, we are obliged to confess that Life in its essence cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms.'[62]

I speak of this as a tardy recognition; but it is one that does honour to the man; it is a frank admission that his previous treatment was in some measure inadequate, which a smaller man would not have had the honesty or the strength of character to make. Of course it is traced down to the Unknowable. 'Life as a principle of activity is unknown and unknowable; while phenomena are accessible to thought the implied noumenon is inaccessible.'[63] Still, certain specific characteristics of living organisms are explicitly recognized as among the accessible phenomena; and these cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. But did Spencer fully realize how big a hole this knocks in the bottom of the purely mechanical interpretation of nature he had for so long championed?

There remains for consideration the place of the cognitive relation in Spencer's philosophy of science. We need not here discuss his transfigured realism. Apart from the customary references to the Unknowable, of which what is knowable is said to be symbolic, it comes to little more than laying special emphasis on the truism that what is known in the so-called objective world involves the process of knowing; from which it follows that, apart from knowing it the objective world cannot be known. From this Spencer draws the conclusion that terms in cognitive relatedness have their very nature determined in and through that relatedness, and cannot _in themselves_ be what they are, and as they are, in the field of cognitive symbolism. This may or may not be true. I am one of those who question the validity of the arguments in favour of this conclusion. Since, however, the philosophy of science deals only with the knowable--of which the so-called appearances with which we have direct acquaintance are the primary data--we need not here trouble ourselves with the controversy between realists and symbolists. Even on Spencer's view the world as symbolized is the real world _for science_.

Now one way of expressing the fact that the cognitive relation is always present where knowledge is concerned is to proclaim 'the truth that our states of consciousness are the only things we can know'.[64] But it is a terribly ambiguous way of expressing the fact. What is here meant by a state of consciousness? So far as cognition is concerned it is, or at any rate it involves, a relationship between something known and the organism, as knowing--for Spencer assuredly the organism, though a so-called inner aspect therein. Of course it is a very complex relationship. It comprises relations in what is known, and relations in the organism as knowing. Hence Spencer defines life, psychical as well as physical, as 'the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations'.[65]

'That which distinguishes Psychology is that each of its propositions takes account both of the connected internal phenomena and of the connected external phenomena to which they refer. It is not only the one, nor only the other, that characterises cognition. It is the connexion between these two connexions.'[66]

So far well. Cognition is a very complex network of relatedness involving many terms. What are these terms? For Spencer the internal terms are ultimately nervous (=psychic) shocks in highly integrated aggregates; and the external terms are, proximately at least, things in the environment. But both alike are spoken of as states of consciousness. There is surely an opening for ambiguity here. Sometimes, too, the words subjective affections are used in place of states of consciousness. 'Thus we are brought to the conclusion that what we are conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective affections.'[67] Well, these states of consciousness, these subjective affections, fall into two great classes--the vivid and the faint. The former, which we know as sensations, accompany direct and therefore strong excitations of the nerve-centres; the latter, which we know as remembered sensations, or ideas of sensations, accompany indirect and therefore weak excitations of the same nerve-centres.[68] And then we are told that the aggregate of the faint is what we call the mind, the subject, the _ego_; the aggregate of the vivid is what we call the external world, the object, the _non-ego_.[69] It would seem, then, that the aggregate of vivid _subjective_ affections is the _objective_ world so far as knowable. To say the least of it, this terminology is somewhat perplexing.

No doubt our knowledge of the external world involves a subtle and intricate inter-relation of what is experienced vividly and what is experienced faintly--of what is actually presented and what is ideally re-presented. The distinction between them is a valid one. But when Spencer equates this distinction with that between the external world and the mind, as he does in the passages to which I have referred, the validity of his procedure is seriously open to question.

It must be confessed that an adequate analysis of cognitive relatedness on scientific lines is not to be found in Spencer's works. I am not sure that it is yet to be found in the works of any other philosopher, though there are many signs that the difficult problems it involves are receiving serious attention. This much seems certain, for those who accept the spirit, though not perhaps the letter, of Spencer's teaching: that there it is as a constitutive mode of relatedness in the realm of nature, and that, if it forms part of the evolutionary scheme, if it is present in the conclusion, so far reached, though it was absent in the physico-chemical premises, if it is to be included in a philosophy of science it must be dealt with by that philosophy on lines strictly analogous to those on which any other relational problem is treated. Firmly as we may believe in the reality of Source, we must not call to our aid some psychic entity, some entelechy, some _élan vital_, to help us out of our difficulties; for one and all of these lie wholly outside the universe of discourse of science; and not one of them affords the smallest help in solving a single scientific problem in a manner that is itself scientific.

We have seen that Spencer believed that the task of psychology is to investigate the correlation of external and internal relations, and, in that sense, itself to correlate them within a scientific interpretation. Now the outcome of the former correlation is some form of behaviour or conduct on the part of the organism. No doubt such behaviour affords data to be dealt with in subsequent cognition. But it implies the prior cognition which leads up to it; and it is this prior cognition, abstracted from the behaviour to which it leads, that we have to consider. It is so terribly complex that it is difficult to deal with it comprehensibly in a brief space. Let me, however, try to do so, at least in tentative outline. There occurs, let us say, an external event in the physical world, such as the motion of a billiard-ball across the table; and when during its progress this stimulates the retina, there is an internal physico-chemical process which runs its course in retina, optic nerves, and the central nervous system. We may regard these two processes, external and internal, as _so far_, of like physical order. With adequate knowledge the two could, in some measure, be serially correlated as such. But the physico-chemical processes in the organism are not only of this physical type. They are vital or physiological as well. And this makes a real difference. Of course this statement is open to question. But I, for one, believe that there are specific relations present in physiological processes, _qua_ vital, other than those of the physico-chemical type--relations which are effective and which require a distinctive name. So far I am a vitalist. At some stage of evolution these new modes of effective relatedness came into being, whereas in the fire-mist and for long afterwards they were not in being. None the less when they did actually come into being, under conditions of which we are at present ignorant--though not so ignorant as we were--they were dependent upon, and, for our interpretation, they logically imply, the physico-chemical relations which are also present. In any given case they further imply, through heredity-relatedness, the evolutionary history of the organism in which they obtain. This so-called historical element in biology no doubt involves a characteristic vital relationship. But, I take it, the physico-chemical constitution of any inorganic compound, and of any molecule therein, has also its history--has relationship to past occurrences within its type, which have helped to make it what it is. Still, in the organism the relation to past happenings has a quite distinctive form which we deal with in terms of heredity. See, then, how we stand so far. The internal physiological process implies a long chain of heredity-relationships through which the organism is prepared for its occurrence. It also implies a physico-chemical basis, an underlying[70] physico-chemical process. And this implies as a condition of its occurrence, the external event, the passage of the billiard-ball across the table. In a broad sense we may say that the inner process knows the external event which is a condition of its occurrence. But we have not yet reached cognition of the psychological type.

Before passing on to indicate, in tentative outline, the nature of this higher mode of relatedness, I pause to note two points. The first is that knowing in that extended sense which I have borrowed,[71] is essentially selective in its nature. The physiological process, in the case I have taken, knows only that external event which is directly before the eyes and which is serially correlated with changes in the retinal images through the stimulation of specialized receptors. Of other external events it has no such knowledge. Compare this with the gravitative knowledge--if a yet wider extension of the meaning of the word be permitted--which the earth has of the sun and all the other members of the solar system--nay more, in degrees perhaps infinitesimal, of all other material bodies in the universe. The motion of the earth in its orbit implies the whole of this vast field of gravitative relatedness. The existing orbital motion at any moment implies, too, the preceding motion which it has, in a sense, inherited from the past. Abolish the rest of the universe at this moment and the earth's motion would cease to be orbital. In virtue of its 'inheritance from the past', it would continue at uniform velocity in one direction. The continuous change of direction and velocity we observe, is a response which implies gravitative knowledge. In a sense, then, the whole solar system is known by the earth as it swings in its orbit.

The second point may be introduced by a question. Granted that we may say, in a very liberal sense, that the earth in its motion has this gravitative knowledge--is such knowledge accompanied by awareness? We do not know. But the point I have in mind is this, that the question itself is vague. Awareness of what? There must be awareness of something; and a definite question should be directed towards the nature of that something. For example: is the earth aware of its own motion? Or is it aware of the solar system? Or is it aware of the relation of the one to the other? If it be said that the second of these is meant when we ask whether the knowledge is accompanied by awareness, well and good. The answer will serve to define the question. Take now a case of biological knowledge. Are the plants in the cottager's window, when they grow towards the light, aware of a process in their own tissues? Or are they aware of the sunshine? Or are they in some measure aware of the connexion between the one and the other? To all these questions we must answer, I suppose, that we do not know. But it may have been worth while to ask them in a definite way.

We pass, then, to cognition in the usual acceptation of the term--to what we speak of as knowledge in the proper and narrower sense. My contention is that this is a mode of relatedness which science must endeavour to treat on precisely the same lines as it deals with any other natural kind of relatedness. At some stage of evolution it came into being, whereas in the fire-mist, and for long afterwards, it was not in being. None the less when it did come into being, it was dependent on, and for our interpretation it logically implies, underlying physiological processes, as they in turn imply physico-chemical processes, in each case serially correlated. It is pre-eminently selective. And just as any physiological process, however externally conditioned, is grounded in[72] the constitution of the organism, as such, so too is any cognitive process grounded in the constitution of the organism as one in which this higher type of relatedness has supervened. Again, just as the physiological constitution implies a prolonged racial preparation, describable in terms of that mode of relatedness we name heredity, so, too, does any cognitive process imply, not only this racial preparation of the biological kind, but also an individual preparation of the psychological kind--implies relatedness to what we call, rather loosely, prior experience--which itself implies a concurrent physiological preparation.