Modern Science

The Progress of Civilisation is not wholly a uniform drift towards better things It may perhaps wear this aspect if we map it on a scale which is large enough But such broad views obscure the details on which rests oui whole under- standing of the process New epochs emerge with comparative suddenness, if we have regard to the scores of thousands of years throughout which the complete history extends Se- cluded races suddenly take their places m the mam stream of events technological discoveries transform the mechan- ism of human life a primitive art quickly flowers into full satisfaction of some aesthetic craving great religions m their crusading youth spread thiough the nations the peace of Heaven and the sword of the Lord The sivrp£nf.h century qf pur era saw_Jb.e,-dlsrUPtiOt L-iif Western Christia n ity and th e..rise^ ■ . ■ . It was

aiTagTor ferment Nothing was . . ■ ' ch was

opened — new worlds and new ideas In science, Copernicus and Vesalius may be chosen as representative figures they typify the new cosmology and the scientific emphasis on direct observation Giordano Bruno was the martyr, though the cause for which he suffered was not that of science, but that of free imaginative speculation His death in the year 1600 ushered in the first century of modern science m the strict sense of the term In his execution there was an uncon- scious symbolism for the subsequent tone of scientific thought has contained distiust of his type of general specula- tiveness The Reformation, for all its importance, may be considered as a domestic affair of the European races Even the Christianity of the East viewed it with profound disen- gagement Furthermore, such disruptions are no new phe- nomena in the history of Christianity or of other religions When we project this great revolution upon the whole history of the Christian Church, we cannot look upon it as intro- ducing a new principle into human life For good or for evil, it was a great traasformation of leligion, but it was not the coming of religion It did not itself claim to be so Re-

10 Science \nd the Modern World

formers maintained that they were only restoring what had been forgotten

It IS quite otherwise with the rise of modern science In every way it contrasts with the contemporary religious move- ment The Reformation was a popular upiising, and for a century and a half dienched Europe in blood The beginnings of the scientific movement were confined to a minoiity among the intellectual elite In a generation which saw the Thirty Years’ War and remembered Alva in the Netherlands, the worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suf- fered an honourable detention and a mild repioof, before dying peacefully m his bed The way in which the peisecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet com- mencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir

■ . ■ " ” . ’is

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ceeding slowly tor many ages in the European peoples At last It issued in the rapid development of science and has theieby strengthened itself by its most obvious application The new mentality is more important even than the new science and the new technology It has altered the metaphysi- cal presuppositions and the imaginative contents of our minds, so that now the old stimuli provoke a new response Pei haps my metaphoi of a new colour is too strong What I mean is just that slightest change of tone which yet makes all the difference This is exactly illustrated by a sentence from a published letter of that adorable genius. William Janies When he was finishing his great treatise on the Pnn- ciplc\ of Psychology, he wrote to his brother Henry James, ..h ave to forg e every sentence in the teeth of irreducible aiid'

.§luWiomJaSir'~ "" -

This new tinge to modem minds is a vehement and pas- ^sionate interest in the i elation of geneial principles to ii- t^jeducible and stubborn facts All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in ‘irreducible and stiibhoni facts’ all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstiact generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society Previously it had appeared sporadically

The Origins of Modern Science

and as if by chance This balance of mind has now become part of the tradition which infects cultivated thought It is the salt which keeps life sweet The mam business of univer- sities IS to transmit this tradition as a widespread inheritance from generation to generation

Another contrast which singles out science from among the European movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is its universality Modem science was born m Europe, but its home is the whole world In the last two cen- turies there has been a long and confused impact of western modes upon the civilisation of Asia The wise men of the East have been puzzling, and are puzzling, as to what may be the regulative secret of life which can be passed from West to East without the wanton destruction of their own inhen-

tance which they so rightly prize More and more it is be- coming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook This is trans om country to countr

ever there jsji rational socie ty.

■ In~ffiii~course of lectures I shall not discuss the details of scientific discovery My theme is the energising of a state of mind in the modern world, its broad generalisation, and its impact upon other spiritual forces There are two ways of reading history, forwards and backwards In the history of thought, we require both methods A climate of opinion — ^to use the happy phrase of a seventeenth century writer — re- quires for Its understanding the consideration of its antece- dents and Its issues Accordingly in this lecture I shall con- sider some of the antecedents of our modern approach to the mvestigation of nature

In_the_ first place, there c

There is a widespread instinctive conviction in the existence

Nature I have used the word instinctive advisedly. It does noTmatter what men say m words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts The words may ultimately destroy the instincts But until this has occurred, words do not count This remark is important m respect to the history of scientific thought For we shall find that since the time of

Hume, the fashionable scientific philosophy has been such as to deny the rationality of science This conclusion lies upon the surface of Hume’s philosophy Take for example, the fol- lowing passage from Section IV of his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding'

In a word, then, every effect is a distinct event from its cause. It could not, therefore, be discovered m the cause, and the first invention or conception of it, a pi ion, must be entirely arbitrary.’

12 SCIPNCE AND THE MODERN WoRLD

If the cause in itself discloses no information as to the effect, so that the fiist invention of it must be entirely arbitrary, it follows at once that science is impossible, except in the sense ot establishing entirely arbitrary connections which are not wairanted by anything intrinsic to the natuies either of

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In view of this strange contradiction in scientific thought, it IS of the first importance to consider the antecedents of a faith which is impervious to the demand for a consistent rationality We have therefore to tr ace the rise of t he instinc . tive faith _ tbat there is an Order of Nature which can be traced in every detailed occuirence

Of course we all share m this faith, and we therefore be- lieve that the reason for the faith is oui apprehension of its truth But the foimation of a general idea — such as the idea of the Order of Nature — and the grasp of its importance, and the observation of its exemplification m a variety of occasions j are by no means the necessary consequences of the truth of the idea in question Familiar things happen, and mankind ; does not bother about them It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious Accordingly 1 wish to considei the stages in which this analysis became explicit, and finally became unalterably impressed upon the educated, minds of Western Europe

Obviously, the mam recurrences of life are too insistent to, escape the notice of the least rational of humans, and even^ before the dawn ot rationality, they have impressed them- selves upon the instincts of animals It is unnecessary to labour the point that in broad outline certain general states of nature recur, and that oui very natures have adapted them-( selves to such lepctitions

But there is a complementary fact which is equally true and equally obvious — nothing ever really recurs in exact detail No two days aie identical, no two winters What has' gone, has gone forever Accordingly the practical philosophy, of mankind has been to expect the broad recuriences, and to accept the details as emanating fiom the inscrutable womb ot things beyond the ken of rationality Men expected the sun to rise, hut the wind blowcth wheie it listcth

Ccrtamlv from the classic d Greek civilisation onwards there have been men, and indeed groups ot men, who have placed themselves beyond this acceptance of an ultimate ir- rationality Such men have endeavoured to explain all phe- nomena as the outcome ot an older of things which extends^

The Origins of Modern Science

to every detail Geniuses such as Aristotle, or Archimedes, or Roger Bacon, must have been endowed with the full scientific mentality, which mstmctively holds that all things great and small are conceivable as exemplifications of general prm- ciples which reign throughout the natural order But untiLthexlose of the Middle Ages, the, general educated

coordinated seaic h for the discovery of these hypothetical pri nciples Either people were doubtful about the existence of "sucEprmcIples, or were doubtful about any success m finding them, or took no interest in thinkmg about them, or were ob- livious to their practical importance when found For whatever reason, search was languid, if we have regard to the oppor- tunities of a high civilisation and the length of time con- cerned Why did the pace suddenly quicken m the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ At the close of the Middle Ages a new mentality discloses itself Invention stimulated thought, thought quickened physical speculation, Grgek manuscripts disclosed what the ancients had discovered /Finally although m the year 1500 Europe knew less than Archimedes who died

m the year 1500 Europe knew less than Archimedes who died m the year 212 B C , yet m the year 1700, Newton’s Pn n. cipia. had been writtenland thft world, was well started o n the mode rn epoch )

There "havi^edn great civilisations m which the peculiar balance of mind required for science has only fitfully ap- peared and has produced the feeblest result For example, the more we know of Chinese art, of Chinese literature, and of the Chinese philosophy of life, the more we admire the heights to which that civilisation attained For thousands of years, there have been m China acute and learned men patiently devoting their lives to study Having regard to the span of time, and to the population concerned, China forms me largest volume of civilisation which the world has seen. There is no reason to doubt the intrinsic capacity of individ- ual Chinamen for the pursuit of science And yet Chinese scienM IS practically negligible There is no reason to believe that China if left to itself would have ever produced any progress in science The same may be said of India Further- more, if the Persians had enslaved the Greeks, there is no dennite ground for belief that science would have flour- ished m Europe The Romans showed no particular orig- mality in that hne Even as it was, the Greeks, though they founded the movement, did not sustain it with the concen- trated interest which modern Europe has shown I am not alluding to the last few generations of the European peoples

Science and the Modern World

on both sides of the ocean, I mean the smaller Europe of the Reformation period, distracted as it was with wars and re- ligious disputes Consider the world of the eastern Mediter- ranean, trom Sicily to western Asia, during the period of about 1400 years from the death of Archimedes [in 212 B C 1 to the irruption of the Tartars There were wais and revolutions and large changes of religion but nothing much worse than the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies throughout Europe There Was a great and wealthy Civilisation, Pagan, Christian, Maliometan In that period a great deal was added to science But on the whole the prog- ress was slow and wavenng, and, except m mathematics, the men of the Renaissance practically started from the position which Archimedes had reached There had been some prog- ress in medicine and some progress in astronomy But the total advance was very little compared to the marvellous suc- cess of the seventeenth century For example, compare the progress ot scientific knowledge from the year 1560, just before the births of Galileo and of Kepler, up to the year 1700, when Newton was in the height of his fame, with the ' progress in the ancient period, already mentioned, exactly ten times as long

Nevertheless, Gia ece w -- *•-- i- , .

to Gregcmthat we must Ir modmutlsias We all Knc '

Mediterranean there was a very flourishing school of Ionian philosophers, deeply interested m theories concerning nature Their ideas have been transmitted to us, enriched by the genius of Plato and Aristotle But, with the exception of Aristotle, and it is a large exception, this school of thought! had not attained to the complete scientific mentality In| some W'ays, it was better The Greek genius was philosoph-l leal, lucid and logical The men of this group were primarily asking philosophical questions What is the substratum of nature? Is it fire, or earth, or water, or some combination of! any two, or of all three? Or is it a meie flux, not reducible' to some static material’ Mathematics interested them mightily They invented its generality, analysed its piemises,' and made notable discoveries of theorems by a rigid adher-* ence to deductive reasoning. Their minds were infected with* an eagei geneiality They demanded clear, bold ideas, and/ strict reasoning from them All this was excellent, it wasi genius, It was ideal preparatory work. But it was not science as we understand it The patience of minute observation was not neiirly so prominent Then genius was not so apt for the State of irnaginative muddled suspense which piecedcs suc-^

geneiahsation They were lucid thinkers* and bold reasoners. ,

The Origins of Modern Science

Of course there were exceptions, and at the very top for example, Aristotle and Archimedes Also for patient observa- tion, there were the astronomers There was a mathematical lucidity about the stars, and a fascination about the small numerable band of run-a-way planets Every philosophy is tinged with the colouring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges ex-

plicitly into Its trains of reasoning The Greek view of natur e, at l east that cosmology transmitted ^o m them to*Ta.ter"^es . ■ ^Ss ^sehtlallv drag ialT i r~ I t isn imriTffiessarrhrwrong for this reason but it was overwhelmingly dramatic It thus con-

ceived nature as articulated in the way of a work of dramatic art, for the exemplification of general ideas converging to an end Nature was differentiated so as to provide its proper end for each thing There was the centre of the universe as the

end of motion for those things which are heavy, and the celestial spheres as the end of motion for those things whose natures lead them upwards The celestial spheies were for things which are impassible and ingenerable, the lower regions for things passible and generable Nature was a drama in which each thing played its part.

I do not say that this is a view to which Aristotle would

have subscribed without severe reservations, m fact without the sort of reservations which we ourselves would make But

it was the view which subsequent Greek thought extracted from Aristotle and passed on to the Middle Ages The effect of such an imaginative setting for nature was to damp down the historical spirit For it was the end which seemed il- luminating, so why bother about the beginning'^ T he Reforma- tion and the scientific movement weie twn-_ ^peetg.-n£-i.Iia f^lt which V - - filuaLjaovsment-of-the

I . ■ origins of Christianity,

and Francis Bacon’s appeal to efficient causes as against final causes, were two sides of one movement of thought Also for this reason Galileo and his adversaries were at hopeless cross purposes, as can be seen from his Dialogues on the Two Systems of the World

Galileo keeps harping on how things happen, whereas his adversaries had a complete theory as to why things happen Unfortunately the two theories did not bring out the same results Galileo insists upon ‘irreducible and stubborn facts,’ and Simplicius, his opponent, brings foi-ward reasons, com- pletely satisfactory, at least to himself It is a great mistake to conceive this historical revolt as an appeal to reason On the contrary, it was through and through an anti-mtellectudlist movement ft was the return to the contemplation of brute tact, and it was based on a recoil from the inflexible ration-

Science and the Modern World

alitv of medieval thought In making this statement I am merely siimmaiismg what at the time the adherents of the old regime themselves asserted For example, in the fourth book of Father Paul SaiTJi’s History of the Council of Tient, you will find that in the yeai 1551 the Papal Legates who piesided ovei the Council ordered ‘That the Divines ought to confirm then opinions with the holy Scriptuie, Tra- ditions of the Apostles, sacied and approved Councils, and by the Constitutions and Authorities of the holy Fathers, that they ought to use brevity, and avoid superfluous and unprof, liable questions, and perverse contentions This order

did not please the Italian Divines, who said it was a novity, and a condemning of School-Divinity, which, m all dif- ficulties, useih teason, and because it was not lawful [i e , by this decree] to treat as St Thomas [Aquinas], St Bona- venture, and other famous men did ’

It IS impossible not to feel sympathy with these Italian divines, maintaining the lost cause of unbridled lationalism They were deserted on all hands The Protestants weie in full revolt against them The Papacy failed to suppoit them, and the Bishops of the Council could not even understand them i For a few sentences below the foregoing quotation, we lead; ‘Though many complained here-of [i.e , of the Decree], yet It prevailed but little, because generally the Fathers [i e , the Bishops] desired to hear men speak with intelligible terms, not abstiusely, as in the matter of Justification, and others already handled ’

Poor belated medievalists! When they used reason they! were not even intelligible to tlie rulmg powers of their epoch, ' It will take centuries before stubborn facts are reducible byl re,ison, and meanwhile the pendulum swings slowly and' heavily to the extreme of the historical method Forty-three years after the Italian divines had written this memorial, Rich,ard Hooker in his famous Laws of Eccle\iasti- cal Polity makes exactly the same complaint of his Puritan adversaries' Hookers balanced thought — from which the appellation ‘The Judicious Hooker’ is derived — and his dif-‘ fuse style, which is the vehicle of such thought, make hisl writings singukirly unfit for the process ot summaiising by! d short, pointed quotation But, in the section referred to^ he reproaches his opponents with Their Dispai agement of , "i?’’ own position definitely lefers

to Die greatest amongst the school-divines’ by which desisr- nation I presume that he refers to St Thomas Aquinas Hookers Eiilesiastical Polity was published just before' S,irpi s Co i("ci/ of Tient Accordingly there was complete m-'

^ C/ Book III, Scttion Mil i

The Origins of Modern Science

denendence between the two works But both the Italian divnes of 1551, and Hooker at the end of that century testify to the anti-rationalist trend of thought at that epoch, and m this I espect contrast then own age with the epoch of scholas- ticism

This reaction was undoubtedly a very necessary corrective to the unguarded rationalism of the Middle Ages But re- actions run to extremes Accordingly, although one outcome of this reaction was the birth of modern science, yet we must remember that science thereby inherited the bias of thought to whi'h It owes its origin

The effect of Greek dramatic literature was manvsided so iSr iis concerns the vaiious wavs m which it indirectly. -af- fpcipd tneffiRVal thought. The pilgrim fath^s of liTe saentiflc

its inevitable issue, is the vision possessed by science Fate in Gieek Tragedy becomes the order of nature in modern thought The absorbing inteicst in the particular heioic inci- dents, as an example and a verification of the workings of fate reappears m our epoch as concentration of interest on the crucial experiments It was my good fortune to be present at the meeting of the Royal Society in London when the As- tronomer Royal for Eneland announced that the photographic plates of the famous eclipse as measured by his colleagues m Greenwich Observatory, had verified the prediction of Em- stern that lays of light are bent as they pass in the neighbour- hood of the sun The whole atmosphere of tense interest was exactly that of the Greek drama, we were the chorus com- menting on the decree of destiny as disclosed in the develop- ment of a supreme incident There was dramatic quality ra the very staging — the traditional ceremonial, and in the background the picture of Newton to remind us that the greatest of scientific generalisations was now, after more than two centuiies, to receive its fiist modification Nor was the personal interest wanting a gieat adventure m thought had at length come safe to shore

Let me here remind vnii that the p. ssp.nrp of Hramaf ip tragedy is not unhnppinps.s It reside s in . t.bp....sn1pmni ty-,rL the remorseless WOrking..nf things! — Thic inp.vitnhlpnpss nf rlpitiny

can only be illustrated . in tenns.J3.f-.human life byancidents

wbicli m fact involve unhappiness. EcmjtJs-Qnly-by-ihp.m- that the. Jutllitv oLfiscape. can be made evident m th e dianiai- This . t^Plfl!:a£ksUJimtabl en.e wh at p ervade s scientific thought 4 The laws of physics aie the tieciees of fate.

cip'ffrA'l'fT gnsrXeschvliis-SophQcles. Eunpides Their vision of fate "tbrnoiseless and indifferent, urging a tiasic incident to

Science and the Modern World

conception of the m oral orde r in th e Greek_p lavs was mrr~r~dKcQ re . tfiO ianiiatfsts It must have passed into the literary tradition from the general serious opinion of the times But in finding this magnificent ex- pression, It thereby deepened the stream of thought from which it arose. The spectacle o L-a— mo ra l- ordei L-aas- im- pressed upon the imagination o f a classical civilisation ■'I'he'fime came when that gireaTsociety decayed, and Eu- rope passed into the Middle Ages The direct influence of Greek literature vanished But the concept of the moral order and of the order of nature had enshrined itself in the Stoic ! philosophy. Foi example, Lecky in his Histoiy of European Morals tells us ‘Seneca maintains that the Divinity has deter- mined all things by an inexorable law of destiny, which He has decreed, but which He Himself obeys ’ But the most effective way m which the Stoics influenced the mentality of the Middle Ages was by the diffused sense of older which arose from Roman law Again to quote Lecky ‘The Roman legislation was in a twofold manner the child of philosophy It was in the first place formed upon the philosophical model, for, instead of being a mere empirical system adjusted to the existing requirements of society, it laid down abstract principles of right to which it endeavoured to conform, and, m the next place, these principles were borrowed directly from Stoicism ’ In spite of the actual anarchy throughout large regions in Europe after the collapse of the Empire, the sense of legal order always haunted the racial memories of the Imperial populations Also the Western Church was always there as a livmg embodiment of the traditions of Imperial rule

■ '-.1.0' ■ I . 1 ' "

in-Hduch it should _fun(^ion/Therc was nothing vague It was not a question of adhuRole maxims, but of definite pio- cedure to put things right and to keep them there The Middle Ages formed one long training of the intellect of Western Europe m the sense of ordei There may have been some deficiency m respect to practicqj But the idea nevei for a moment lost its grip “ ' ch of orderly

ratio nalist very anarchy

quickeneffTffe sense , ^ 3 the modern

anarchy of Europe has stimulated the intellectual vision of a League of Nations

The Origins of Modern Science

But for science something more is wanted than a general sense of the order in things It needs but a sentence to point out how the habit of definite exact thought was implanted in the European mind by the long dominance of scholastic logic and scholastic divinity The habit remained after the philos- ophy had been repudiated, the priceless habit of looking for an exact point and of sticking to it when found Galileo owes more to Aristotle than appears on the surface of his Dialogues he owes to him his clear head and his analytic mind

I do not think, however, that I have even yet brought out the gieatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement I mean the inexpugnable belief

of scientists would be without hope It is this instinctive conviction, vividly poised befoie the imagination, which is the motive power of research — that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled How has f5Ts'‘''c6nviction”Beeh

that every detail ed occiirience can be coiTelated with _jds antece( ^ enti"ih~a pglect[y~33inite manner., ex e m5irfv ing--gen- .eral ’principles vVitliout ttiis ~Eeliefthe incredible labours

ordered the search into nature could only result in the vin- dication of the faith in rationality Remember that I am not talkmg of the explicit beliefs of a few individuals What I mean is the impiess on the European mind arising from the unquestioned faith of centuiies By this I mean the instinctive tone of thought and not a mere creed of words In Asia, the conceptions of God were of a being who was either too arbitrary or too impersonal for such ideas to have much effect on instinctive habits of mind Any definite oc- currence might be due to the fiat of an irrational despot, or might issue from some impersonal, inscrutable origin of things There was not the same confidence as in the intel- ligible rationality of a personal being I am not arguing that the European trust in the scrutability of nature was logically justified even by its own theology My only point is to under- stand how It arose , explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently lo fn?

Science and the Modern World

1 ,

iLdl

life.i aiL^li£iL<3aaa

This qualification ‘for their own sake’ is important. The first phase of the Middle Ages was an age of symbolism It was an age of vast ideas, and ot piimitive technique There was little to be done with natuie, except to com a hard living from it But there were realms of thought to be ex- plored, realms of philosophy and realms of theology Prim- itive ait could svmbohse those ideas which filled all thought- ful minds The first phase of medieval art has a haunting charm beyond compare its own intrinsic quality is en- hanced by the fact that its message, which stretched beyond art's own self-justification of aesthetic achievement, was the symbolism of things lying behind nature itself In this sym- bolic phase, medieval art energised in nature as its medium, but pointed to anothei woild

In order to understand the contrast between these early Middle Ages and the atmosphere required by the scientific mentality, we should compare the sixth century in Italy with the sixteenth century In both centuries the Italian genius was laving the foundations of a new epoch The history of the three centuries preceding the eailier period, despite the prom- ise for the future introduced by the rise of Cnnstiamty, is overwhelmingly infected by the sense of the decline of civili- sation in each generation something has been lost As we read the records, we are haunted by the shadow of the coming barbarism There are great men, with fine achieve- ments in action or in thought But their total ettecL is merely for some short time to airest the general decline In the sixth century vre are. so far as Italy is concerned, at the lowest point of the curve But in that century every action is laying the foundation for the tremendous rise of the new Euro- ' pean civilisation In the background the Bvzigyit'nP-

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'as freed

le old Italian genius for creating oiganisations which shall be protective of ideals of cultural, activity It IS impossible not to sympathise with the Goths’ ] yet there can be no doubt but th.it a thousand years of the' P'pacv weie infinitely moie valuable for Europe than any etlects deiivalile from a well-established Gothic kingdom of' Itiilv

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lan

“"IKe soci-

The Origins of Modern Science gincriraT fhoupht of BuTOpe m the succeeding _ggntun6L. Law

& both an engine for government and a condition restraining government The canon law of the Church, and the civil law of the State, owe to Justinian’s lawyers their influence on the development of Europe They established in the Western mind the ideal that an authority should be at once lawful, and law-enforcing, and should in itself exhibit a rationally adjusted system of organisation The sixth century m Italy gave the initial exhibition of the way in which the impress of these ideas was fostered by contact with the Byzantine Em- pire.

Thirdly, m the non-political sphe res .■oT.ai t-and learn ing i ron^tinnnTe'exhibiteTTstan dard^ reglised^aehieyetnegt " . ■ '! ’ll' !i) m f’l cr -'id yri’-flv.Jjy

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such things existed', .i.ied C'lern

culture The wisdom I'lc !(_/‘ii'ii's .■ ii u'c ' in ihe imagination of the first phase of medieval mentality, and the Wisdom of the Egyptians as it stood in the imagination of the early Greeks, played analogous roles Probably the actual knowledge of these respective widoms was, in either case, about as much as was good for the recipients They knew enough to know the sort of standards which are attainable, and not enough to be fettered by static and traditional ways of thought Accordingly, in both cases men went ahead on their own and did better No account of the rise of the Eu- ropean scientific mentality can omit some notice of this in- fluence of the Byzantine civilisation in the background In the sixth century there is a crisis m the history of the rela- tions between the Byzantines and the West, and this crisis is to be contrasted with the influence of Greek liteiature on European thought in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries The two outstanding men, who in the Italy of the sixth cen- tury laid the foundations of the future, were St Benedict and Giegory the Great By reference to them, we can at once see how absolutely in rums was the approach to the scientific mentality which had been attained by the Greeks We are at the zero point of scientific temperature But the life-work of Gregory and of Benedict contr i buted elements to the reconstruction o f Europe wh ich s ecured that this recons truc- tion. when It arnyptl, mplnrip inTpIffnFi P

'fiientality than that of the ancient world The Greeks we re Tovec-theorepeal For them sci e nce was aji offshoot of phil os- opfiy Gregory and Benedict we-rn pra ntmal mpp, with an a ye 101 'flic' impor tance of ordinary thin gs, and they combined this practica l tem^rament with their reh gious and cultural a'ctivTEes 'Tn"'paftlcurar, we owe Tt to St. BenedicTtEarthe

12 Science and the Modern World }

monasteries were the homes of practicaL -affacajltuialists. aif g rttstr^and men of learning The' aihanceof science with technoiogyrW"wEicH' leiBiin^ kept* m contact with irreducible and stubborn facts, owes much to ' the practical bent of the early Benedictines Modern science derives from Rome as well as from Greece, and this Roman strain explains its gam in an energy of thought kept closely i m contact with the world of facts I

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Naturahsm ‘ ‘ .

European mind of the final mgredient necessary for the nse of science It was the rise of interest m natural objects and m natural occurrences, for their own sakes The natural foliage of a distiict was sculptured in out-of-the-way spots of the| later buildings, merely as exhibiting delight m those famihat objects The whole atmosphere of every art exhibited a direct joy in the apprehension of the things which he around us The craftsmen who executed the late medieval decorative sculpture, Giotto, Chaucer, Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, j and, at the present day, the New England poet Robert Frost, ' aie all akin to each other in this respect T he simple inj. media t e facte ar a- tb e.- top ics-of-antei£st . and th ese reappear

The mind of Europe was now prepared for its new venture of thought It is unnecessary to tell in detail the various incidents which marked the rise of science the growth of wealth and leisure, the expansion of universities, the in- vention of printing, the taking of Constantinople, Copernicus; Vasco da Gama, Columbus, the telescope The soil, the cli- mate, the seeds, were there, and the forest grew Science has

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I . ■, " ' ’ .

What reasoning it has wanted, has been borrowed from math- ematics which IS a surviving relic of Greek rationalism, fol- lowing the deductive method Science repudiates philosophy, In other words, it has never cared to justify its faith or to explain its meanings, and has remained blandly indifferent to Its refutation by Hume

Of course the historical revolt was fully justified It was wanted It was more than wanted it was an absolute necessity for healthy progress T j?_e world required centiir.ies...Q.f- jaotu.

tSJTOllatioTrSr irreduciPte-afld^ ^ubhorm - fnS SnZA ^ fnr

men Jo do more than one thing at _a time, and that was Jhe sort of thing thcmjmJ- tu Jo after the rationalistir.

The Origins of Modern Science

the Middle Ages It was a very sensible reaction, but it was nonTprOTesToirbehalf of reason There is, however, a Nemesis which waits upon those who deliberately avoid avenues of knowledge Oliver Cromwell’s cry echoes down the ages, ‘My brethren, by the bowels of Christ I beseech you, bethink you that you may be mistaken ’ The progress of science has now reached a turning point. The s*fSlel3BntiRticrfimifTSftysics'fi'ave broken up also for the flist time physiology is asserting itself as an effective body of knowledge, as distinct from a scrapheap The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ethei, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all re- quire reinterpretation What is the sense of talking about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics?

tak ing over ideas derived from, the weakest side of_thLe„.DMT losophies of Aristotle’s successo rs In some respects it was a HappT’cHbice it enableii the knowledge of the seventeenth century to be formulansed so far as physics and chemistry were concerned, with a completeness which has lasted to the present time But the progress of biology and psychology has probably been checked by the uncritical assumption of half- truths If science is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism of its own foundations

I n the succeeding lectures of this course. I shall .tiagp—tha. siitrcpssTfnd fhp. failures nt th e particularconceptions of cos- mology with which the European intellect h as-dotbed-rtself in the las Llhrae.meDturi^JCTRnerai^rlTrn'af^ of opinion per- sist for periods of about two to three generations, that is to say, for periods of sixty to a hundred yeais There are also shorter waves of thought, which play on the surface of the tidtil movement shall find, therefore, transformations in the Euiopean outlo i^, slo wly modifying t he siiccessivp. r.e n- turies. Tbp.rp. ppj-'iisrs, finwpvp i. jmroiiphout the whole p eriod t he fixed scientific cosmology which nresupposeriE&^im ate fact_of an irreducible biute matter, or material, spread/

In itself such

a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless It just does what It does do, foll owing a fi xed routine imposed Tbv ex - temaLTelations whicn go not snring frorn thp nature of its being,. It IS this assumption that I call ‘scientific materialism ’ Also It IS an assumption which I shaft challenge as being entirely unsuited to scientific situation at which we have

24 Science and the Modern World

now arnved It is not wrong, if propeily construed If we confine ourselves to certain types of facts, abstracted from the complete circumstances in which they occur, the material- istic assumption expresses these facts to perfection But when we pass beyond the abstraction, either by more subtle em- ployment of our senses, or by the request for meanings and for coherence of thoughts, the scheme breaks down at once The narrow efficiency of the scheme was the very cause of Its supreme methodological success For it directed attention to just those groups of facts which, m the state of knowledge then existing, required investigation

The success of the scheme has adversely affected the van- ous currents of European thought The historical revolt was anti-rationalistic, because the rationalism of the scholastics required a sharp correction by contact with brute fact But the revival of philosophy in the hands of Descartes and his successors was entirely coloured in its development by the acceptance of the scientific cosmology at its face value The success of their ultimate ideas confirmed scientists m then refusal to modify them as the result of an enquiry into their rationality Every philosophy was bound m some way or other to swallow them whole Also the example of science affected other regions of thought Tlie historical revolt has thus been exaggerated into the exclusion of philosophy from its proper role of harmonising the various abstractions of methodological thought Thought is abstract, and the intol- erant use of abstractions is the major vice of the intellect. This vice is not wholly corrected by the recurrence to con- crete experience For after all, you need only attend to those aspects of your concrete experience which he within some limited scheme There are two methods for the purification of ideas One of them is dispassionate observation by means of the bodily senses But observation is selection Accordingly, it IS difficult to transcend a scheme of abstraction whose suc- cess IS sufficiently wide The other method is by comparing the various schemes of abstraction which are well founded in our various types of experience This comparison takes the form of satisfying the demands of the Italian scholastic divmts whom Paul Sarpi mentioned They asked that reason should be used Faith m reason is the trust that the ultimate natures of things he together in a harmony which excludes mere arbitrariness It is the taith that at the base of things we shall not find mere arbitrary mystery The faith in the order of nature which has made possible the growth ot science is a particular example of a deeper faith This faith cannot be justified by any inductive generalisation It springs from direct inspection of the nature of things as

Mathematics

disclosed m our own immediate present experience There is no parting from your own shadow To experience this faith IS to know that m being ourselves we are more than our- selves to know that our experience, dim and fragmentary as It IS, yet sounds the utmost depths of reality to know that detached details merely in order to be themselves de- mand that they should find themselves in a system of things to know that this system includes the harmony of logical rationality, and the harmony of aesthetic achievement to know that, while the harmony of logic lies upon the uni- verse as an iron necessity, the aesthetic harmony stands before it as a living ideal moulding the general flux in its broken progress towards finer, subtle: issues

2 / Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought

The Science of Pure Mathematics, m its modern de- velopments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit Another claimant for this position is music But we will put aside all rivals, and consider the ground on which such a claim can be made for mathematics The originality of mathematics consists in the fact that m mathematical science connections between things are exhibited which, apart from the agency of human reason, are extremely unobvious. Thus the ideas, now m the minds of contemporary mathemati- cians, he very remote from any notions which can be im- mediately derived by perception through the senses, unless indeed it be perception stimulated and guided by antecedent mathematical knowledge This is the thesis which I proceed to exemplify

Suppose wc project our imagination backwards through many thousands of years and endeavour to realise the simple-mmdedness of even the greatest intellects m those early societies Abstract ideas which to us are immediately obvious must have been, for them, matters only of the most dim apprehension For example take the question of number We think of the number ‘five’ as applying to appropriate groups of any entities whatsoever — to five fishes, five chil- dren, five apples, five days Thus in consideimg the relations of the number ‘five’ to the number ‘three,’ we are thinking of two groups of things, one with five members and the other

26 Science and the Modern World

with three members But we are entirely abstracting from any consideration of any particular entities, or even of any particular sorts of entities, which go to make up the member- ship of either of the two groups We are merely thinking of those relationships between those two groups which are en- tirely independent of the individual essences of any of the membeis of eitlier group This is a very remarkable feat of abstraction, and it must have taken ages for the human race to nse to it Dunng a long penod, groups of fishes will have been compared to each other m respect to their multiplicity, and groups of days to each other But the first man who noticed the analogy between a group of seven fishes and a group of seven days made a notable advance m the history of thought He was the first man who entertained a concept belonging to the science of pure mathematics At that mo- ment it must have been impossible for him to divine the com- plexity and subtlety of these abstract mathematical ideas which were waiting for discovery Nor could he have guessed that these notions would exert a widespread fascination in each succeeding generation There is an erroneous literary tradition which represents the love of mathematics as a mon- omania confined to a few eccentrics m each generation But be this as it may, it would have been impossible to anticipate the pleasure derivable from a type of abstract thinking which had no counterpart m the then-existing society Thirdly, the tremendous future effect of mathematical knowledge on the lives of men, on their daily avocations, on their habitual thoughts, on the organisation of society, must have been even more completely shrouded from the foresight of those early thinkers Even now there is a very wavering grasp of the true position of mathematics as an element m the history of thought. I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathemati- cal ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him That would be claiming too much But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the pait of Ophelia This simile is singularly exact For Ophelia IS quite essential to the play, she is veiy charming — and a little mad Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings

When we think of mathematics, we have m our mind a science devoted to the exploration of number, quantity, geom- etry, and in modern times also including investigation mto yet more abstract concepts of ordei, and mto analogous types ot purely logical relations The point of mathematics is that m It we have always got rid of the particular instance, and

Mathematics

even of any particular sorts of entities So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours So long as you are dealing with pure mathematics, you are m the realm of complete and absolute abstraction All you assert is, that reason insists on the admission that, if any entities whatever have any relations which satisfy such-and-such purely abstract conditions, then they must have other relations which satisfy other purely abstract conditions

Mathematics is thought moving m the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about So far is this view of mathematics from being obvious, that we can easily assure ourselves that it is not, even now, generally understood For example, it is habitually thought that the certainty of mathematics is a reason for the certamty of our geometrical knowledge of the space of the physical universe This is a delusion which has vitiated much philos- ophy m the past, and some philosophy m the present The question of geometry is a test case of some urgency There are certain alternative sets of purely abstract conditions pos- sible for the relationship of groups of unspecified entities, which I will call geometucdl conditions I give them this name because of their general analogy to those conditions, which we believe to hold respecting the particular geometrical rela- tions of things observed by us in our direct perception of nature So far as our observations are concerned, we are not quite accurate enough to be certain of the exact conditions regulating the things we come across m nature But we can by a slight stretch of hypothesis identify these observed conditions with some one set of the purely abstract geometri- cal conditions In doing so, we make a particular determina- tion of the group of unspecified entities which are the relaia in the abstract science In the pure mathematics of geometn- cal relationships, we say that, if any group entities enjoy any relationships among its members satisfying this set of abstract geometrical conditions, then such-and-such additional ab- stract conditions must also hold for such relationships But when we come to physical space, we say that some definitely observed group of physical entities enjoys some definitely ob- served relationships among its members which do satisfy this above-mentioned set of abstract geometrical conditions We thence conclude that the additional relationships which we concluded to hold m any such case, must therefore hold m this particular case

The certainty of mathematics depends upon its complete abstract generality But we can have no a pi lori certainty that we are right in believing that the observed entities in the

28 Science and the Modern World

concrete universe form a particular instance of what falls under our general reasoning To take another example from arithmetic. It is a general abstract truth ot pure mathematics that any group of forty entities can be subdivided into two groups of twenty entities We are therefore justified m con- cluding that a particular gioup of apples which we believe to contain forty members can be subdivided into two groups of apples of which each contains twenty members But there always remains the possibility that we have miscounted the big group, so that, when we come in practice to subdivide it, we shall find that one of the two heaps has an apple too tew or an apple too many

Accordingly, in criticising an argument based upon the application of mathematics to particular matters of fact theie are always three processes to be kept perfectly distinct m our minds We must first scan the purely mathematical rea- soning to make sure that there are no mere slips in it — no casual illogicalities due to mental failure Any mathematician knows from bitter experience that, in first elaborating a tram of reasoning, it is very easy to commit a slight error which yet makes all the difference But when a piece of mathematics has been revised, and has been before the expert world for some time, the chance of a casual error is almost negligible The next process is to make quite certain of all the abstract conditions which have been presupposed to hold This is the determination of the abstract premises from which the mathematical reasoning proceeds This is a matter of con- siderable difficulty In the past quite remarkable oversights have been made, and have been accepted by generations of the greatest mathematicians The chief danger is that of over- sight, namely, tacitly to introduce some condition, which it IS natural for us to presuppose, but which in fact need not always be holding There is another opposite oversight m this connection which does not lead to error, but only to lack of simplification. It is very easy to think that more postulated conditions are required than is in fact the case In other words, we may think that some abstract postulate is neces- sary which is in fact capable of being proved from the other postulates that we have already on hand The only effects of this excess of abstract postulates are to diminish our aes- thetic pleasure in the mathematical reasoning, and to give us more trouble when we come to the third process of criticism

This third process of criticism is that of verifying that our abstract postulates hold for the particular case in question It is in respect to this process of verification for the particular

Mathematics

case that all the trouble anses In some simple instances, such as the counting of forty apples, we can with a little care arrive at practical certainty But in general, with more com- plex instances, complete certainty is unattainable Volumes, libraries of volumes, have been written on the subject It is the battle ground of rival philosopheis There are two distinct questions involved There aie particulai definite things ob- served, and we have to make sure that the relations between these things really do obey certain definite exact abstract conditions There is great room for error here The exact observational methods of science are all contrivances for limiting these erroneous conclusions as to direct matteis of fact But another question arises The things directly observed are, almost always, only samples We want to conclude that the abstract conditions, which hold for the samples, also hold for all other entities which, tor some reason or other, appear to us to be of the same sort This process of reasoning from the sample to the whole species is Induction The theory of Induction is the despair of philosophy — and yet all oui activi- ties are based upon it Anyhow, m criticising a mathemati- cal conclusion as to a particular matter of fact, the real dif- ficulties consist in finding out the abstract assumptions in- volved, and m estimating the evidence for their applicability to the particular case in hand

It often happens, therefore, that in criticising a learned book of applied mathematics, or a memoir, one’s whole trouble is with the first chaplei , or even with the first page For It IS there, at the very outset, where the author will prob- ably be found to slip in his assumptions Farther, the trouble is not with what the author does say, but with what he does not say Also it is not with what he knows he has assumed, but with what he has unconsciously assumed We do not doubt the author's honesty It is his perspicacity which we are criticising Each generation criticises the unconscious ^sumptions made by its parents It may assent to them, hut It brings them out in the open

The history of development of language illustrates this point It IS a history of the progressive analysis of ideas Latin and Greek were inflected languages This means tliat they express an unanalysed complex of ideas by the mere modifi- cation of d word, whereas in English, for example, we use prepositions and auxiliary verbs to drag into the open the whole bundle of ideas involved Foi certain forms of literary art— -though not alv,rays — the compact absoiption of auxiliary Ideas into the mam word may be an advantage But in a language such as English there is the overwhelming gam m

Science and the Modern World

explicitness This increased explicitness is a more complete exhibition of the various abstractions involved in the complex idea which is the meaning of the sentence.

By comparison with language, we can now see what is the function in thought which is performed by pure mathematics. It IS a resolute attempt to go the whole way in the direction of complete analysis, so as to separate the elements of mere matter of fact from the purely abstract conditions which they exemplify

The habit of such analysis enlightens every act of the functioning of the human mind It first (by isolating it) em- phasizes the dacct aesthetic appreciation of the content cf experience Tins diiect appreciation means an apprehension of what this experience is in itself in its own particular es- sence, including its immediate concrete values This is a question of direct experience, dependent upon sensitive sub- tlety There is then the abstraction of the paiticular entities involved, viewed in themselves, as apait from that particular occ.ision of expel lence in which we aie then apprehending them Lastly there is the further apprehension of the abso- lutely genera] conditions satisfied by the particulai relations of those entities as m that expeiience These conditions gam then generality fiom the fact that they are expressible without reference to those particular relations or to those paiticular relata which occur m that particular occasion of experience They are conditions which might hold for an in- definite vaiiety ot othei occasions, involving other entities and other relations between them Thus these conditions are perfectly general because they refer to no particular occa- sion, and to no particular entities (such as green, or blue, or trees) which enter into a variety of occasions, and to no par- ticular relationships between such entities

There is, however, a limitation to be made to the gener- ality ot mathematics, it is a qualification which applies equally to all geneial statements No statement, except one, can be made respecting any remote occasion which enters mto no relationship with the immediate occasion so as to form a constitutive element ot the essence of that immediate occasion Bv the ‘immediate occasion’ I mean that occasion wtiich involves as an ingredient the individual act of ludg- ment in question The one excepted statement is — If any- ming out of relationship, then complete ignorance as to it iieic by Ignorance,’ I mean igiioiance, accordingly no advice can^ be given as to how to expect it, or to treat it, in ‘piac- tice 01 in any other way Either we know something of the remote occasion by the cognition which is itself an clement of the immediate occasion, or we know nothing Accoidmgly

Mathematics

(he full universe, disclosed for every variety of experience, is a universe m which every detail enters into its proper rela- tionship with the immediate occasion The generality of mathematics is the most complete generality consistent with the community of occasions which constitutes our metaphysi- cal situation

It is further to be noticed that the particular entities re- quire the'e general conditions for their mgression into any occasions, but the same general conditions may be required by many types of particular entities This fact, that the gen- eral conditions transcend any one set of particular entities, is the ground for the entry into mathematics, and into mathematical logic, of the notion of the ‘variable ’ It is by the employment of this notion that general conditions are in- vestigated without any specification of particular entities This irrelevance of the particular entities has not been gen- erally understood for example, the shape-mess of shapes, e s . circularity and sphericity and cubicality as in actual ex- perience, do not enter into the geometrical reasoning

The exercise of logical reason is always concerned with these absolutely general conditions In its broadest sense, the discovery of mathematics is the discovery that the totality of these general abstract conditions, which are concurrently ap- plicable to the relationships among the entities of any one concrete occasion, are themselves inter-connected in the manner of a pattern with a key to it This pattern of relation- ships among general abstract conditions is imposed alike on external reality, and on our abstract representations of it, by the general necessity that every thing must be just its own in- dividual self, with Its own individual way of differing from everything else This is nothing else than the necessity of ab- stract logic, which is the presupposition involved in the very fact of mter-related existence as disclosed in each immedi- ate occasion of experience

The key to the patterns means this fact — ^that from a se- lect set of those general conditions, exemplified in any one and the same occasion, a pattern involving an infinite va- nety of other such conditions, also exemplified in the same occasion, can be developed by the pure exercise of abstract logic Any such select set is called the sot of postulates, or premises, from which the reasoning proceeds The reasoning IS nothing else than the exhibition of the whole pattern of general conditions involved in the pattern derived from the selected postulates

The harmony of the logical reason, which divines the com- plete pattern as involved in the postulates, is the most gen- eral aesthetic property arising from the mere fact of

32 Science and the Modern World

cancurrent existence in the unity of one occasion Wheiever there is a unity of occasion there is theieby established an aesthetic relationship between the geneial conditions involved in that occasion This aesthetic lelationship is that which is divined m the exercise of rationality Whatever falls within that iclationship is thcicby exemplified in that occasion, whatever falls without that relationship is thereby excluded horn exemplification m that occasion The complete pattern of general conditions, thus exemplified, is determined by any one of many select sets of these conditions These key sets are sets of equivalent postulates This reasonable harmony of being, which is required toi the unity of a complex occa- sion, together with the completeness of the lealisation (m that occasion) of alt that is involved in its logical haimony, IS the primary article of metaphysical doctrine It means that lor things to be together involves that they are reason- ably togctliei This means that thought can penetrate into every occasion of fact, so that by comprehending its key con- ditions the whole complex of its pattern of conditions lies open before it It comes to this — provided we know some- thing which is perfectly geneial about the elements in any occasion, we can then know an indefinite number of other equally general concepts which must also be exemplified in that same occasion The logical harmony involved m the unity of an occasion is both exclusive and inclusive The oc- casion must exclude the inharmonious, and it must include the haimoiiious

Pythagoras was the first man who had any grasp of the full sweep of this general principle He lived in the sixth cen- tury before Christ Our knowledge of him is fragmentary But we know some points which establish his greatness m the history of thought He insisted on the importance of the utmost generality m reasoning, and he divined the impor- tance of number as an aid to the construction of any repre- St.ntation of the conditions involved m the order of nature. We know also that he studied gcometiy, and discovered the general pi oof of the remarkable theorem about right-angled tiiangles The formation of the Pythagoiean Brotherhood, and the mysterious rumouis as to its rites and its influence, afford some evidence that Pythagoras divined, however dimly, the possible impoitance of mathematics in the forma- tion of science On the side of philosophy he started a dis- cussion which has agititcd thinkers evei since He asked, ‘What is the stalus of mathematical entilies, such as num- bcis for eximple, in the realm of things'?’ The number ‘two,’ tor example, is m some sense exempt from the flux of time and the necessity of position m space Yet it is involved in

Mathematics

the real world The same considerations apply to geometrical notions — to circular shape, for example Pythagoras is said to have taught that the mathematical entities, such as num- bers and shapes, were the ultimate stuff out of which the real entities of our perceptual experience are constructed As thus baldly stated, the idea seems crude, and indeed silly. But undoubtedly, he had hit upon a philosophical notion of considerable importance, a notion which has a long history, and which has moved the imnds of men, and has even en- tered into Christian theology About a thousand years sepa- rate the Athanasian Creed from Pythagoras, and about two thousand four hundred years separate Pythagoras from Hegel Yet for all these distances m time, the importance of definite number in the constitution of the Divine Nature, and the concept of the real world as exhibiting the evolution of an idea, can both be traced back to the tram of thought set going by Pythagoras

The importance of an individual thinker owes something to chance For it depends upon the fate of his ideas m the minds of his successors In this respect Pythagoras was for- tunate His philosophical speculations reach us through the mind of Plato The Platonic world of ideas is the refined, revised form of the Pythagoiean doctrine that number lies at the base of the real world Owing to the Greek mode of representing numbers by patterns of dots, the notions of number and of geometrical configuration are less separated than with us Also Pythagoras, without doubt, included the shape-mess of shape, which is an impure mathematical en- tity So to-day, when Einstein and his followers proclaim that physical facts, such as gravitation, are to be construed as exhibitions of local peoulianties of spatio-temporal prop- erties, they are following the pure Pythagorean tradition. In a sense, Plato and Pythagoras stand nearer to modem physi- cal science than does Aristotle. The two former were mathe- maticians, whereas Aristotle was the son of a doctor, though of course he was not thereby ignorant of mathematics The practical counsel to be derived from Pythagoras, is to meas- ure, and thus to express quality in terms of numencally de- termined quantity But the biological sciences, then and till our own time, have been overwhelmingly classiflcatory Ac- coidmgly, Aristotle by his Logic throws the emphasis on classification The popularity of Anstotehaa Logic retarded the advance of physical science throughout the Middle Ages.

U only the schoolmen had measured instead of classifying, how much they might have learntl Classification is a halfway house between the immediate concreteness of the mdividual thing and the complete ah-

34 SCffiNCE AND THE MODERN WORLD

straction of mathematical notions The species take account of the specific character, and the genera of the genenc char- acter But in the procedure of relating mathematical no- tions to the facts of nature, by counting, by measurement, and by geometrical relations, and by types of order, the ra- tional contemplation is lifted from the incomplete abstrac- tions involved m definite species and genera, to the complete abstractions of mathematics Classification is necessary But unless you can progress from classification to mathematics, your reasoning vvill not take you very far

Between the epoch which stretches from Pythagoras to Plato and the epoch comprised m the seventeenth century of the modem world nearly two thousand years elapsed In this long interval mathematics had made immense strides Geom- etry had gained the study of conic sections and trigonometry; the method ot exhaustion had almost anticipated the integral calculus; and above all the Arabic anthmetical notation and algebra had been contnbuted by Asiatic thought But the progress was on technical lines Mathematics, as a formative element m the development of philosophy, never, dunng this long penod, recovered from its deposition at the hands of Aristotle. Some of the old ideas derived from the Pythago- rean-Platonic epoch lingered on, and can be traced among the Platonic influences which shaped the first period of evolution of Christian theology But philosophy received no fresh mspiration from the steady advance of mathematical science In the seventeenth century the influence of Aristotle was at its lowest, and mathematics recovered the importance of Its earlier period It was an age of great physicists and great philosophers, and the physicists and philosophers were alike mathematicians The exception of John Locke should be made, although he was greatly influenced by the New- toman circle of the Royal Society. In the age of Gahleo, Descartes, Spinoza, Newton, and Leibniz, mathematics was an influence of the first magnitude in the formation of philo- sophic ideas. But the mathematics, which now emerged into prominence, was a very different science from the mathe- matics of the earlier epoch It had gained in generahty, and had started upon its almost mcredible modern career of pil- ing subtlety of generalisation upon subtlety of generalisation; and of finding, with each growth of complexity, some new application, either to physical science, or to philosophic thought The Arabic notation had equipped the science with almost perfect technical efficiency m the manipulation of numbers This relief from a struggle with arithmetical de- tails (as instanced, for example, in the Egyptian arithmetic of B. C. 1600) gave room for a development which had al-

Mathematics

ready been faintly anticipated m later Greek mathematics. Algebra now came upon the scene, and algebra is a gener- alisation of anthmctic In the same way as the notion of num- ber abstracted from reference to any one particular set of entities, so in algebra abstraction is made from the notion of any particular numbers Just as the number ‘5’ refers impar- tially to any group of five entities, so m algebra the letters are used to refer impartially to any number, with the proviso that each letter is to refer to the same number throughout the same context of its employment

This usage was first employed in equations, which are methods of asking complicated arithmetical questions In this connection, the letters representing numbers were termed ‘unknowns ’ But equations soon suggested a new idea, that, namely, of a function of one or more general symbols, these symbols being letteis representing any numbers In this em- ployment the algebraic letters are called the ‘arguments’ of the function, or sometimes they are called the ‘variables.’ Then, for instance, if an angle is represented by an algebrai- cal letter, as standing for its numerical measure m terms of a given unit. Trigonometry is absorbed mto this new algebra. Algebra thus develops mto the general science of analysis m winch we consider the properties of various functions of un- determined arguments Finally the particular functions, such jis the trigonometrical functions, and the logarithmic func- tions, and the algebraic functions, are generalised into the idea of ‘any function ’ Too large a generalisation leads to mere barrenness It is the large generahsation, limited by a happy particularity, which is the fruitful conception For in- stance the idea of any continuous function, whereby the lim- itation of continuity is introduced, is the fruitful idea which has led to most of the important applications This nse of algebraic analysis was concurrent with Descartes’ discovery of analytical geometry, and then with the invention of the infinitesimal calculus by Newton and Leibniz Truly, Pthag- oras, if he could have foreseen the issue of the tram of thought which he had set going would have felt himself fully justified m his brotherhood with its excitement of mysterious rites

The point which I now want to make is that this domi- nance of the idea of functionality m the abstract sphere of mathematics found itself reflected m the order of nature under the guise of mathematically expressed laws of nature. Apart from this progress of mathematics, the seventeenth century developments of science would have been impossi- ble Mathematics supplied the background of imaginative thought with which the men of science approached the ob-

36 Science and the Modern World

servation of nature Galileo produced formulae, Descartes produced foniiulae, Huyghens produced formulae, Newton produced formulae

As a particular example of the effect of the abstract de- velopment of mathematics upon the science of those times, consider the notion of periodicity The general recurrences of things are very obvious in our ordinary experience Days recur, lunar phases recur, the seasons of the year recur, ro- tating bodies recur to their old positions, beats of the heart recur, breathing recurs On every side, we are met by recur- rence Apart from recurrence, knowledge would be impossi- ble, for nothing could be referred to our past experience. Also, apart from some regulanty of recurrence, measure- ment would be unpossible. In our experience, as we gam the idea of exactness, recurrence is fundamental

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the theory of periodicity took a fundamental place in science Kepler di- vined a law connecting the major axes of the planetary orbits with the periods in which the planets respectively described their orbits Galileo observed the periodic vibrations of pendulums, Newton explained sound as being due to the disturbance of air by the passage through it of periodic waves of condensation and rarefaction Huyghens explained light as being due to the transverse waves of vibration of a subtle ether' Mersenne connected the period of the vibration of a violin string with its density, tension, and length The" birth of modem physics depended upon the application of the abstract idea of penodicity to a variety of concrete in- stances But this would have been impossible, unless mathe- maticians had already worked out in the abstract the various abstract ideas which cluster round the notions of periodicity. Tlie science of trigonometry arose from that of the relations of the angles of a nght-angled triangle, to the ratios between the sides and h>potenuse of the triangle Then, under the influence of the newly discovered mathematical science of the analysis of functions, it broadened out into the study of the simple abstract periodic functions which these ratios exemplify Thus trigonometry became completely abstract; and m thus becoming abstract, it became useful It illumi- nated the underlying analogy between sets of utterly diverse physical phenomena, and at the same time it supplied the Weapons by which any one such set could have its vanous features analysed and related to each other ^

Nothing IS more impressive than the fact that as mathe- m.atics withdrew increasingly into the upper regions of ever

1 For a more detailed consideration of the nature and function of pure mathematics t/ my IntroduLUnn to Mathematics, Home Umveisity Library, Williams and Norgate, London

Mathematics ^ '

ereater extremes of abstract thought, it returned back to earth with a corresponding growth of importance for the analysis of concrete fact The history of the seventeenth century science reads as though it were some vivid dream of Plato or Pythagoras In this characteristic the seventeentli century was only the forerunner of its successors

The paradox is now fully established that the utmost ab- stractions are the true weapons with which to control oui thought of conciete fact As the result of the prominence of mathematicians in the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century was mathematically minded, moie especially wheie French influence piedominated An exception must be made of the English empiricism derived from Locke Outside France, Newton’s direct mfluence on philosophy is best seen in Kant, and not m Hume

In the nineteenth century, the general influence of mathe- matics waned The romantic movement in literature, and the idealistic movement m philosophy were not the products of mathematical minds Also, even in science, the growth of geology, of zoology, and of the biological sciences gener- ally, was in each case entirely disconnected from any refer- ence to mathematics The chief scientific excitement of the century was the Darwinian theory of evolution Accordingly, mathematicians were m the background so far as the general r-thought of that ago was concerned. But this docs not mean that mathematics was being neglected, or even that it was unmfluential During the nineteenth century pure mathe- matics made almost as much progress as during all the pre- ceding centuries from Pythagoras onwards Of course prog- ress Was easier, because the technique had been perfected But allowing for that, the change in mathematics between the years 1800 and 1900 is very remarkable If we add m the previous hundred years, and take the two centuries pre- ceding the present time, one is almost tempted to date the foundation of mathematics somewhere m the last quarter of the seventeenth centuiy. The period of the discovery of the elements stretches fiom Pythagoras to Descartes, New- ton, and Leibniz, and the developed science has been created during the last two hundred and fifty years This is not a boast as to the superior genius of the modern woild, for it is harder to discover the elements than to develop the science.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the influence of the science was its mfluence on dynamics and physics, and thence derivatively on engineering and chemistry It is difficult to overrate its indirect influence on human life through the medium of these sciences But there was no direct influence of mathematics upon the general thought of the age.

38 Science and the Modern World

In reviewing this rapid sketch of the influence of mathe- matics throughout European history, we see that it had two great periods of direct influence upon general thought, both periods lasting for about two hundred years The first period was that stretching from Pythagoras to Plato, when the possi- bility of the science, and its general character, first dawned upon the Grecian thinkers The second period comprised the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of our modern epoch Both periods had certain common characteristics In the eailier, as in the later period, the general categories of thought m many spheres of human interest, weie in a state of dis- integration In the age of Pythagoras, the unconscious Pa- ganism, with Its traditional clothing of beautiful ritual and of magical rites, was passing into a new phase under two influences There were waves of religious enthusiasm, seek- ing direct enlightenment into the secret depths of being, and at the opposite pole, there was the awakening of critical analytical thought, probing with cool dispassionateness into ultimate meanings In both influences, so diverse in their outcome, there was one common element — an awakened curiosity, and a movement towards the reconstruction of traditional ways The pagan mysteries may be compared to the Puritan reaction and to the Catholic reaction, critical scientific interest was alike m both epochs, though with minor difierences of substantial importance In each age, the earlier stages were placed m periods of rising prospenty, and of new opportunities In this respect, they differed from the period of gradual declension in the second and third centuries when Christianity was advancing to the conquest of the Roman world It is only in a period, fortunate both in its opportunities for disengagement from the immediate pressure of circumstances, and in its eager cunosity, that the Age-Spint can undertake any direct re- vision of those final abstractions which he hidden in the more concrete concepts from which the serious thought of an age takes its start In the rare periods when this task can be undertaken, mathematics becomes relevant to philosophy For mathematics is the science of the most complete abstrac- tions to which the human mind can attain

The parallel between the two epochs must not be pressed too far The modern woild is larger and more complex than file ancient civilisation round the shores of the Mediterra- nean, or even than that of the Europe which sent Columbus and the Pilgrim Fathers across the ocean We cannot now explain our age by some simple formula which becomes dominant and will then be laid to rest for a thousand years Thus the temporary submergence of the mathematical men-

Mathematics

tality from the time of Rousseau onwards appears already to be at an end We are entermg upon an age of reconstruction, in religion, in science, and in political thought Such ages, if they are to avoid mere ignorant oscillation between extremes, must seek truth in its ultimate depths There can be no vision of this depth of truth apart from a philosophy which takes full account of those ultimate abstractions, whose intercon- nections It IS the business of mathematics to explore.

In order to explain exactly how mathematics is gaining in general importance at the present time, let us start from a particular scientific perplexity and consider the notions to which we are naturally led by some attempt to unravel its difficulties. At present physics is troubled by the quantum theory. I need not now explain^ what this theory is, to those who are not already familiar with it But the point is that one of the most hopeful hnes of explanation is to as- sume that an electron does not continously traverse its path in space The alternative notion as to its mode of existence is that It appears at a senes of discrete positions m space which it occupies for successive durations of time. It is as though an automobile, moving at the average rate of thirty miles an hour along a road, did not traverse the road continu- ously, but appeared successively at the successive milestones, -jemaming for two minutes at each milestone

In the first place there is required the purely technical use of mathematics to determine whether this conception does in fact explain the many perplexing characteristics of the quantum theory If the notion survives this test, undoubt- edly physics will adopt it So far the question is purely one for mathematics and physical science to settle between them, on the basis of mathematical calculations and physical ob- servations

But now a problem is handed over to the philosophers. This discontinuous existence in space, thus assigned to elec- trons, IS very unlike the contmuous existence of material entities which we habitually assume as obvious The electron seems to be borrowing the character which some people have ^signed to the Mahatmas of Tibet These electrons, with the correlative protons, are now conceived as being the fundamental entities out of which the material bodies of ordinary experience are composed Accordingly if this explanation is allowed, we have to revise all our notions of the ultimate character of material existence For when we penetrate to these final entities, this starthng discontinuity ot spatial existence discloses itself.

There is no difficulty m explainmg the paradox, if we con- ic/ Chapter 8.

40 Science and the Modern World

seat to apply to the apparently steady undifferentiated en- durance of matter the same pnnciples as those now accepted for sound and light A steadily sounding note is explained as the outcome of vibrations in the air a steady colour is ex- plained as the outcome of vibrations in ether If we explain the steady endurance of matter on the same principle, we shall conceive each primordial element as a vibratory ebb and flow of an underlying energy, or activity Suppose we keep to the physical idea of energy then each pnmordial element will be an organised system of vibratory streaming of energy Accordingly there will be a definite period asso- ciated with each element, and within that period the stream- system will sway from one stationary maximum to another stationary maximum — or, taking a metaphor from the ocean tides, the system will sway from one high tide to another high tide Tins system, forming the primordial element, is notliing at any instant It requires its whole period in which to manifest itself In an analogous way, a note of music is nothing at an instant, but it also requues its whole period m which to manifest itself

Accordingly, m asking where the primordial element is, we must settle on its average position at the centre of each period If we divide time into smaller elements, the vibratory system as one electronic entity has no existence The patb^ in space of such a vibratory entity — where the entity is constituted by the vibrations — must be represented by a senes of detached positions in space, analogously to the auto- mobile which IS found at successive milestones and at no- where between

We first must ask whether there is any evidence to asso- ciate the quantum theory with vibration This question is immediately answered in the affirmative The whole theory centres around the radiant energy from an atom, and is m- timately associated with the periods of the radiant wave- systems It seems, therefore, that the hypothesis of essen- tially vibratory existence is the most hopeful way of explain- ing the paradox of the discontinuous orbit

In the second place, a new problem is now placed before philosophers and physicists, if we entertain the hypothesis that the ultimate elements of matter aie in then essence vibratory By this I mean that apart trom being a periodic system, such an element would have no existence With this hypothesis we have to ask, what are the ingredients which form the vibratory organism We have already got iid of the matter with its appearance of undifferentiated endur- ance Apart from some metaphysical compulsion, there is no reason to provide another more subtle stuff to take the place

The Centuky of Genius

nf the matter which has just been explained away, The field IS now open for the introduction of some new doctrine of organism which may take the place ot the materialism with which since the seventeenth century, science has sad- dled philosophy It must be remembered that the physicists’ energy is obviously an abstraction The conciete fact, which IS the organism, must be a complete expression of the char- acter of a real occurrence Such a displacement of scientific materialism, if it ever takes place, cannot fail to have impor- tant consequences in every field of thought

Finally, our last reflection must be, that we have in the end come back to a version of the doctrine of old Pythag- oras, from whom mathematics, and mathematical physics, took their rise He discovered the importance of dealmg with abstractions, and in particular directed attention to number as characterising the periodicities ot notes of music. The importance of the abstract idea of periodicity was thus pres- ent at the very beginning both of mathematics and of Euro- pean philosophy

In the seventeenth century, the birth of modem science required a new mathematics, more fully equipped for the purpose of analysmg the characteristics of vibratory existence And now in the twentieth centuiy we find physicists largely engaged in analysmg the periodicities of atoms Truly, Py- thagoras in founding Euiopean philosophy and European mathematics, endowed them with the luckiest of lucky guesses — or, was It a flash of divine genius, penetrating the mmost nature of things'^

3 / The Century of Genius

The previous chapters were devoted to the antecedent con- ditions which prepared the soil for the scientific outburst of the seventeenth century They traced the vanous elements of thought and instinctive belief, from their first efflorescence m 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 mam factors arrested attention — the rise of mathematics, the instinctive belief in a detailed order of nature, and the un- bridled 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

Science and the Modern World

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 ongins of Christianity; and m science it meant the appeal to experiment and the inductive method of reasoning

A brief, and sufficiently accurate, description of the in- tellectual 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 pro- vided 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 occa- sions 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 ap- peared in the preceding year, and a slightly variant edition m 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 m a course of lectures before the College of Physicians in London Newton was bom 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

The Century of Genius

filled the list from its own ranks Again Harvey is the only biologist, and also there are too many Enghshmen. This latter defect is partly due to the fact that the lecturer is Eng- lish, and that he is lecturing to an audience which, equally with hun, 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 un- happy 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 Enghsh 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 m biology within the century, chiefly associated with Italy and the Umversity 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 ren- dermg, in terms of general ideas, of the state of physical knowledge of that age and of the two succeedmg centuries. As a matter of fact, these concepts are very unsuited to bi- ology, and set for it an insoluble problem of matter and life and orgamsm, with which biolopsts are now ivresthng But the science of livmg orgamsms is only now commg to a growth adequate to impress its conceptions upon philosophy. The last half century before the present time has witnessed unsuccessful attempts to unpress biological notions upon the materialism of the seventeenth century. However this success be estimated, it is certam that the root ideas of the seven- teenth 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 formu- lated thus Given configurations of matter with locomotion m space as assigned by physical laws, to account for hvmg orgamsms

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 m the contemporary memoir by his chaplam. 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 certam that all bodies whatsoever, though they have no sense, yet they have perception, for when one body is

44 Science and the Modern World

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, ever- more a perception precedeth operation, for else all bodies would be like one to anothei And sometimes this percep- tion, in some kind of bodies, is far more subtile than sense, so that sense is but a dull thing m 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 en- quiry, to enquire of the more subtile perceptions, for it is another key to open nature, as well as the sense, and some- times 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 quo- tation, some of which will emerge into importance in suc- ceeding lectures In the first place, note the careful way in which Bacon discriminates between petcepuon. or taking ac count 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 mate- rialistic 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 exper- imental 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 reali- sation of the antithesis between the deductive rationalism of the scholastics and the inductive observational methods of the modems 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 ol the whole group, and also had the most direct ap-

The Century of Genius

prehension of the full extent of the intellectual revolution which was in progress Perhaps the man who most complete- , ly anticipated both Bacon and the whole modem pomt of view was the artist Leonardo Da Vinci, who lived almost exactly a century before Bacon Leonardo also illustrated 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 prac- tice of naturalistic art is more akin to the practice of physics, chemistry and biology than is the practice of law We all re- member 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 Vmci and Bacon stand together as il- lustrating 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 rea- soning It IS unnecessary for me to prove to you by any quo- tations 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 mam themes to which Bacon devoted himself in his wnt- mgs Induction has proved to be a somewhat moie complex process than Bacon anticipated He had in his mmd the be- hef 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 inade- quate account of the processes which issue in scientific gen- eralisations But when you have made all the requisite de- ductions, Bacon remams as one of the great builders who con- structed the mmd of the modern world

The special difficulties raised by induction emerged m the eighteenth century, as the resuli of Hume’s cnticism 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 knowl- edge 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 mduction, unless indeed we are content to base it upon our vague mstinct that

46 Science and the Modern World

of course it is all right Either there is something about the immediate occasion which affords knowledge of the past and the future, or wc are reduced to utter scepticism as to mem- oiy and induction, It is impossible to over-emphasise the point that the key to the process of induction, as used either m science or in our ordinary life, is to be found in the right understanding of the immediate occasion of knowledge m its full concreteness It is in respect to our grasp of the charac- ter of these occasions m their concreteness that the modem developments of physiology and of psychology are of criti- cal importance I shall illustrate this pomt m my subsequent lectures We find ourselves amid msoluble difficulties when we substitute for tins concrete occasion a mere abstract in v/hich we only consider material objects in a flux of config- urations in time and space It is quite obvious that such ob- jects can tell us only that they arc where they are Accordingly, we must recur to the method of the school- divinity as explained by the Italian medievalists whom I quoted m 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 youi metaphysics has assured you that there is a history to appeal to, and likewise your conjectures as to the future pre- suppose some basis of knowledge that theie is a future al- ready subjected to some determmations The difficulty is to make sense of either of these ideas But unless you have done so, you have made nonsense of induction

You wdl 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 trom the known charactenstics of a particular past The wider assumption of geneial laws holding for all cognisable occasions appears a very unsafe addendum to attach to this himted knowledge All we can ask of the present occasion is that it shall deter- nune a particular community of occasions, which ai e in some respects mutually qualified by re.ison 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 otliei — as we say — in common space-time, so that we can trace the transitions from one to the other Ac- cordingly, we reler to the common space-time indicated in oui immediate occasion of knowledge Inductive reasoning proceeds fiom the particular occasion to the paiticular com- munity of occasions, and from the particular community to relations between particular occasions within that commu-

The Century of Gewus

nity Until we have taken into account other scientific con- cepts, 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 quahtative character of the statements made in it In this respect Bacon completely missed the tonality which lay behind the sources of seventeenth century science. Science was becoming, and has remained, primarily quanti- -tative Search for measurable elements among your phenom- ena, 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 quahtatively and not quantita- tively We cannot ask that he should anticipate his younger contemporary Galdeo, or his distant successor Newton But he gives no hint that there should be a search for quantities Perhaps he was rmsled by the current logical doctrines which had come down from Aristotle For, in effect, these doctrmes 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 masi was discerned as characterising all bodies m different amounts Bodies which are apparently identical in substance, shape, and size have veiy 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 anses whether this conception of the magnitude of a force leads to the dis- covery of simple quantitative laws mvolvmg the alternative ’'determination of foices by circumstances of the configuration of substances and of their physical characters The New- tonian conception has been brilliantly successful in surviv- ing this test throughout the whole modem 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 cntical attention The whole development of thought occupied exactly two genera- tions It commenced with Galileo and ended with Newton’s Prmcipia, and Newton was born in the year that Galileo

48 Science and the Modern World

died Also the lives of Descartes and Huyghens fall within the penoil occupied by these great terminal figures The is- sue of the combined labours of these four men has some right to be considered as the greatest single intellectual suc^ cess 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 umverse, and it enables us to cal- culate the minutest detail of a particular occurrence Galileo took the first step m hitting on the right line of thought noted that the critical point to attend to was not the motion of bodies but the changes of their motions Galileo’s discov- ery is formulansed by Newton in his first law of motion — ‘Every body continues m its state of rest, or of uniform mo- tion m 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 progiess 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 ‘iso- lated’ system is not a solipsist system, apart fiom which there would be nonentity It is isolated as within the universe This means that there are tiuths respecting this system which require reference only to the remainder of things by way of a uniform systematic scheme of relationships Thus the con- ception of an isolated system is not the conception of sub- stantial independence from the remainder of things, but of freedom from casual contingent dependence upon detailed Items w'ltlun the rest of the umverse Further, this freedom from casual dependence is required only in respect to certain abstract characteiistics 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 dynam- ically isolated system so far as concerns its motion as a whole, absti acting from its orientation and its internal ar- rangement of parts Aristotle said that you must conceive such a system to be at rest Galileo added that the state of test 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 Aristotelian would conceive the forces arising from the reaction of alien bodies as being quanti- tatively measurable in teims 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 dillerence is il-

T^e Century of Genius

lustrated by contrasting Kepler and Newton They both spec- ulated 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 direc- tions 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 ev- eryday 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 umm- aginative empiricism The seventeenth century exhibits an- other example of this same danger; and, of all people m 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 ex- plained shadows Since then both theories have had then pe- riods of triumph At the present moment the scientific world IS seeking for a combination of the two These examples il- lustrate the danger of refusing to entertain an idea because of its failure to explain one of the most obvious facts in the subject matter m question If you have had your attention .duecfed to the novelties m thought m your own lifetime, you Will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they aie first produced Returning to the laws of motion it is noticeable that no reason was produced m the seventeenth centuiy 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 modem period, we shall see that the theory of rela- tivity 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 m the nature of a material body Mass remained permanent during all changes of motion But the proof of the permanence of mass amid chemical trans- formations had to wait for Lavoisier, a century later. New- tons next task was to find some estimate of the magm- tude of the alien force m 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 success-

Science and the Modern World

ful one Again the modem relativity theory modifies this extreme simplicity. But luckily for science the delicate ex- periments 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 —1

Having regard to this triumph, can we wonder that scien- tists plated 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 adher- ents of all the variant systems withm the epoch unconsciously presuppose Such assumptions appeal 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 modem period It is embodied in the con- ception which IS supposed to express the most concrete aspect of nature The Ionian philosophers asked, What is nature made of? The answer is couched m terms of stuff, or matter, or material — the particular name chosen is indifferent — which has the property of simple location in space anJ* time, or, if you adopt the more modern ideas, m space-time. What I mean by matter, or material, is anythmg 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 m space and here m time, 01 here in space-time, m a perfectly defimte 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 loca- tion, IS that material can be said to have just these relations of posiiion to the other entities without requiring for its ex- planation any reference to other regions constituted by analo-

The CEOTuav OF Genius 51

C» lyO • * iy<yi

gous relations of position,^ to the same entities In fact, as soon as you have settled, however” you d6"settle, what you mean by a definite place in space-tune, 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 durmg 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, m respect to space, dividing the volume does divide the matenal Ac- cordingly, 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 ex- tent that some extremists of the modem school of relativists veiy rashly desiie For the division of time functions, in re- spect 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 ma- terial The material is fully itself in any sub-period however short Thus the transition of tune has nothing to do with the •-(aiaracter of the matenal The matenal is equally itself at an instant of tune Here an instant of time is conceived as in Itself without transition, smce 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 was that the world is a succession of instan- taneous 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 de- termined by the configurations of masses Thus the configura- tions determined their own changes, so that the circle of scientific thought was completely dosed 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 bv the pragmatic test It worked. Physicists took no more

52 Science and the Modern World

interest m philosophy. They emphasised the anti-rationalism of the Historical Revolt But the difBculties 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 gen- eral idea which it could neither live with nor live without This simple location of instantaneous material configura- tions is what Bergson has protested against, so far as it con- cerns 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 Berg- son in his protest, but 1 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 absti act for the concrete It is an example of what I will call the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness ’ This fallacy is the oc- casion 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 m 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 AcconW ingly, induction is not based on anything which can be ob- served as inherent in nature Thus we cannot look to nature for the justification of our belief m 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 mem- ory, 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 cen- tury 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 be- cause the clergy were in principle rationalists, whereas the

The Century of Genius

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 empiiicists

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 m 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 simphciter in some definite portion of space But m respect to substance and quality the leading minds of the seventeenth century were definitely per- plexed, though, with their usual genius, they at once con- structed a theory which was adequate for Iheir immediate purposes

, Of course, substance and quality, as well as simple loca- tion, 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 -wrselves with simplified editions of immediate matters of fact When we examine the primary elements of tliese sim- plified 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 irrele- vance, we find that, though there are entities left correspond- ing 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 con- sider 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 charactenstics 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

54 Science and the Modern World

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 wouhl not be itself, while other qualities are accidental and changeable In respect to material bodies, the qii.alities of having a qu.intilative mass, and of simple loca- tion 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 expenmental fact except for some extremists So far. so good But when wo pass to blueness and noisi- ness a new situation has to be faced In the first place, the body may not be always blue, or noisy We have already •illowed for this by our theory of accidental qualities, which for the moment we may accept as adequate But in the sec- ond place, the seventeenth century exposed a real difficulty. The great physicists elaborated tiansmission theories of light and sound, based upon their materialistic views of nature There were two hypotheses as to light either it was trans- mitted by the vibr.atory waves of a matenahstic 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 Hiiyghens held the field during the nineteenth century, and at present physicists are endeav- ouring to explain some obscure circumstances attending ladia- tion 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 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 m 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, cars, or noses, there would be no colours, sounds, or smells Descartes and Locke elaborated a theory of primary and secondary qualities For example, Descartes m his ‘Sixth Meditation’ says ' ‘And indeed, as 1 peiceive different sorts of colours, sounds, odours, tastes, heal, hardness etc , I safely conclude that there are m the bodies from which the diveise perceptions of the senses pro- ceed, certain varieties coiresponding to them, although, perhaps, not m reality like them, ’

1 Transl.mon by Professor John Veitch

The Centuey of Genius

Also m his Principles of Philosophy, he says: ‘That by our senses we know nothing of external objects beyond their figure [or station], 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 quahties m accordance with the state of physical science at the close of the seventeenth century The primary qualities are the essen- tial qualities of substances whose spatio-temporal relation- ships constitute 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 mstance But the mind in apprehending also experiences sensations which, properly speaking, are qualities of the mind alone. These sen- sations are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies m 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 m truth be reserved for our- selves; the rose for its scent the nightingale for his song: and the sun for his radiance The poets aie entirely mis- taken They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the ex- cellency of the human mind Nature is a dull affair, sound- less, scentless, colourless, merely the hurrymg of material, endlessly, meaninglessly

However you disguise it, this is the practical outcome of the characteristic scientific philosophy which closed the seven- teenth century

In the first place, we must note its astounding efficiency as a system of concepts for the organisation of scientific re- S63^rch In this respect, it is fully worthy of the genius of the century which produced it It has held its own as the guidmg pnnciple of scientific studies ever since It is still reigning Every university m the world organises itself in accordance with It No alternative system of orgamsing the pursiut of scientific truth has been suggested It is not only reigning but It is without a rival '' = 6>

And yet it is quite unbelievable This conception of the universe IS sure y framed in terms of high abstractions, and the paradox only arises because we have mistaken our ab- straction for concrete realities

No picture, however generalised, of the achievements of scientific thought m this century can omit the advance in

56 Science and the Modern World

mathematics Here as elsewhere the genius of the epoch made Itself evident. Three great Frenchmen, Descartes, Desargnes, Pascal, initiated the modern period in geometry Another Frenchman, Fermat, laid the foundations of modern analy- sis, and all but perfected the methods of the differential cal- culus. Newton and Leibniz, between them, actually did create the differential calculus .as a practical method of math- ematical reasoning When the century ended, mathematics as an instrument for application to physical problems was well established in something of its modem proficiency. Modem pure mathematics, if we except geometry, was m its infancy, and had given no signs of the astonishing growth it was to make in the nineteenth century But the mathe- matical phvsicist had appeared, bringing with him the type of mind which was to rule the scientific world in the next century It was to he the age of ‘Victorious Analysis ’

The seventeenth century h.id finally produced a scheme of scientific thought framed by mathematicians, for the use of mathematicians The gieat characteristic of the mathematical mind is Its capacity foi dealing with abstractions, and for eliciting from them clear-cut demonstrative trains of reason- ing, entirely satisfactory so long as it is those abstractions which you want to thml, about The enormous success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand matter with Its ample location in spate and time, 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 oscil- lated m a complex manner between three extremes There are the dualists, who accept matter and mind as on an 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 inher- ent sonfusion introduced by the ascription of misplaced con- creteness to the scientific scheme of the seventeenth century

4 / The Eighteenth Century

In so EAR as the intellectual climates of different epochs can be eontnistcd, the eighteenth century in Europe was the complete antithesis to the Middle Ages. The contrast is sym- bolised by the difference between the cathedral of Chartres

The Eighteenth Century

and the Parisian salons, where D’Alembert conversed with Voltaire The Middle Ages were haunted with the desire to rationalise the infinite the men of the eighteenth century rationalised the social life of modern communities, and based their sociological theones on an appeal to the facts of na- ture The earlier period was the age of faith, based upon rea- son In the later period, they let sleeping dogs he it was the age of reason, based upon faith To illustrate my meaning. — • St Anselm would have been distressed if he had failed to find a convincing argument for the existence of God, and on this argument he based his edifice of faith, whereas Hume based his Dissertation on the Natural History of Religion upon his faith in the order of nature. In companng these epochs It IS well to remember that reason can err, and that faith may be misplaced

In my previous lecture I traced the evolution, during the seventeenth century, of the scheme of scientific ideas which has dominated thought ever since It involves a fundamental duality, with material on the one hand, and on the other hand mind In between there lie the concepts of life, organ- ism, function, instantaneous reality, interaction, order of na- ture, which collectively form the Achilles heel of the whole system

I also expressed my conviction that if we desired to obtain a more fundamental expression of the concrete character of natural fact, the clement in this scheme which we should first criticise is the concept of simple location In view therefore of the importance which this idea will assume in these lec- tures, I will repeat the meaning which I have attached to this phrase To say that a bit of matter has simple location means that, in expressing its spatio-temporal relations, it is adequate to state that it is where it is, in a definite finite re- gion of space, and throughout a definite finite duration of time, apart from any essential reference of the relations of that bit of matter to other regions of space and to other durations of time Again, this concept of simple location is independent of the controversy between the absolutist and the relativist views of space or of time So long as any theory of space, or or time, can give a meaning, either absolute or relative, to tile idea of a definite region of space, and of a definite dura- tion of time, the idea of simple location has a perfectly defi- nite meaning This idea is the very foundation of the seven- teenth oentury scheme of nature Apart from it, the scheme IS incapable of expression I shall argue that among the pri- mary elements of nature as apprehended in our immediate experience, (here is no element whatever which possesses this character of simple location It does not follow, however

58 SciBNCE AND THE MODERN WORLD

that the science of the seventeenth century was simply wrong I hold that by a process of constnictive abstraction we can arrive at abstractions which are the simply-located bits of material, and at other abstractions which are the minds included in the scientific scheme Accordingly, the real error is an example of what I have termed The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

The advantage of confining attention to a definite group of abstractions, is that you confine your thoughts to clear-cut definite things, with clear-cut definite relations Accordmgly, if you have a logical head, you can deduce a variety of con- clusions respecting the relationships betw'een these abstract entities Furthermore, if the abstractions are well-founded, that is to say, if they do not abstract from everything that is important in experience, the scientific thought which con- fines Itself to these abstractions will arrive at a vanety of important truths relating to our experience of nature We all know those clear-cut trenchant intellects, immovably encased in a hard shell of absti actions They hold you to their ab- stractions by the sheer grip of personality

The disadvantage of exclusive attention to a group of ab- stractions, howevei well-founded, is that, by the nature of the case, you have abstracted from the remainder of things In so far as the excluded things aie important in your expe- rience, your modes of thought are not fitted to deal with them You cannot think without abstractions, accordingly, it IS of the utmost importance to be vigilant in critically revis- ing your moiles of abstraction It is here that philosophy finds Its niche as essential to the healthy progress of society. It IS the critic of abstractions A civilisation which cannot burst through its current abstractions is doomed to sterility after a very limited period of progress An active school of philosophy is quite as important for the locomotion of ideas, as IS an active school of railway engineers for the locomo- tion of fuel

Sometimes it happens that the service rendered by philos- ophy IS entirely obscured by the astonishing success of a scheme of abstractions in expressing the dominant interests of an epoch This is exactly what happened dunng the eight- eenth century Les philosopher were not philosophers They were men of genius, clear-headed and acute, who applied the seventeenth century group of scientific abstractions to the analysis of the unbounded universe Their triumph, in re- spect to the circle of ideas mainly interesting to their con- temporaries, was overwhelming Whatever did not fit into their scheme w.is ignored, derided, disbelieved Their hatred of Gothic architecture symbolises their lack of sympathy

The Eighteenth Century

with dim perspectives It was the age of reason, healthy, manly, upstanding reason, but, of one-eyed reason, deficient m Its vision of depth We cannot overrate the debt of grati- tude which we owe to these men For a thousand years Eu- rope had been a prey to intolerant, intolerable visionaries. The common sense of the eighteenth century, its grasp of the obvious facts of human suffering, and of the obvious de- mands of human nature, acted on the world like a bath of

moral cleansing Voltaire must have the credit, that he hated injustice, he hated cruelty, he hated senseless repression, and he hated hocus-pocus Furthermore, when he saw them, he knew them In these supreme virtues, he was typical of his century, on its better side But if men cannot live on bread alone, still less can they do so on disinfectants The age had Its limitations, yet we cannot understand the passion with which some of its mam positions are still defended, espe- cially in the schools of science, unless we do full justice to Its positive achievements The seventeenth century scheme of concepts was proving a perfect instrument for research This triumph of materialism was chiefly in the sciences of rational dynamics and physics, and chemistry So far as dy- namics, physics were concerned, progress was in the form of direct developments of the mam ideas of the previous epoch Nothing fundamentally new was introduced, but there was an immense detailed development Special case was un- ravelled It was as though the very Heavens were bemg opened, on a set plan In the second half of the century, Lavoisier practically founded chemistry on its present basis He introduced into it the principle that no material is lost or gained in any chemical transformations This was the last success of materialistic thought, which has not ultimately proved to be double-edged Chemical science now only waited for the atomic theory, m the next century In tlus century the notion of the mechanical explanation Of all the processes of nature finally hardened into a dogma of science The notion won through on its merits by reason Of an almost miraculous series of triumphs achieved by the mathematical physicists, culminating m the Mdchamque A,m- of Lagrange, which was published in 1787 New- published m 1687, so that exactly one S great books This century

first period of mathematical physics of the mod-

m mx" Elecmaty and

Each marks the close of the second period

Each of these three books introduces new horizons of thought affecting everything which comes after them In considering the various topics to which mankind has

60 Science and the Modern World

bent ite systematic thought, it is impossible not to be struck with the unequal distribution of ability among the different fields In almost all subjects theie are a few outstanding names For it requires genius to create a subject as a dis- tinct topic for thought But in the case of many topics, after a good beginning very relevant to its immediate occasion, the subsequent development appears as a weak senes of floun- dermgs, so that the whole subject gradually loses its grip on the evolution of thought It was far otherwise with mathe- matical physics. The more you study this subject, the more you will find yourself astonished by the almost incredible tri- umphs of intellect which it exhibits The great mathematical physicists of the eighteenth and first few years of the nine- teenth century, most of them French, are a case m point Maupertuis, Clairaut, D’Alembert, Lagrange, Laplace, Fou- rier, Carnot, form a senes of names, such that each recalls to mind some achievement of the first rank When Carlyle, as the mouthpiece of the subsequent Romantic Age, scofihig- ly tenns the period the Age of Victorious Analysis, and mocks at Maupertuis as a ‘siiblimish gentleman m a white periwig,’ he only exhibits the narrow side of the Romanti- cists whom he is then voicing

It IS impossible to explain intelligently, in a short time and without technicalities, the details of the progress made by this school I will, however, endeavour to explain the mam point of a joint achievement of Maupertuis and Lagrange Their results, in conjunction with some subsequent mathe- matical methods due to two great German mathematicians of the first half of the nineteenth century, Gauss and Rie- mann, have recently proved themselves to be the preparatory work necessary for the new ideas which Herz and Einstein have introduced into mathematical physics Also they m- spired some of the best ideas m Clerk Maxwell’s treatise, al- ready mentioned in this lecture

They aimed at discovering something more fundamental and more general than Newton’s laws of motion which were discussed in the previous lecture They wanted to find some wider ideas, and in the case of Lagrange some more general means of mathematical exposition It was an ambitious en- terprise, and they were completely successful Maupertuis lived m the fust halt of the eighteenth century, and La- grange’s active life lay in its second half We find m Mauper- tuis a tinge ot the theologic age which preceded his birth. He started with the idea that the whole path of a material par- ticle between any limits of time must achieve some perfec- tion worthy of the providence of God There are two points of interest m this motive prmciple In the first place, it illus-

The Eighteenth Century

trates the thesis which I was urging in my first lecture that the way m which the medieval church had impressed on Eu- rope the notion of the detailed providence of a rational per- sonal God was one of the factors by which the trust in the order of nature had been generated In the second place, though we are now all convinced that such modes of thought are of no direct use in detailed scientific enquiry, Mauper- tuis’ success in this particular case shows that almost any idea which ]ogs you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing In the present case what the idea in ques- tion did for Maupertms was to lead him to enquire what general property of the path as a whole could be deduced from Newton’s laws of motion Undoubtedly this was a very sensible procedure whatever one’s theological notions Also his general idea led him to conceive that the property found would be a quantitative sum, such that any slight deviation from the path would increase it In this supposition he was generalising Newton’s first law of motion For an isolated particle takes the shortest route with uniform velocity. So Maupertms conjectured that a particle travelling through a field of force would realise the least possible amount of some quantity He discovered such a quantity and called it the m- tegral action between the tune limits considered In modern pluaseology it is the sum through successive small lapses of tune of the difference between the kinetic and potential en- ergies of the particle at each successive instant This action, therefore, has to do with the mterchange between the energy arising from motion and the energy arismg from position. Maupertms had discovered the famous theorem of least ac- tion Maupertms was not quite of the first rank m compari- son with such a man as Lagrange. In his hands and in those of his immediate successors, his principle did not assume any dominating importance Lagrange put the same question on a wider basis so as to make its answer relevant to actual procedure in the development of dynamics His Principle of Virtual Work as applied to systems m motion is m effect Maupertuis’ principle conceived as applymg at each instant of the path of the system But Lagrange saw further than Maupertms He grasped that he had gamed a method of stating dynamical truths in a way which is perfectly indif- ferent to the particular methods of measurement employed in fixing the positions of the various parts of the system. Accordingly, he went on to deduce equations of motion which are equally applicable whatever quantitative measure- ments have been made, provided that they are adequate to fix positions The beauty and almost divine simplicity of these equations is such that these formulas are worthy to rank

62 Science and the Modern World

with those mysterious symbols which in ancient times were held directly to indicate the Supreme Reason at the base of all things. Later Herz — inventor of electromagnetic waves — b.ised mechanics on the idea of every particle traversing the shortest path open to it under the circumstances constraining its motion, and finally Einstein, by the use of die geometri- cal theories of Gauss and Riemann, showed that these cir- cumstances could be construed as being inherent in the char- acter of space-time itself Such, in barest outline, is the story of dynamics from Galileo to Einstein

hfeanwhile Galvani and Volta lived and made their elec- tric discoveries, and the biological sciences slowly gathered their material, hut still waited for dominating ideas Psy- chology, also, was beginning to disengage itself from its de- pendence on general philosophy This independent growth of psychology was the ultimate result of its invocation by John Locke as a ciitic of metaphysical licence All the sciences dealing with life were still in an elementary observational stage, m which classification and diiect description were dominant So far the scheme of abstractions was adequate to the occasion

Tn the realm of practice, the age which produced enlight- ened rulers, such as the Emperor Joseph of the House of Hapsburg, Frederick the Great, Walpole, the great Lord Chatham, George Washington, cannot be said to have failed. Especially when to these rulers it adds the invention of par- liamentary cabinet government m England, of federal presi- dential government m the United States, and of the humam- tarian principles of the French Revolution Also in technol- ogy It produced the steam-engine, and thereby ushered in a new era of civilisation Undoubtedly, as a practical age the eighteenth centuiy was ,i success If you had asked one of the wisest and most typical of its ancestors, who just saw its commencement, I mean John Locke, what he had expected from it he would hardly have pitched his hopes higher than Its actual achievements

In developing a criticism of the scientific scheme of the eighteenth century, I must first give my mam reason for ig- noiing nineteenth century idealism — I am speaking of the philosophic idealism which finds the ultimate meaning of redity in mentality that is fully cognitive This idealistic school, as hitherto developed, has been too much divorced from the scientific outlook It has swallowed the scientific scheme m its entirety a« being the only rendering of the facts ot nature, and has then explained it as being an idea in the ultimate mentality In the case of absolute idealism, the world of nature is just one of the ideas, somehow differcn-

The Eighteenth Century

tiating the unity of the Absolute- m the case of pluralisUc idealism involving monadic mentalities, tins world is me greatest common measure of the various ideas which dif- ferentiate the various mental unities of the various monads. But, however you take it, these idealistic schools have con- spicuously failed to connect, m any organic fashion, the fact of nature with their idealistic philosophies So far as concerns what will be said in these lectures, your ultimate outlook may be realistic or idealistic My point is that a fur- ther stage of provisional realism is required m which the scientific scheme is recast, and founded upon the ultimate concept of organism

In outline, my procedure is to start from the analysis of the status of space and of time, or in modem phraseology, the status of space-time. There are two characters of either. Things are separated by space, and are separated by time: but they are also together m space, and together m time, even if they be not contemporaneous. I will call these characters the separative and the prehensive characters of space-time. There is yet a third character of space time. Everythmg which IS m space receives a definite limitation of some sort, so that m a sense it has just that shape which it does have and no other, also m some sense it is just in this place and no other Analogously for time, a thing endures during a certain period, and through no other period I will call this the modal character of space-tune It is evident that the modal character taken by itself gives rise to the idea of simple location But it must be conjoined with the separative and prehensive characters

For simplicity of thought, I will first speak of space only, and will afterwards extend the same treatment to time.

The volume is the most concrete element of space But the separative character of space, analyses a volume mto sub-volumes, and so on indefimtely. Accordmgly, taking the separative ch-aracter m isolation, we should infer that a vol- ume IS a mere multiplicity of non-volummous elements, of points in fact But it is die umty of volume which is the ultimate fact of experience, for example, the voluminous space of this hall This hall as a mere multiplicity of pomts is a construction of the logical imagmation.

Accordingly, the prime fact is the prehensive unity of volume, and this umty is mitigated or hmited by the separated unities of the innumerable contained parts We have a pre- hensive unity, which is yet held apart as an aggregate of contained parts But the prehensive unity of the volume is not the unity of a mere logical aggregate of parts The parts form an ordered aggregate, m the sense that each part is

64 Science and the Modern World

something from the standpoint of every other part, and also from the same standpoint every other part is something in re- lation to it Thus if A and B and C are volumes of space, B has an aspect from the standpoint of A, and so has C, and so has the relationship of B and C This aspect of B from A is of the essence of >1 The volumes of space have no independent existence They are only entities as within the totality; you cannot extract them from their environment without destruc- tion of then very essence Accordingly. I will say that the aspect of B from A is the mode in winch B enteis into the composition of A This is the modal character of space, that the prehensive unity of A is the prehension into unity of the aspects of all other volumes from the standpoint of A Tlic shape of a volume is the formula from which the totality of its aspects can be derived Thus the shape of a volume is more abstiact than its aspects It is evident that I can use Leibniz’s language, and say that every volume mirrors m it- self every other volume in space

Exactly analogous considerations hold with respect to dura- tions in tune An instant of time, without duration, is an imaginative logical constiuction Aho each duration of time mirrors in itselt all temporal durations

But in two ways I have introduced a false simplicity In the first place, I should have conjoined space and time, and conducted my expl.ination in respect to four-dimensional regions of space-time I have nothing to add in the way of explanation In your minds, substitute such foiir-dimensional regions for the spatial volumes of the previous explanations.

Secondly, my explanation has involved itself in a vicious circle For I have made the prehensive unity of the region A to consist of the prehensive unification of the modal pres- ences in A of other regions This difficulty arises because space-time cannot m reality be considered as a self-subsistent entity It is an abstraction, and its explanation requires ref- erence to that from which it has been extracted Space-time IS the specification of certain general characters of events and of their mutii.il ordering This recurrence to concrete fact brings me back to the eighteenth century, and indeed to Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century We have to con- sider the development in those epochs, of the criticism of the leigning scientific scheme

No epoch IS homogeneous; whatever you may have as- signed as the dominant note of a considerable penod, it will .always be possible to produce men, and great men, belonging to the same time, who exhibit themselves as an- tagonistic to the tone of their age This is certainly the case

The Eighteenth Century

with the eighteenth century For example, the names of John Wesley and of Rousseau must have occurred to you while I was drawing the character of that time But I do not want to speak of them, or of others The man whose ideas I must consider at some length is Bishop Berkeley Quite at the commencement of the epoch, he made all the right criticisms, at least in principle It would be untrue to say that he pro- duced no effect He was a famous man The wife of George II was one of the few queens who, m any country, have been clever enough, and wise enough, to patronise learning judiciously, accordingly, Berkeley was made a bishop, m days when bishops in Great Bntam were relatively far greater men than they are now. Also, what was more important than his bishopric, Hume studied him, and developed one side of his philosophy m a way which might have disturbed the ghost of the great ecclesiastic Then Kant studied Hume So, to say that Berkeley was uninfluential during the century, would certainly be absurd But all the same, he failed to affect the mam stream of scientific thought It flowed on as if he had never written Its general success made it impervious to criticism, then and since The world of science has always re- mained perfectly satisfied with its peculiar abstractions, They work, and that is sufficient for it The point before us is that this scientific field of thought IS now, in the twentieth century, too narrow for the concrete facts which are before it for analysis This is true even in physics, and is more especially urgent in the biological sciences. Thus, m order to understand the difficulties of modern scientific thought and also its reactions on the mod- ern world, we should have m our mmds some conception of a wider field of abstraction, a more concrete analysis, which shall stand nearer to the complete concreteness of our intui- tive experience Such an analysis should find in itself a niche for the concepts of matter and spint, as abstractions in terms of which much of our physical experience can be interpreted It IS m the search for this wider basis for scientific thought that Berkeley is so important He launched his criticism shortly after the schools of Newton and Locke had completed their work, and laid his finger exactly on the weak spots which they had left I do not propose to consider either the subjective idealism which has been derived from him, or the schools ot development which trace their descent from Hume and Kant respectively My point will be that — whatever the final metaphysics you may adopt — there is another line of development embedded m Berkeley, pointing to the analysis which we are in search of Berkeley overlooked it, partly by

66 Science and the Modern World

reason of the over-intellectualism of philosophers, and partly by his haste to have recourse to an idealism with its objectivity grounded in the mind of God You will remember that I have .ilready stated that the key of the problem lies in the notion of simple location Berkeley, in effect, criticises this notion He also laises the question, What do we mean by things being realised m the world of nature‘s

In Sections 23 and 24 of his Prmciplei of Human Knowl- edge, Berkeley gives his answer to this latter question I will quote some detached sentences from those Sections

‘23 But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a paik, or books existing m a closet, and nobody by to perceive them 1 answer, you m.ay so, there is no difficulty in it; but what is all this, I be- seech you, more than framing in your mind certain ide.is which you call books and trees, and at the same time omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive tlicm'’ ‘When we do our utmost to conceive the existence of ex- ternal bodies, we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas Bui the mind taking no notice of litelf, is deluded to think It can .and does conceive bodies existing un- thought of or without the mind, though at the same time they are apprehended by or evist m itself

‘24 It is veiy obvious, upon the least inquiry into our thoughts, to know whether it be possible for us to understand what IS meant by the ahmluie eviitcnce of sensible objects in themselves, or without the mind To me it is evident those woids mark out either a direct contradiction, or else nothing at all ’

Again there is a very remarkable passage in Section 10, of the tourth Dialogue ot Beikeley’s Alciphron I have already quoted It, .at greater length, m my Principles of Natural Knowledge

‘Euphranor Tell me, Alciphron, can you discern the doors, window and battlements of th.it same castle''

‘Alciphron I cannot At this distance it seems only a small round tower

‘Enph But I, who have been at it, know that it is no small round tower, but a large square building with battlements and turrets, which it seems you do not see ‘Ale What will you infer from thence?

‘Euph I would infer that the very object w’hich you strictly and properly perceive by sight is not that thing which is several miles distant.

‘Ale. Why so?

The Eighteenth Century 67

‘Euph Because a little round object is one thing, and a great square object is another Is it not so?

Some analogous examples concerning a planet and a cloud are then cited in the dialogue, and this passage finally con- cludes with.

‘Euphranor Is it not plain, therefore, that neither the castle, the planet, nor the cloud, which you tee here, are those real ones which you suppose exist at a distance?’

It IS made explicit in the first passage, already quoted, that Berkeley himself adopts an extreme idealistic interpreta- tion. For him mmd is the only absolute reality, and the umty of nature is the unity of ideas m the mind of God Personally, I think that Berkeley’s solution of the metaphysical problem raises difficulties not less than those which he points out as arising from a realistic interpretation of the scientific scheme. There is, however, another possible Ime of thought, which enables us to adopt anyhow an attitude of provisional real- ism, and to widen the scientific scheme m a way which is useful for science itself

I recur to the passage from Francis Bacon’s Natural His- tory, already quoted in the previous lecture

Tt IS certain that all bodies whatsoever, though they have no sense, yet they have perception and whether the body be alterant or altered, evermore a perception precedeth opera- tion; for else all bodies would be alike one to another . .’

Also in the previous lecture I construed perception (as used by Bacon) as meaning taking account of the essential character of the thmg perceived, and I construed sense as meaning cognition We certainly do take account of thmgs of which at the time we have no explicit cognition We can even have a cognitive memory of the taking account, without hav- ing had a contemporaneous cogmtion Also, as Bacon pomts out by his statement, ‘ for else all bodies would be alike one to another,’ it is evidently some element of the essential character which we take account of, namely something on which diversity is founded and not mere bare diversity.

The word peiceive is, in our common usage, shot through and through with the notion of cognitive apprehension So IS the word apprehension, even with the adjective cognitive omitted I will use the word prehension for uncognitive apprehension by this I mean apprehension which may or may not be cognitive Now take Euphranor’s last remark-

‘Is It not plain, therefore, that neither the castle, the planet.

68 Science and the Modern World

nor the cloud, which yon see here, are those real ones which you suppose exist at a distance''' Accordingly, there is a pre- hension, here in this place, of things which have a reference to other places

Now go back to Berkeley’s sentences, quoted from his P}inciples of Huiuan Knowledge He contends that what constitutes the realisation of natural entities is the being per- ceived within the unity of mind

We can substitute the concept, that the realisation is a gathering of things into the unity of a prehension, and that what IS diereby realised is the prehension, and not the things This unity of a prehension defines itself as a here and a now, and the things so gathered into the grasped unity have essen- tia] reference to other places and other times For Berkeley’s mind, I substitute a process of prehensive unification In order to make intelligible this concept of the progressive realisation of natur.il occurrences considerable expansion is required, and confrontation with its actual implications in terms of concrete experience This will be the task of the sub- sequent lectures In the first place, note that the idea of simple location has gone The things which are grasped into a realised unity, here and now, are not the castle, the cloud, and the planet simply m themselves, but they are the castle, the cloud, and the planet from the standpoint, m space and time, of the prehensive unification In other words, it is the perspective of the castle over there from the standpoint of the unification here It is, therefore, aspects of the castle, the cloud, and the planet which are grasped into unity here You wUl remember that the idea of perspectives is quite familiar in philosophy It was introduced by Leibmz, m the notion of his monads mirroring perspectives of the universe 1 am using the same notion, only 1 am toning down his monads into the unified events in space and time In some ways, there is a greater analogy with Spinoza’s modes, that IS why I use the terms mode and modal In the analogy With Spinoza, his one substance is for me the one underlying activity of realisation individualising itself in an interlocked plurality of modes Tlius, concrete fact is process Its primary analysis is into underlying activity of prehension, and into realised prehensive events E.ach event is an individual matter of fact issuing from an individualisation of the substrate activity But individualisation does not mean substantial independence

An entity of which we become aware in sense perception is the terminus of our act of perception I will call such an entity, a sense-object For example, green of a definite shade

The Eighteenth Century

is a sense-object, so is a sound of definite quality and pitch; and so is a definite scent, and a definite quahty of touch The way in which such an enUty is related to space during a definite lapse of time is complex I will say that a sense- object has ingremon into space-time The cognitive percep- tion of a sense-object is the awareness of the prehensive uni- fication (into a standpoint A) of various modes of various sense-objects, including the sense-object in question The standpoint A is, of course, a region of space-time, that is to say. It IS a volume of space through a duration of time But as one entity, this standpoint ts a unit of realised expenence A mode of a sense-object at (as abstracted from the sense- object whose relationship to A the mode is conditioning) is the aspect from A of some other legion B Thus the sense- object IS present m A with the mode of location in B. Thus if green be the sense-object m question, green is not simply at A where it is being perceived, nor is it simply at B where it is perceived as located, but it is present at A with the mode of lo- cation in B There is no particular mystery about this You have only got to look into a mirror and to see the image in it of some green leaves behind your back For you at A there will be green, but not green simply at A where you are The green at A will be green with the mode of having location at the image of the leaf behind the mirror Then turn round and look at the leaf You are now perceivmg the green in the same way as you did before, except that now the green has the mode of being located in the actual leaf I am merely describing what we do perceive we are aware of green as being one element in a prehensive umfication of sense-objects; each sense-object, and among them green, having its particu- lar mode, which is expressible as location elsewhere There are various types of modal location For example, sound is voluminous' it fills a hall, and so sometimes does diffused colour But the modal location of a colour may be that of being the remote boundary of a volume, as for example IS the locus of the modal mgression of sense-objects. This is the reason why space and time (if for simplicity we disjoin them) are given m their entireties For each volume of space, or each lapse of time, includes in its essence aspects of all volumes of space, or of all lapses of time The difficulties of philosophy in respect to space and time are founded on the error of considering them as primarily the loci of simple locations Perception is simply the cognition of prehensive uniticatiom or more shortly, perception is cognition of pre- hension The actual world is a manifold of prehensions, and a prehension is a ‘prehensive occasion’; and a prehensive

70 Science and the Modern World

occasion is the most concrete finite entity, conceived as what it IS in itself and for itself and not as from its aspect in the essence of another such occasion Prehcnsive unification might he said to have simple location in its volume A But this would be a mere tautology For space and time arc simply abstractions from the totality of prehensive unifications as mutually patterned m each other Thus a prehension has simple location at the volume A in the same way as that m which a man’s face fits on to the smile that spreads over it There is, so far as we have gone, more sense m saying that an act of perception has simple location, for it may be con- ceived as being simply at the cognised prehension

There are more entities involved in nature than the mere sense-objects, so far considered But, allowing for the ne- cessity of revision consequent on a more complete point of view, we can frame our answer to Berkeley’s question as to the character of the reality to be assigned to nature He states It to he the reality of ideas m mind A complete metaphysic which has attained to some notion of mind, and to some no- tion of ideas, may perhaps ultimately adopt that view It is unnecessary for the purpose of these lectures to ask such a fundamental question We can be content with a provisional realism in which nature is conceived as a complex of pre- hcnsive unifications. Space and time exhibit the general scheme of interlocked relations of these prehensions You cannot tear any of them out of its context Yet each one of them within its context has all the reality that attaches to the whole complex Conversely, the totality has the same reality as each prehension, for each prehension unifies the modalities to be asenbed, from its standpoint, to every part of the whole A prehension is a process of unifying Accord- ingly, nature is a process of expansive development, neces- sarily transitional from prehension to prehension What is achieved is thereby passed beyond, but it is also retained as having aspects of itself present to prehensions which he be- yond It

Thus nature is a structure of evolving processes The real- ity IS the process It is nonsense to ask if the colour red is real The colour red is ingredient m the process of realisa- tion The realities of nature are the prehensions m nature, that IS to say, the events in nature

Now that we h,ave cleared space and time from the taint of simple location, we may partially abandon the awkward term prehension This term was introduced to signify the essential unity of an event, namely, the event as one entity, and not as a mere assemblage of parts or of ingredients It IS necessary to understand that space-time is nothing else

The Eighteenth Century

than a system of pulling together of assemblages into unities. But the word event just means one of these spatio-temporal unities Accordingly, it may be used instead of the term ‘prehension’ as meaning the thing prehended.

An event has contemporaries This means that an event mirrors within itself the modes of its contemporaries as a display of immediate achievement An event has a past This means that an event minors within itself the modes of its predecessors, as memories which are fused into its own con- tent An event has a future This means that an event mir- rors within Itself such aspects as the future throws back on to the present, or, m other words, as the present has deter- mined concerning the future. Thus an event has anticipation:

The prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreammg on things to come.’

These conclusions are essential for any form of realism For there is in the world for our cognisance, memory of the past, immediacy of reahsation, and indication of things to come

In this sketch of an analysis more concrete than that of the scientific scheme of thought, I have started from our own psychological field, as it stands for our cogmtion I take it for what it claims to be the self-knowledge of our bodily event I mean the total event, and not the inspection of the details of the body This self-knowledge discloses a pre- hensive unification of modal presences of entities beyond it- self I generalise by the use of the pnnciple that this total bodily event is on the same level as all other events, except for an unusual complexity and stability of inherent pattern. The strength of the theory of matenalistic mechanism has been the demand, that no arbitrary breaks be introduced into nature, to eke out the collapse of an explanation. I accept this principle But if you start from the immediate facts of our psychological experience, as surely an empiricist should begin, you are at once led to the organic conception of na- ture of which the description has been commenced in this lecture

It is the defect of the eighteenth century scientific scheme that it provides none of the elements which compose the im- mediate psychological experiences of mankind Nor does it provide any elementary trace of the organic unity of a whole, from which the organic umties of electrons, protons, mole- cules, and living bodies can emerge According to that scheme, there is no reason in the nature of things why por- tions of material should have any physical relations to each

72 Science and the Modern World

other Let us grant that we cannot hope to he able to discern the laws of nature to be necessary But we can hope to see that It IS necessary that there should be an order of nature. The concept of the order of nature is bound up with the con- cept of nature as the locus of organisms m process of devel- opment

N B In connection mth the httcr portion of this chapter a sentence from Descartes’ ‘Reply to Obieclions , against the Meditations’ is interesting — ‘Hence the idea of the sun will be the sun itself existing in the mind, not indted form.illy, as it exists m the sky, but objective- ly, le . in the way in which objects are wont to exist m the mmd, and Uiis mode of being is iruly much less perfect than that in which things exist outside the mind, but it is not on that account mere nothmg I have already said’ [Reply to Objections I, Tnnslation by Haldane’ & Ross, Vol II, p 10 ] I find di/liculty in reconciling this theory of ideas (with which I agree) with other parts of the Cartesian philosophy

5 ! The Romantic Reaction

My LAST LECTURE described the mfluence upon the eight- eenth century of the narrow and efficient scheme of scien- tific concepts which it had inherited from its predecessor That scheme was the product of a mentality which found the Augustmian theology extremely congenial. The Protes- tant Calvinism and the Catholic Jansenism exhibited man as helpless to co-operate with Irresistible Grace the contempo- rary scheme of science exhibited man as helpless to co- operate with the irresistible mechanism of nature The mech- amsm ot God and the mechanism of matter were the mon- strous issues of hmited metaphysics and clear logical intellect Also the seventeenth century had genius, and denied the world of muddled thought The eighteenth century con- tinued the work of clearance, with rutliless efficiency. The scientific scheme has lasted longer than the theological scheme Mankind soon lost interest in Irresistible Grace, but it quickly appreciated the competent engineering which was due to science Also in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, George Berkeley launched his philosophical criti- cism against the whole basis of the system He failed to dis- turb the dominant current of thought In my last lecture I developed a parallel line of argument, which would lead to a system of thought basing nature upon the concept of or- pnism, and not upon the concept of matter In the present lecture, I propose in the first place to consider how the con-

The Romantic Reaction

Crete educated thought of men has viewed this opposition of mechanism and organism. It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression Accordingly it is to literature that we must look, particularly in its more con- crete forms, namely m poetry and in drama, if we hope to dis- cover the inward thoughts of a generation We quickly find that the Western peoples exhibit on a colossal scale a peculiarity which is popularly supposed to be more especially characteristic of the Chinese Surprise is often expressed that a Chinaman can be of two religions, a Confucian for some occasions and a Buddhist for other oc- casions Whether this is true of China I do not know, nor do I know whether, if true, these two attitudes are really inconsistent But there can be no doubt that an analogous fact IS true of the West, and that the two attitudes involved are inconsistent A scientific realism, based on mechanism, IS conjoined with an unwavermg belief in the world of men and of the higher animals as being composed of self- determimng organisms This radical inconsistency at the basis of modern thought accounts for much that is half-

hearted and wavenng in our civilisation. It would be going too far to say that it distracts thought It enfeebles it, by rea- son of the inconsistency lurking in the background After all, the men of the Middle Ages were m pursuit of an ex- cellency of which we have nearly forgotten the existence They set before themselves the ideal of the attainment of a harmony of the understanding We are content with super- ficial orderings from diverse arbitrary starting points For instance, the enterprises produced by the individualistic en- ergy of the European peoples presuppose physical actions directed to final causes But the science which is employed in their development is based on a philosophy which asserts that physical causation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end It is not popular to dwell on the absolute contradiction here involved. It is the fact however you gloze it over with phrases Of course, we find m the eighteenth century Paley’s famous argument that mechanisin presupposes a God who is the author of nature. But even before Paley put the argument into its final form, Hume had written the retort, that the God whom you will find will be the sort of God who makes that mechanism In Other words, that mechanism can, at most, presuppose a me- chanic, and not merely a mechanic but its mechanic The only way of mitigating mechamsm is by the discovery that it IS not mechanism ^

When we leave literature, we find,

apologetic theology, and come to ordinary as we might expect, that the scientific out-

74 Science and the Modern World

look IS m general simply ignored So far as the mass of lit- erature IS concerned, science might never have been heard of Until recently nearly all writers have been soaked m classical and renaissance literature For the most part, neither philosophy nor science interested them, and their minds were trained to ignoie them

There aie exceptions to this sweeping statement, and, even if we confine ourselves to English hteiature, they concern some of the greatest names, also the mdiiect influence of science has been considerable

A sidelight on this distracting inconsistency in modern thought is obtained by examining some of those great se- rious poems in English literature, whose general scale gives them a didactic character The relevant poems are Milton’s Paiadise Lost, Pope’s Esmy on Man Woidsworth’s Excur- .uon, Tennyson’s In Memonam Milton, though he is writing after the Restoiation, voices the theological aspect of the earlier portion of his century, untouched by the influence of the scientific mateiialism Pope’s poem repiesents the effect on popular thought of the intervening sixty years which in- cludes the fiist period of assured triumph for the scientific movement Wordsworth in his whole being expresses a con- scious reaction against the mentality of the eighteenth cen- tury This mentality means nothing else than the acceptance of the scientific ideas at their full face value Wordsworth was not botliered bv any intellectual antagonism What moved him was a moral repulsion He felt that somethmg had been left out, and that what had been left out com- prised everything that was most important Tennyson is the mouthpiece of the attempts of the waning romantic movement in the second quarter of the nineteenth century to come to terms with science By this time the two elements in modern thought had disclosed their fundamental diverg- ence by their jarring interpretations of the course of nature and the life of man Tennyson stands in this poem as the perfect example of the distraction which I have already men- tioned There are opposing visions of the world, and both of them command his assent by appeals to ultimate intuitions from which there seems no escape Tennyson goes to the heart of the difficulty It is the problem of mechanism which appalls him,

“ ‘The stars,’ she whispers, ‘blindly run ’ ”

This line states starkly the whole philosophic problem im- plicit in the poem Each molecule blindly runs The human body IS a collection of molecules Therefore, the human body

The Romantic Reaction

blindly runs, and therefore there can be no individual re- sponsibility for the actions of the body If you once accept that the molecule is definitely determined to be what it is, independently of any determination by reason of the total organism of the body, and if you further admit that the blind run is settled by the general mechanical laws, there can be no escape from this conclusion But mental experi- ences are derivative from the actions of the body, including of course its internal behaviour Accordingly, the sole func- tion of the mind is to have at least some of its experiences settled for it, and to add such others as may be open to it independently of the body’s motions, internal and external

There are then tu'o possible theories as to the mind You can either deny that it can supply for itself any experiences other than those provided for it by the body, or you can admit them

If you refuse to admit the additional experiences, then all individual moral responsibility is swept away If you do admit them, then a human being may be responsible for the state of his mind though he has no responsibility for the ac- tions of his body. The enfeeblement of thought in file mod- ern world IS illustrated by the way in which this plain issue is avoided in Tennyson’s poem There is something kept m the background, a skeleton in the cupboard He touches on almost every religious and scientific problem, but carefully avoids more than a passing allusion to this one

This very problem was in full debate at the date of the poem John Stuart Mill was maintammg his doctrine of de- terniimsm In this doctrine volitions are determined by mo- tives, and motives are expressible in terms of antecedent conditions including states of mind as well as states of the body

It is obvious that this doctrine affords no escape from the dilemma presented by a thoroughgoing mechanism For if the volition affects the state of the body, then the molecules m the body do not blindly run If the volition does not af- fect the state of the body, the mind is still left m its un- comfortable position

Mill s doctrine is generally accepted, especially among scientists’ as though in some way it allowed you to accept the extreme doctrme of materialistic mechanism, and yet mitigated its unbelievable consequences It does nothing of the sort Either the bodily molecules blindly run, or they do not It they do blindly run, the mental states are urelevant in discussing the bodily actions

I have stated the arguments concisely, because in truth the issue is a very simple one. Prolonged discussion is mere-

76 Science and the Modern World

ly .a source of confusion Tlie question as to the metaphysical status of molecules does not come in The statement that they are meie formulae has no beaiing on the argument For presuniably the formulae mean something If they mean nothing, the whole mechanical doctiine is likewise without meaning, and the question drops But if the formulae mean anything, the aigument applies to exactly what they do mean The traditional w.iv of evading the difficulty — other than the simple way of ignoring it — is to have recourse to some form of what is now termed ‘vitalism ’ This doctrine is really a compromise It allows a free lun to mechanism throughout the whole of inanimate nature, and holds that the mechanism is partially mitigated within living bodies I feel that this thcoiv is an unsatisfactory compromise The gap between living and dead matter is too vague and prob- lematical to heai the weight of such an arbitrary assumption, which involves an essential dualism somewhcie

The doctrine which I am maintaining is th.at the whole concept of materialism only applies to very abstract entities, the products of logical discernment The concrete endunng entities arc organisms, so that the plan of the whole influ- ences the very characters of the various subordinate organ- isms which entei into it In the case of an animal, the men- tal states enter into the plan of the total organism and thus modify the plans of the successive subordinate organisms until the ultimate smallest organisms, such as electrons, are reached Thus an electron within a living body is different from an electron outside it, bv reason of the plan of the body The electron blindly runs cither within or without the body; but it runs within the body in accordance with its character within (he body, that is to say, in accordance wth the general plan of the bodv, and this plan includes the men- tal state But the principle of modification is perfectly gen- eral throughout nature, .and lepresents no property peculiar to living bodies In subsequent lectures it will be explained that this doctiine involves the abandonment of the traditional scientific materialism, and the substitution of an alternative doctrine of organism

I shall not discuss Mill’s determinism, as it lies outside the scheme of these lectures The foregoing discussion has been directed to secure that either determinism or free will shall have some relevance, unhampered by the difficulties intro- duced by materialistic mechanism, or by the compromise of vitalism I would terni the doctrine of these lectures, the theory of nnjanic mechanism In this theory, the molecules may blindly run in accord.ince with the general laws, but the molecules differ in their mtimsic characters according to

The Romantic Reaction 77

the general organic plans of the situations in. which they find themselves.

The discrepancy between the materialistic mechanism of science and the moral intuitions, which are presupposed in the concrete affairs of life, only gradually assumed its true importance as the centuries advanced The different tones of the successive epochs to which the poems, already men- tioned, belong are curiously reflected in their opemng pas- sages Milton ends his introduction with the prayer.

That to the height of this great argument I mav assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men '

To judge from many modern writers on Milton, we might imagine that the Paradise Lost and the Paradise Regained were written as a senes of experiments m blank verse This was certainly not Milton’s view of his work To ‘justify the ways of God to men’ was very much his main object. He recurs to the same idea in the Samson Agomstes,

‘Just are the ways of God And justifiable to men’

We note the assured volume of confidence, untroubled by the coming scientific avalanche The actual date of the pub- lication of the Paradise Lost lies just beyond the epoch to which It belongs It is the swan-song of a passing world of untroubled certitude

A comparison between Pope’s Essay on Man and the Paradise Lost exhibits the change of tone in English thought in the fifty or sixty years which separate the age of Milton from the age of Pope Milton addresses his poem to God, Pope’s poem is addressed to Lord Bolingbroke,

|Awake, my St John' leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pnde of kings.

Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die)

Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;

A mighty maze! but not without a plan.’

Compare the jaunty assurance of Pope,

'A mighty maze! but not without a plan.’ with Milton’s

‘Just are the ways of God And justifiable to men.’

But the real point to notice is that Pope as well as Milton was untroubled by the great perplexity which haLJs the

78 Science and the Modern Worid

modern world The clue which Milton followed was to dwell on the ways of God in dealings with man Two generations later we find Pope equally confident that the enlightened methods of modem science provided a plan adequate as a map of the ‘mighty maze ’

Wordswoith's Excursion is the next English poem on the same subject A prose preface tells us that it is a fragment of a larger projected work, described as ‘A philosophical poem containing views of Man, Nature, and Society ’

Very chaiacteristically the poem begins with the line,

‘ Twas summer, and the sun had mounted high ’

Thus the romantic reaction started neither with God nor with Lord Bohngbroke, but with nature We aie here wit- nessing a conscious leaction against the whole tone of the eighteenth century That century approached nature with the abstract analysis of science, whereas Wordsworth opposes to the scientific abstractions his full concrete experience

A generation of religious revival and of scientific advance lies between the Excursion and Tennyson’s In Memoriam The earlier poets had solved the perplexity by ignoring it That course was not open to Tennvson Accordingly his poem begins thus

'Stronc Son of God, immortal Love,

Whom \st, that have not seen Tliy face.

By faith, and faith alone, embrace,

Believing where we cannot prove.’

Tlie note of perplexity is struck at once The nineteenth cen- tury' has been a perplexed century, in a sense which is not true of any of its predecessors of the modern period In the earlier times there were opposing camps, bitterly at variance on questions which they deemed fundamental But, except tor a few stragglers, either camp was whole-hearted The importance of Tennyson’s poem lies in the fact that it exactly expressed the character of its period. Each individual was divided against himself In the earlier times, the deep thinkers were the clear thinkers, — Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz They knew exactly what they meant and said it In the nineteenth century, some of the deeper thinkers among theologians and philosopheis were muddled thinkers Their assent was claimed by incompatible doctrines, and their ef- forts at reconciliation produced inevitable confusion

Matthew Arnold, even mote than Tennvson, tvas the poet who expressed this mood of individual distraction which was

The Romantic Reaction 79

so charactenstic of this century Compare with In Memo- nam the closing lines of Arnold’s Dover Beach-

‘And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

^ere ignorant armies clash by night ’

Cardinal Newman in his Apologia pro Viia Sua mentions it as a peculiarity of Pusey, the great Anglican ecclesiastic, ‘He was haunted by no intellectual perplexities ’ In this re- spect Pusey recalls Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, as in contrast with Tennyson, Clough, Matthew Arnold, and Newman him- self.

So far as concerns English literature we find, as might be anticipated, the most interesting cnticism of the thoughts of science among the leaders of the romantic reaction which accompanied and succeeded the epoch of the French Revo- lution In English literature, the deepest thinkers of this school were Colendge, Wordsworth, and Shelley Keats is an example of literature untouched by science We may neg- lect Coleridge’s attempt at an explicit philosophical formu- lation It was influential m his own generation, but in these lectures it is my object only to mention those elements of the thought of the past which stand for all time Even with this lumtation, only a selection is possible For our purposes Coleridge is only important by his influence on Wordsworth. Thus Wordsworth and Shelley remain

Wordsworth was passionately absorbed in nature It has been said of Spinoza, that he was drunk with God It is equally true that Wordsworth was drunk with nature But he was a thoughtful, well-read man, with philosophical in- terests, and sane even to the point of prosiness. In addition, he was a gemus He weakens his evidence by his dislike of science We all remember his scorn of the poor man whom he somewhat hastily accuses of peeping and botanising on his mother’s grave Passage after passage could be quoted from him, expressing this repulsion In this respect, his char- acteristic thought can be summed up m his phrase, ‘We murder to dissect ’

In this latter passage, he discloses the intellectual basis of his criticism of science He alleges against science its absorp- tion m abstractions His consistent theme is that the impor- tant facts of nature elude the scientific method It is im- portant therefore to ask, what Wordsworth found in nature that failed to receive expression m science I ask this question in the interest of science itself, for one main position in these

Science and the Modern World

lectures is a protest against the idea that the abstractions of science aie irrcformable and unalterable Now it is emphat- ically not the case that Wordswoith hands over inorganic matter to the mercy of science, and concentrates on the faith that in the living organism there is some element that science cannot analyse Of course he recognises, what no one doubts, that in some sense living things aie different trom lifeless things But that is not his mam point It is the brood- ing presence of the hills which haunts him His theme is na- ture w\oliila, that is to say, he dwells on that mysterious presence of surrounding things, which imposes itself on any sepal ate element that we set up as an individual for its own sake He always grasps the whole of natiiie as involved in the tonality of the paiticular instance That is why he laughs with the daffodils, and finds in the primrose thoughts ‘too deep lor tears ’

Wordsworth’s greatest poem is, by far, the first book of T/ic Pielutle It is pervaded by this sense of the haunting presences of nature A scries of magnificent passages, too long for quotation, cxpiess this idea Of course, Words- 'worth IS a poet writing a poem, and is not concerned with drv philosophical statements But it would hardly be possi- ble to expiess more cleaily a feeling for n.iture, as exhibiting entwined prehcnsivc unities, each suffused with modal pres- ences of others

‘Ye Presences of Nature in the sky And on the eaitli' Ye Visions of the hillsl And Souls of lonely places! can I think A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed Such ministry', when ye through many a year Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,

On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills, Impressed upon all foims the characters Of danger or desire, and thus did make The surface of the universal earth.

With triumph and delight, with hope and fear,

Woik like a sea’’ ’

In thus citing Wordsworth, the point which I wish to make is that we forget how stiained and patadoxical is the view of nature which modern science imposes on our thoughts Wordsworth, to the height of genius, expresses the concrete facts of our apprehension, facts which are distorted in the scientific analysis Is it not possible that the standard- ised concepts of science are only valid within narrow limi- tations, perhaps too narrow foi science itself'^

Shelley’s attitude to science was at the opposite pole to

The Romantic Reaction

that of Woidswoith He loved it, and is never tired of ex- pressing in poetry the thoughts which it suggests It sym- bolises to him joy, and peace, and illumination What the hills were to the youth of Wordsworth, a chemical labora- tory was to Shelley It is unfortunate that Shelley’s literary critics have, in this respect, so little of Shelley in their own mentality They tend to treat as a casual oddity of Shelley’s nature what was, in fact, pait of the mam structure of his mind, permeating his poetry through and through If Shelley had been born a hundred years later, the twentieth century would have seen a Newton among chemists For the sake ot estimating the value of Shelley’s evidence it IS important to realise this absorption of his mind m sci- entific ideas It can be illustrated by lyric after lyric I will choose one poem only, the fourth act of his Piometheus Unbound The Earth and the Moon converse together in the language of accurate science Physical experiments guide his imagery For example, the Earth’s exclamation,

‘The vaporous exultation not to be confined!’

IS the poetic transcript of ‘the expansive force of gases,’ as it is termed in books on science Again, take the Earth’s stanza,

T spin beneath my pyramid of night.

Which points into the heavens — dreaming delight,

Murmuring victorious joy m my enchanted sleep.

As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,

Under the shadow of his beauty lying.

Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep ’

This stanza could only have been written by someone with a definite geometrical diagiam before his inward eye — a dia- gram which It has often been my business to demonstrate to mathematical classes As evidence, note especially the last line which gives poetical imagery to the light sui rounding night’s pyramid This idea could not occur to anyone with- out the diagram But the whole poem and other poems are permeated with touches of this kind Now the poet, so sympathetic with science, so absorbed m Its ideas, can simply make nothing of the doctrine of sec- ondary qualities which is fundamental to its concepts For Shelley nature retains its beauty and its colour Shelley’s na- ture IS in Its essence a nature of organisms, functioning with the full content of our perceptual experience We are so used to Ignoring the implication of orthodox scientific doc- trine, that it IS difficult to make evident the criticism upon it

82 Science and the Modern World

which IS thereby implied If anybody could have treated it seriously, Shelley would have done so

Furthermore Shelley is entirely at one with Wordsworth as to the interfusing of the Presence in nature Here is the opening stanza of his poem entitled Mont Blanc.

The everlasting universe of Things

Flows through the Mind, and rolls its rapid waves.

Now dark. — now glittering — now reflecting gloom —

Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters, — with a sound but half its own,

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume

In the wild woods, among the Mountains lone,

Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river Over Its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves '

Shelley has written these lines with explicit reference to some form of idealism, Kantian or Berkeleyan or Platonic But however you construe him, he is here an emphatic wit- ness to a prehensive unification as constitutmg the very being of nature

Berkeley, Wordsworth, Shelley are representative of the in- tuitive refusal seriously to accept the abstract materialism of science

There is an interesting difference m the treatment of na- ture by Wordsworth and by Shelley, which brings forward the exact questions we have got to think about Shelley thinks of nature as changing, dissolving, transforming as it were at a fairy’s touch. The leaves fly before the West Wind

‘Like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing ’

In his poem The Cloud it is the transformations of water which excite his imagination The subject of the poem is the endless, eternal, elusive change of things

‘I change but I cannot die ’

This IS one aspect of nature, its elusive change' a change not merely to be expressed by locomotion, but a change of inward character This is where Shelley places his emphasis, on the change of what cannot die

Wordsworth was born among hills, hills mostly barren of trees, and thus showing the minimum of change with the seasons He was haunted by the enormous permanences of

The Romantic Reaction 83

nature. For him change is an incident which shoots across a background of endurance,

‘Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides ’

Every scheme for the analysis of nature has to face these two facts, change and enduiance There is yet a third fact to be placed by it, eternality, I will call it The mountain endures But when after ages it has been worn away, it has gone If a replica arises, it is yet a new mountain A col- our IS eternal It haunts time like a spirit It comes and it goes But where it comes, it is the same colour It neither survives nor does it live It appears when it is wanted The mountain has to time and space a different relation from that which colour has In the previous lecture, I was chiefly considering the relation to space-time of things which, in my sense of the term, are eternal It was necessary to do so before we can pass to the consideration of the things which endure Also we must recollect the basis of our procedure I hold that philosophy is the ciitic of abstractions Its function is the double one, first of harmonising them by assigning to them their right relative status as abstractions, and secondly of completing them by direct comparison with more concrete intuitions of the universe, and thereby promoting the forma- tion of more complete schemes of thought It is in respect to this comparison that the testimony of great poets is of such importance Their survival is evidence that they express deep intuitions of mankind penetrating into what is universal in concrete fact Philosophy is not one among the sciences with Its own little scheme of abstractions which it works away at perfecting and improving It is the survey of sciences, with the special objects of their harmony, and of their comple- tion It brings to this task, not only the evidence of the sep- arate sciences, but also its own appeal to concrete experience It confronts the sciences with concrete fact The literature of the nineteenth century, especially its Eng- lish poetic literature, is a witness to the discord between the aesthetic intuitions of mankind and the mechanism of sci- ence Shelley brings vividly before us the elusiveness of the eternal objects of sense as they haunt the change which in- fects underlying organisms Wordsworth is the poet of na- ture as being the field of enduring permanences carrying within themselves a message of tremendous significance The eternal objects are also there for him.

The light that never was, on sea or land ’

Both Shelley and Wordsworth emphaUcally bear witness that

84 Science and the Modern World

nature cannot be divorced from its aesthetic values, and that these values aiise from the cumulation, m some sense, of the brooding presence of the whole on to its various parts. Thus we gain from the poets the doctrine that a philosophy of nature must concern itself at least with these six notions change, value, eternal objects, enduiance, organism, interfu- sion

We see that the literary romantic movement at the begin- ning of the nineteenth century, just as much as Berkeley’s philosophical idealistic movement a hundred years earlier, refused to be confined within the materialistic concepts of the orthodox scientific theory We know also that when in these lectures we come to the twentieth century, we shall find a movement in science itself to reorganise its concepts, driven thereto by its own intrinsic development

It is, howevei, impossible to proceed untd we have settled whether this refashioning of ideas is to be earned out on an objectivist basis or on a subjectivist basis By a subjectivist basis I mean the belief tliat the nature of our immediate experience is the outcome of the perceptive peculiarities of the subject enjoying the experience In other words, I mean that for this theory what is perceived is not a partial vision of a complex of things generally independent of that act of cog- nition, but that It merely is the expression of the individual peculiarities of the cognitive act Accordingly what is common to the multiplicity of cognitive acts is the ratiocination con- nected with them Thus, though there is a common world of thought associated with our sense-perceptions, there ts no common world to think about What we do think about is a common conceptual world applying indifferently to our in- dividual experiences which are strictly personal to ourselves Such a conceptual world will ultimately find its complete ex- pression in the equations of applied mathematics. This is the extreme subjectivist position There is of course the half-way house of those who believe that our perceptual experience does tell us of a common objective world, but that the thmgs perceived are merely the outcome for us of this world, and are not m themselves elements in the common world itself

Also there is the objectivist position This creed is that the actual elements perceived by our senses are in themselves the elements of a common world, and that this world is a complex of things, incliidmg indeed our acts of cognition, but transcending them Accoiding to this point of view the things experienced are to be distinguished from our knowl- edge of them So far as there is dependence, the things pave the way for the cognition, rather than vice versa But the point IS that the actual things experienced enter into a common

The Romantic Reaction

world which transcends knowledge, though it includes knowledge The intermediate subjectivists would hold that the things experienced only mdirectly enter into the common world by reason of their dependence on the subject who is cognising The objectivist holds that the things experienced and the cognisant subject enter into the common world on equal terms In these lectures I am giving the outline of what I consider to be the essentials of an objectivist philosophy adapted to the requirement of science and to the concrete experience of mankind Apart from the detailed criticism of the difficulties raised by subjectivism in any form, my broad reasons for distrusting it are three in number One reason arises from the direct interrogation ot our perceptive expen- ence It appears from this mterrogation that we are within a world of colours, sounds, and other sense-objects, related in space and time to enduring objects such as stones, trees, and human bodies We seem to be ourselves elements of this world m the same sense as are the other things which we perceive But the subjectivist, even the moderate intermedi- ate subjectivist, makes this world, as thus described, depend on us, in a way which directly traverses our naive experience I hold that the ultimate appeal is to naive experience and that IS why I lay such stress on the evidence of poetry My point IS, that m our sense-experience we know away from and beyond our own personality, whereas the subjectivist holds that in such experience w-e merely know about our own personality Even the intermediate subjectivist places oui per- sonality between the world we know ot and the common world which he admits The world we know of is for him the internal strain of our personality under the stress of the common world which lies behind

My second reason for distrusting subjectivism is based on the particular content of experience Our historical knowl- edge tell us of ages in the past when, so far as we can see, no living being existed on earth Again it also tells us of count- less star-systems, whose detailed history remains beyond our ken Consider even the moon and the earth What is going on within the interior of the earth, and on the far side of the moon' Our perceptions lead us to infer that there is some- thing happening in the stars, something happening within the earth, and something happening on the far side of the moon Also they tell us that m remote ages there were things happening But all these things which it appears certainly h.ippened, are either unknown m detail, or else are recon- structed by inferential evidence In the tace of this content of our personal experience, it is difficult to believe that the experienced world is an attribute of our own personality

86 Science and the Modern World

My third reason is based upon the instinct for action Just as sense-perception seems to give knowledge of what lies beyond individuality, so action seems to issue m an mstinct for self-transcendence The activity passes beyond self into the known transcendent world It is here that final ends are of importance For it is not activity urged from behind, which passes out mto the veiled world of the intermediate subjectivist It IS activity directed to determinate ends in the known world, and yet it is activity transcending self and It IS activity withm the known world It follows there- fore that the world, as known, transcends the subject which IS cognisant of it

The subjectivist position has been popular among those who have been engaged in giving a philosophical interpreta- tion to the recent theories of relativity m physical science The dependence of the world of sense on the individual per- cipient seems an easy mode of expressing the means mvolved, Of course, with the exception of those who are content with themselves as forming the entire universe, solitary amid noth- ing, everyone wants to struggle back to some sort of ob- lectivist position I do not understand how a common world Bf thought can be established m the absence of a common World of sense I will not argue this point in detail, but in the absence of a transcendence of thought, or a transcendence of the world of sense, it is difficult to see how the subjectivist IS to divest himself of his solitariness Nor does the inter- mediate subjectivist appear to get any help from his un- known world in the background

The distinction between realism and idealism does not coincide with that between objectivism and subjectivism Both realists and idealists can start from an objective stand- point They may both agree that the world disclosed in sense-perception is a common world, transcending the in- dividual recipient But the objective idealist, when he comes to analyse what the reality of this world involves, finds that cogmtive mentality is m some way inextricably concerned in every detail This position the realist demes Accordingly these two classes of objectivists do not part company till they have arrived at the ultimate problem of metaphysics There is a great deal which they share m common This is why, in my last lecture, I said that I adopted a position of provisional realism

In the past, the objectivist position has been distorted by the supposed necessity of accepting the classical scientific materialism, with its doctrine of simple location This has ne- cessitated the doctrine of secondary and primary qualities Thus the secondary qualities, such as the sense-objects, are

The Romantic Reaction 87

dealt with on subjectivist principles This is a half-hearted position which falls an easy prey to subjectivist criticism

If we are to include the secondary qualities m the com- mon world, a very drastic reorganisation of our fundamental concept IS necessary It is an evident fact of experience that our apprehensions of the external world depend absolutely on the occurrences within the human body By playing ap- propriate tricks on the body a man can be got to perceive, or not to perceive, almost anything Some people express them- selves as though bodies, brains, and nerves were the only real things in an entirely imagmary world In other words, they treat bodies on objectivist principles, and the rest of the world on subjectivist principles This will not do, especially, when we remember that it is the experimenter’s perception of another person’s body which is m question as evidence

But we have to admit that the body is the organism whose states regulate our cognisance of the world The unity of the perceptual field therefore must be a unity of bodily experi- ence In being aware of the bodily experience, we must there- by he aware of aspects of the whole spatio-temporal world as mirrored within the bodily life

This IS the solution of the problem which I gave m my last lecture I will not repeat myself now, except to remind you that my theory involves the entire abandonment of the notion that simple location is the primary way in which things are involved in space-time In a certam sense, every- thing is everywhere at all times For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location Thus every spatio- temporal standpoint mirrors the world

If you try to imagine this doctrine in terms of our con- ventional views of space and time, which presuppose simple location, it is a great paradox But if you think of it m terms of our naive experience, it is a mere transcript of the ob- vious facts You are in a certain place perceiving things. Your perception takes place where you are, and is entirely dependent on how your body is functioning But this func- tioning of the body in one place, exhibits for your cognisance an aspect of the distant environment, fading away into the general knowledge that there are things beyond If this cog- nisance conveys knowledge of a transcendent world it must be because the event which is the bodily life unifies in itself aspects of the universe

This is a doctrine extremely consonant with the vivid ex- pression of personal experience which we find m the nature- ^etry of imaginative writers such as Wordswoith or Shelley I he brooding, immediate presences of things are an obses- sion to Wordsworth What the theory does do is to edge cog-

Science and the Modern World

nitive mentality away from being the necessary substratum of the unity of experience That unity is now placed in the unity of an event Accompanying this unity, there may or there may not be cognition

At this point we come back to the great question which was posed before us by our examination of the evidence afforded by the poetic insight of Wordworth and Shelley This single question has expanded into a group of questions What are enduring things, as distinguished from the eternal objects, such as colour and shape? How are they possible? What IS their status and meaning in the universe"? It comes to this What IS the status of the enduring stability of the order of nature’ There is the summary answer, which refers nature to some greater reality standing behind it This reality occurs in the history of thought under many names. The Absolute, Brahma, TTie Order of Heaven, God The delinea- tion of final metaphysical truth is no part of this lecture My point IS that any summary conclusion jumping from our con- viction of the existence of such an order of nature to the easy assumption that there is an ultimate reality which, m some unexplained way, is to be appealed to for the removal of per- plexity, constitutes the great refusal of rationality to assert Its rights We have to search whether nature does not m its very being show itself as self-explanatory By this I mean, that the sheer statement, of what things are, may contain elements explanatory of why things are Such elements may be expected to refer to depths beyond anything which we can grasp with a clear apprehension In a sense, all explanation must end in an ultimate arbitrariness My demand is, that the ultimate arbitrariness of matter of fact from which our formulation starts should disclose the same general prmciples of reality, which we dimly discern as stretching away into regions beyond our explicit powers of discernment Nature exhibits itself as exemplifying a philosophy of the evolution of organisms subject to determinate conditions Examples of such conditions are the dimensions of space, the laws of nature, the determinate enduring entities, such as atoms and electrons, which exemplify these laws But the very nature of these entities, the very nature of their spatiality and tem- porality, should exhibit the arbitrariness of these conditions as the outcome of a wider evolution beyond nature itself, and within which natuie is but a limited mode

One all-pervasive fact, inherent in the very character of what is real is the transition of things, the passage one to an- other This passage is not a mere linear procession of discrete entities. However we fix a determinate entity, there is always a narrower determination of something which is presupposed

The Romantic Reaction

in our lirst choice Also there is always a wider determina- tion into which our first choice fades by transition beyond itself The general aspect of nature is that of evolutionary expansiveness Tliese unities, which I call events, are the emergence into actuality of something How are we to char- acterise the something which thus emerges? The name 'event' given to such a unity, draws attention to the inherent transitonness, combined with the actual unity But this ab- stract word cannot be sufficient to characterise what the fact of the reality of an event is in itself A moment’s thought shows us that no one idea can in itself be sufficient For every idea which finds its significance m each event must represent something which contributes to what realisation is in itself Thus no one word can be adequate But conversely, nothing must be left out Remembering the poetic rendering of our concrete experience, we see at once that the element of value, of being valuable, of having value, of being an end in itself, ot being something which is for its own sake, must not be omitted in any account of an event as the most con- crete actual something ‘Value’ is the word I use for the in- trinsic reality of an event Value is an element which perme- ates through and through the poetic view of nature We have only to transfer to the very texture of realisation m itself that value which we recognise so readily in terms of human life This is the secret of Wordsworth’s worship of nature Realisa- tion therefore is in itself the attainment of value But there IS no such thing as mere value Value is the outcome of limitation The definite finite entity is the selected mode which IS the shaping of attainment, apart from such shaping into individual matter of fact there is no attainment The mere fusion of all that there is would be the nonentity of indefiniteness The salvation of reality is its obstinate, irre- ducible, matter-of-fact entities, which are limited to be no other than themselves Neither science, nor art, nor creative action can tear itself away from obstinate, irreducible, limited facts The endurance of things has its significance in the self-retention of that which imposes itself as a deflmte at- tainment for its own sake That which endures is limited, ob- structive. intolerant, infecting its environment with its own aspects But it is not self-sufficient The aspects of all things enter into its very nature It is only itself as drawing together into Its own limitation the larger whole in which it finds it- self. Conversely it is only itself by lending its aspects to this same environment m which it finds itself The problem of evolution is the development of endurmg harmonies of endur- ing shapes of value, which merge into higher attainments of things beyond themselves Aesthetic attainment is mterwoven

90 Science and the Modern World

in the texture of realisation The endurance of an entity rep- resents the attainment of a limited aesthetic success, though if we look beyond it to its external effects, it may represent an aesthetic failure Even within itself, it may represent the conflict between a lower success and a higher failure The conflict IS the presage of disraption

The further discussion of the nature of enduring objects and of the conditions they require will be relevant to the consideration of the doctrine of evolution which dominated the latter half of the nineteenth century The point which in this lecture I have endeavoured to make clear is that the nature-poetry of the romantic revival was a protest on behalf of the orgamc view of nature, and also a protest against the exclusion of value from the essence of matter of fact In this aspect of It, the romantic movement may be conceived as a revival of Berkeley’s protest which had been launched a hun- dred years earlier The romantic reaction was a protest on behalf of value.

6 f The Nineteenth Century

My previous lecture was occupied with the comparison of the nature-poetry of the romantic movement in England with the materialistic scientific philosophy inherited from the eighteenth century It noted the entire disagreement of the two movements of thought The lecture also continued the endeavour to outline an objectivist philosophy, capable of bridging the gap between science and that fundamental intui- tion of mankind which finds its expression m poetry and its practical exemplification in the presuppositions of daUy life As the nineteenth century passed on, the romantic movement died down It did not die away, but it lost its clear unity of tidal stream, and dispersed itself into many estuaries as it co- alesced with other human interests The faith of the century was derived from three sources' one source was the roman- tic movement, showing itself in religious revival, in art, and in political aspiration another source was the gathering ad- vance of science which opened avenues of thought the third source was the advance in technology which completely changed the conditions of human life

Each of these spiings of faith had its origin in the pre- vious period The French Revolution itself was the first child of romanticism in the form m which it tinged Rousseau

The Nineteenth Century

James Watt obtained his patent for his steam-engine m 1769 The scientific advance was the glory of Fiance and of French influence, throughout the same century

Also even during this earlier period, the streams inter- acted, coalesced, and antagonised each other But it was not until the nineteenth century that the three-fold movement came to that full development and peculiar balance charac- teristic of the sixty years following the battle of Waterloo What is peculiar and new to the century, differentiating it from all its predecessors, is its technology It was not merely the introduction of some great isolated mventions. It IS impossible not to feel that something more than that was involved For example, writing was a greater invention than the steam-engine But m tracing the continuous history of the growth of writing we find an immense difference from that of the steam-engine We must, of course, put aside minor and sporadic anticipations of both, and confine at- tention to the periods of their effective elaboration For scale of time is so absolutely disparate For the steam-engine, we may give about a hundred years, for writing, the time penod is of the order of a thousand years Further, when writing was finally popularised, the world was not then ex- pecting the next step in technology The process of change was slow, unconscious and unexpected In the nineteenth century, the process became quick, con- scious, and expected The earlier half of the century was the period in which this new attitude to change was first established and enjoyed. It was a peculiar period of hope, in the sense in which, sixty or seventy years later, we can now detect a note of disillusionment, or at least of anxiety The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention A new method en- tered into life In order to understand our epoch, we can neglect all the details of change, such as railways, telegraphs, radios, spinning machines, synthetic dyes We must concen- trate on the method in itself, that is the real novelty, which has broken up the foundations of the old civilisation The prophecy of Francis Bacon has now been fulfilled, and man,

who at times dreamt of himself as a little lower than the

angels, has submitted to become the servant and the min- ister of nature It still remains to be seen whether the same

actor can play both parts,

The whole change has arisen from the new scientific in- formation Science, conceived not so much in its principles as m Its results, is an obvious storehouse of ideas for utilisa- tion But, if we are to understand what happened during the century, the analogy of a mine is better than that of a store-

92 Science and the Modern World

house Also, it is a great mistake to think that the bare sci- entific idea IS the required invention, so that it has only to be picked up and used An intense period of imaginative de- sign lies between One element in the new method is just the discovei7 of how to set about bridging the gap between the scientific ideas, and the ultimate product It is a process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another

The possibilities of modern technology were first in prac- tise realised in England, by the energy of a prosperous mid- dle class Accordingly, the industrial revolution started there But the Germans explicitly realised the methods by which the deeper veins m the mine of science could be reached They abolished haphazard methods of scholarship In their technological schools and universities progress did not have to wait for the occasional genius, or the occasional lucky thought Their feats of scholarship during the nine- teenth century were the admiration of the world This dis- cipline of knowledge applies beyond technology to pure sci- ence, and beyond science to general scholarship It repre- sents the change from amateurs to professionals There have always been people who devoted their lives to definite regions of thought In particular, lawyers and the clergy of the Christian churches form obvious examples of such specialism But the full self-conscious lealisation of the power of professionalism in knowledge m all its departments, and of the way to produce the professionals, and of the im- portance of knowledge to the advance of technology, and of the methods by which abstract knowledge can be connected with technology, and of the boundless possibilities of tech- nological advance — the realisation of all these things was first completely attained in the nineteenth centuiy, and among the various countries, chiefly m Germany

In the past human life was lived in a bullock cart, in the future It will be lived in an aeroplane, and the change of speed amounts to a diffcience in quality The transformation of the field of knowledge, which has been thus effected, has not been wholly a gam At least, there are dangers implicit in it, although the increase of efficiency IS undeniable The discussion of various effects on social life arising fiom the new situation is reseived for my last lec- ture For the present it is sufficient to note that this novel situation of disciplined piogiess is the setting within which the thought of the century developed

In the period considered four great novel ideas were m- troduced into theoretical science Of course, it is possible to show good cause for increasing my list far beyond the num- ber four. But I am keeping to ideas which, it taken in their

The Nineteenth Century

broadest signification, are vital to modern attempts at re- constructing the foundat'onb of physical science Two of these ideas are antithetical, and I will consider them together We are not concerned with details, but With ultimate influences on thought One of the ideas is that of a field of physical activity pervading all space, even where there is an apparent vacuum This notion had occurred to many people, under many forms We remember the medieval axiom, nature abhors a vacuum Also, Descartes’ vortices at one time, in the seventeenth century, seemed as if estab- lished among scientific assumptions Newton believed that gravitation was caused by something happening in a medium But, on the whole, in the eighteenth century nothing was made of any of these ideas The passage of light was ex- plained m Newton’s fashion by the flight of minute corpuscles, which of course left room for a vacuum Mathematical phys- icists were far too busy deducing the consequences of the theory of gravitation to bothei much about the causes, nor did they know where to look, if they had troubled them- selves over the question There were speculations, but their importance was not great Accordingly, when the nineteenth century opened, the notion of phyical occurrences pervad- ing all space held no effective place in science. It was re- vived from two sources The undulatory theory of light tri- umphed, thanks to Thomas Young and Fresnel This de- mands that there shall be something throughout space which can undulate Accordingly, the ether was produced, as a sort of all-pervading subtle material Again the theory of electro- magnetism finally, m Clerk Maxwell’s hands, assumed a shape m which it demanded that there should be electro- magnetic occurrences throughout all space Maxwell’s com- plete theory was not shaped until the eighteen-seventies But It had been prepared for by many great men, Amp&re, Oersted, Faraday In accordance with the current materialis- tic outlook, these electromagnetic occurrences also required a material in which to happen So again the ether was requi- sitioned Then Maxwell, as the immediate first-fruits of his theory, demonstiated that the waves of light were merely waves of his electromagnetic occurrences Accordingly, the theory of electromagnetism swallowed up the theory of light It was a great sirapliflcaiion. and no one doubts its truth. But it had one unfortunate effect so far as materialism was concerned For, whereas quite a simple sort of elastic ether sufficed for light when taken by itself, the electromagnetic ether has to be endowed with just those properties neces- sary for the production of the electromagnetic occurrences In tact, It becomes a mere name for the material which is

94 Science and the Modern World

postulated to underlie these occurrences If you do not hap- pen to hold the metaphysical theory which makes you postu- late such an ether, you can discard it For it has no mde- pendent vitality

Thus in the seventies of the last century, some main physi- cal sciences were established on a basis which presupposed the idea of continuity On the other hand, the idea of ato- micity had been introduced by John Dalton, to complete Lavoisier’s work on the foundation of chemistry This is the second great notion Ordinary matter was conceived as atomic electromagnetic effects were conceived as arismg from a continuous field

There was no contradiction In the first place, the notions are antithetical, but, apart from special embodiments, are not logically contradictory Secondly, they were applied to different legions of science, one to chemistry, and the other to electromagnetism And, as yet, there were but faint signs of coalescence between the two

The notion of matter as atomic has a long history Democ- ritus and Lucretius will at once occur to your minds In speak- mg of these ideas as novel, I merely mean relatively novel, having regard to the settlement of ideas which formed the efficient basis of science throughout the eighteenth century. In considering the history of thought, it is necessary to dis- tinguish the real stream, determining a period, from in- effectual thoughts casually entertained In the eighteenth century every well-educated man read Lucretius, and enter- tained ideas about atoms But John Dalton made them effi- cient m the stream of science, and in this function of e£B- ciency atomicity was a new idea

The influence of atomicity was not limited to chemistry. The living cell is to biology what the election and the pro- ton are to physics Apart from cells and from aggregates of cells there are no biological phenomena The cell theory was introduced into biology contemporaneously with, and inde- pendently of, Dalton’s atomic theory The two theones are independent exemplifications of the same idea of ‘atomism.’ The biological cell theory was a gradual growth, and a mere list of dates and names illustrates the fact that the biological sciences, as effective schemes of thought, arc barely one hun- dred years old Bichat in 1801 elaborated a tissue theory. Johannes Mullei in 1835 described ‘cells’ and demon- strated facts concerning their nature and relations. Schleiden in 1838 and Schwann in 1839 finally established their fun- damental charactei Thus by 1840 both biology and chem- istry were established on an atomic basis The final triumph of atomism had to watt for the arrival of electrons at the

The Nineteenth Century

end of the century The importance of the imaginative back- ground IS illustrated by the fact that nearly half a century after Dalton had done his work, another chemist, Louis Pas- tern, carried over these same ideas of atomicity still further into the region of biology The cell theory and Pasteur’s work were in some respects more revolutionary than that of Dalton For they introduced the notion of organism into the world of minute beings There had been a tendency to treat the atom as an ultimate entity, capable only of external relations This attitude of mind was breaking down under the influence of Mendeleef’s periodic law But Pasteur showed the decisive importance of the idea of organism at the stage of mflnitestimal magnitude The astronomers had shown us how big IS the universe The chemists and biologists teach us how small it is There is m modern scientific practice a famous standard of length It is rather small to obtain it, you must divide a centimetre into one hundred million parts, and take one of them Pasteur’s organisms are a good deal bigger than this length In connection with atoms, we now know that there are organisms for which such distances are uncomfortably great

The remaining pair of new ideas to be ascribed to this epoch are both of them connected with the notion of transi- tion or change They are the doctrine of the conversion of energy, and the doctrine of evolution

The doctrine of energy has to do with the notion of quan- titative permanence underlying change The doctrine of evo- lution has to do with the emergence of novel orgamsms as the outcome of chance The theory of energy lies in the province of physics The theory of evolution lies mainly m the province of biology, although it had previously been touched upon by Kant and Laplace in connection with the formation of suns and planets

The convergent effect of the new power for scientific ad- vance, which resulted from these four ideas, transformed the middle period of the century into an orgy of scientific triumph. Clear-sighted men, of the sort who are so clearly wrong, now proclaimed that the secrets of the physical uni- verse were finally disclosed If only you ignored everything which refused to come into line, your powers of explanation were unlimited On the other side, muddle-headed men mud- dled themselves into the most indefensible positions Learned dogmatism, conjoined with ignorance of the crucial facts, suf- fered a heavy defeat from the scientific advocates of new ways Thus to the excitement derived from technological revolution, there was now added the excitement arising from the vistas disclosed by scientific theory. Both the ma-

96 Science and the Modern World

tenal and the spiritual bases of social life were in process of transformation. When the century entered upon its last quar- ter, Its three sources of inspiration, the lomantic, the techno- logical, and the scientific had done then work

Then, almost suddenly, a pause occurred, and m its last twenty years the century closed with one of the dullest stages of thought since the lime of the First Crusade It was an echo of the eighteenth century, lacking Voltaire and the reckless grace of the French aristrocrats The peiiod was ef- ficient, dull, and half-hearted It celebrated the triumph of the professional man

But looking backwards upon this time of pause, we can now discern signs of change In the first place, the modem conditions of systematic research prevent absolute stagna- tion In every branch of science, there was effective prog- ress, indeed lapid progress, although it was confined some- what strictly within the accepted ideas of each branch It was an age of successful scientific orthodoxy, undisturbed by much thought beyond the conventions

In the second place, we can now see that the adequacy of scientific materialism as a scheme of thought for the use of science was endangered The conservation of energy pro- vided a new tvpe of quantitative permanence It is true that energy could bo construed as something subsidiary to mat- tei But, anyhow, the notion of mass was losing its unique pre-eminence as being the one final permanent quantity Later on, we find the relations of mass and energy inverted, so that mass now becomes the name for a quantity of energy considered in relation to some of its dynamical effects This tram of thought leads to the notion of energy being fundamental, thus displacing matter from that position But energy is merely the name foi the quantitative aspect of a structure of happenings, in short, it depends on the notion of the functioning of an organism The question is, can we define an organism without recurrence to the concept of matter in simple location’ We must, later on, consider this point m more detail

The same relegation of matter to the background occurs m connection with the electromagnetic fields The modern theoiy presupposes happenings in that field which are di- vorced from immediate dependence upon matter It is usual to provide an ether as a substratum But the ether does not really enter into the theory Thus again the notion of mate- rial loses its fundamental position Also, the atom is trans- forming itself into an organism, and finally the evolution theory is nothing else than the analysis of the conditions for the foimation and survival of vaiious types of organisms.

The Nineteenth Centuhy

In truth, one most significant fact of this later period is the advance in biological sciences These sciences are essentially sciences concerning organisms Durmg the epoch m question, and indeed also at the present moment, the prestige of the more perfect scientific form belongs to the physical sciences. Accordingly, biology apes the manner of physics It is ortho- dox to hold, that there is nothing m biology but what is physical mechanism under somewhat complex circumstances One difficulty m this position is the present confusion as to the foundational concepts ot physical science. This same difficulty also attaches to the opposed doctrine of vitalism For, m this later theory, the fact of mechanism is accepted — 1 mean, mechanism based upon materialism — and an addi- tional vital control is introduced to explain the actions of livmg bodies It cannot be too clearly understood that the various physical laws which appear to apply to the behaviour of atoms are not mutually consistent as at present formu- lated The appeal to mechanism on behalf ot biology was in its origin an appeal to the well-attested self-consistent phys- ical concepts as expressmg the basis of all natural phenom- ena But at present there is no such system of concepts Science is taking on a new aspect which is neither puiely physical, nor purely biological It is becoming the study of organisms Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms There IS another difference between the two divisions of science The organisms of biology include as ingredients the smaller organisms of physics, but there is at present no evidence that the smaller of the physical organisms can be analysed into component organisms It may be so But anyhow we are faced with the question as to whether there are not primary organisms which are incapable of further analysis It seems very unlikely that there should be any infinite regress in na- ture Accordingly, a theory of science which discards mate- rialism must answer the question as to the character of these primary entities There can be only one answer on this basis We must start with the event as the ultimate unit of natural occurrence An event has to do with all that there is, and m particular with all other events This interfusion of events is effected by the aspects of those eternal objects, such as colours, sounds, scents, geometrical characters, which are required for nature and are not emergent from it Such an eternal object will be an ingredient of one event under the guise, or aspect, of qualifying another event There is a reciprocity of aspects, and theie are patterns of aspects Each event corresponds to two such patterns, namely, the pattern of aspects of other events which it giasps into its

98 Science and the Modern World

own unity, and the pattern of its aspects which other events severally grasp into their unities Accordingly, a non- matcrialistic philosophy of nature will identify a primary organism as being the emergence of some particular pattern as grasped in the unity of a real event Such a pattern will also include the aspects of the event in question as grasped m other events, whereby those other events receive a modi- fication, or partial determination There is thus an intrmsic and an extrinsic leahty of an event, namely, the event as m its own prehension, and the event as in the prehension of other events The concept of an organism includes, therefore, the concept of the interaction of organisms The ordinary scien- tific ideas of transmission and continuity are, relatively speaking, details concerning the empirically observed char- acters of these patterns throughout space and time The po- sition here maintained is that the relationships of an event are internal, so far as concerns the event itself, that is to say, that they are constitutive of what the event is in itself Also in the previous lecture, we arrived at the notion that an actual event is an achievement for its own sake, a grasp- ing of diverse entities into a value by reason of their real togetherness in that pattern, to the exclusion of other entities It is not the mere logical togetherness of merely diverse things For m that case, to modify Bacon’s words, “all eter- nal objects would be alike one to another ’’ This reality means that each intrinsic essence, that is to say, what each eternal object IS in itself, becomes relevant to the one limited value emergent m the guise of the event But values differ m im- portance Thus though each event is necessary for the com- munity of events, the weight of its contribution is determined bv something intrinsic in itself We have now to discuss what that property is Empirical observation shows that it is the property which we may call indifferently retention, endur- ance or reiteration. This property amounts to the recovery, on behalf of value amid the transitonness of reality, of the self-identity which is also enjoyed by the primary eternal objects The reiteration ot a particular shape (or formation) of value within an event occurs when the event as a whole repeats some shape which is also exhibited by each one of a succession of its parts Thus however you analyse the event according to the flux of its parts through time, there is the same thing-for-its-own-sake standing before you Thus the event, m its own intrinsic reality, mirrors in itself, as de- rived from Its own parts, aspects of the same patterned value as it realises m its complete self It thus realises itself under the guise of an enduring individual entity, with a life his- tory contained within itself Furthermore, the extrinsic real-

The Nineteenth Century

ity of such an event, as mirroied m othci events, takes this same foim of an enduring individuality, only m this case, the individuality is implanted as a reiteration of aspects of itself in the alien events composing the enviionment

The total temporal duration of such an event bearmg an enduring pattern, constitutes its specious present Within this specious present the event realises itself as a totality, and also m so doing lealises itself as giouping together a number of aspects of its own temporal parts One and the same pattern is realised in the total event, and is exhibited by each of these various parts through an aspect of each part grasped into the togetherness of the total event Also, the earlier life-history of the same pattern is exhibited by its aspects in this total event There is, thus, in this event a memory of the antecedent life-history of its own dominant pattern, as having formed an element of value in its own antecedent environment This concrete prehension, from within, of the life-history of an enduring fact is analysable into two abstractions, of which one is the enduring entity which has emerged as a real matter of fact to be taken ac- count of by other things, and the other is the individualised embodiment of the underlying energy of realisation

The consideration ot the general flux of events leads to this analysis into an underlying eternal energy in whose na- ture there stands an envisagement of the realm of all eteinal objects Such an envisagement is the ground of the individualised thoughts which emerge as thought-aspects grasped within the life-history of the subtler and more com- plex enduring patterns Also in the nature of the eternal ac- tivity there must stand an envisagement of all values to be obtained by a real togetherness of eternal objects, as envis- aged in ideal situations Such ideal situations, apart from any reality, are devoid of intrinsic value, but are valuable as ele- ments in purpose The individualised prehension into individual events of aspects of these ideal situations takes the form of individualised thoughts, and as such has intrinsic value This value arises because there is now a real together- ness of the ideal aspects, as in thought, with the actual as- pects, as in process of occurrence Accordingly no value is to be ascribed to the underlying activity as divorced from the matter-of-fact events of the real world

Finally, to sum up this tiain of thought, the underlying ac- tivity, as conceived apart from the fact of realisation, has three types of envisagement These are first, the envisage- ment of eternal objects, secondly, the envisagement of possi- bilities of value in respect to the synthesis of eternal objects, and lastly, the envisagement of the actual matter of fact

100 Science and the Modern World

which must enter into the total situation which is achievable by the addition of the future But in abstraction from actu- ality, the eternal activity is divorced from value For the actuality is the value The individual perception arising from enduring objects will vary in its individual depth and width according to the way m which the pattern dominates its own route It may represent the faintest ripple differentiating the general substrate energy; or, in the other extreme, it may rise to conscious thought, which includes poising before self- conscious judgment the abstract possibilities of value in- herent in various situations of ideal togetherness The intermediate cases wiU group round the individual percep- tion as envisaging (without self-consciousness) that one im- mediate possibility of attainment which represents the closest analogy to its own immediate past, having regard to the actual aspects which are there for prehension The laws of physics represent the haimonised adjustment of develop- ment which result from this unique principle of determina- tion Thus dynamics is dominated by a principle of least action, whose detailed character has to be learnt from observation

The atomic material entities which are considered in physical science are merely these individual enduring en- tities, conceived in abstraction from everything except what concerns their mutual interplay in determining each other’s historical loutes of hfc-history Such entities are partially formed by the inheritance of aspects from their own past But they are also partially formed by the aspects of other events forming their environments The laws of physics are the laws declaring how the entities mutually react among themselves For physics these laws are arbitrary, because that science has abstracted from what the entities are in themselves We have seen that this fact of what the entities are m themselves is liable to modification by their environ- ments Accordingly, the assumption that no modification of these laws is to be looked for m environments, which have any striking difference from the environments for which the laws have been observed to hold, is very unsafe The physi- cal entities may be modified in very essential ways, so far as these laws are concerned It is even possible that they may be developed into individualities of more fundamental types, with wider embodiment of envisagement Such envisagement might reach to the attainment of the poising of alternative values with exercise of choice lying outside the physical laws, and expressible only in terms of purpose Apart from such remote possibilities, it remains an immediate deduction that an individual entity, whose own hte-history is a part

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within the lite-history of some larger, deeper, more complete pattern, is liable to have aspects of that larger pattern domi- nating its own being, and to experience modifications of that larger pattern reflected in itself as modifications of its own being This is the theory of organic mechanism

According to this theory the evolution of laws of nature IS concurrent with the evolution of enduring pattern For the general state of the universe, as it now is, partly deter- mines the very essences of the entities whose modes of func- tioning these laws express The general principle is that m a new environment there is an evolution of the old entities into new forms

This rapid outline of a thoroughgoing organic theory of nature enables us to understand the chief requisites of the doctrine of evolution The mam work, proceeding during this pause at the end of the nineteenth century, was the ab- sorption of this doctrine as guiding the methodology of all branches of science By a blindness which is almost judicial as being a penalty affixed to hasty, superficial thinking, many religious thinkeis opposed the new doctrine, although, m truth, a thoroughgoing evolutionary philosophy is inconsist- ent with materialism The aboriginal stufl:, or material, from which a materialistic philosophy starts is incapable of evolu- tion This material is m itself the ultimate substance Evolu- tion, on the materialistic theory, is reduced to the r 61 e of being another word for the description of the changes of the external relations between portions of matter There is noth- ing to evolve, because one set of external relations is as good as any other set of external relations There can merely be change, purposeless and unprogressive But the whole point of the modern doctrine is the evolution of the complex or- ganisms from antecedent states of less complex organisms The doctrine thus cries aloud for a conception of orgamsm as fundamental for nature It also requires an underlying ac- tivity — a substantial activity — expressing itself m individual embodiments, and evolving m achievements of organism The orgamsm is a unit of emergent value, a real fusion of the characters of eternal objects, emerging for its own sake

Thus in the process of analysing the character of nature in itself, we find that the emergence of organisms depends on a selective activity which is akin to purpose The point is that the enduring organisms are now the outcome of evolu- tion; and that, beyond these organisms, there is nothing else that endures On the materialistic theory, there is material — such as matter or electricity — which endures On the or- ganic theory, the only endurances are structures of activity, and the structures are evolved

102 Science and the Modern World

Enduring things are thus the outcome of a temporal proc- ess, whereas eternal things are the elements required for the very being of the process We can give a precise definition of endurance m this way Let an event A be pervaded by an enduring structural pattern Then A can be exhaustively sub- divided into a temporal succession of events Let S be any part of A, which is obtained by picking out any one of the events belonging to a senes which thus subdivides A Then the enduring pattern is a pattern of aspects within the com- plete pattern prehended into the unity of A, and it is also a pattern within the complete pattern prehended mto the unity of any temporal slice of A, such as B For example, a molecule is a pattern exhibited in an event of one minute, and of any second of that minute It is obvious that such an enduring pattern may be of more, or of less, importance It may express some slight fact connecting the underlying ac- tivities thus individualised, or it may express some very close connection If the pattern which endures is merely derived from the direct aspects of the external environment, mir- rored in the standpoints of the various parts, then the en- durance IS an extrinsic fact of slight importance But if the enduring pattern is wholly derived from the direct aspects of the various temporal sections of the event in question, then the endurance is an important intrinsic fact It expresses a certain unity of character uniting the underlying individual- ised activities There is then an enduring object with a cer- tain unity for itself and for the lest of nature Let us use the term physical endurance to express endurance of this type Then physical endurance is the process of continuously inheriting a certain identity of character transmitted through- out a historical route of events This character belongs to the whole route, and to every event of the route This is the ex- act propeity of material If it has existed for ten minutes, it has existed during every minute of the ten minutes, and dur- ing every second ot every minute Only if you take material to be fundamental, this properly of endurance is an arbitrary fact at the base of the order of nature; but if you take or- ganism to be fundamental, this property is the result of evolution

It looks at first sight, as if a physical object, with its proc- ess of inheritance from itself, were independent of the en- vironment But such a conclusion is not justified For let B and C be two successive slices in the life of such an object, such that C succeeds B Then the enduruig pattern m C is inherited from B, and from other analogous antecedent parts of Its life It IS transmitted through B to C But what is transmitted to C is the complete pattern of aspects derived

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from such events as B. These complete patterns include the influence of the environment on B, and on the other ante- cedent parts of the life of the object Thus the complete as- pects of the antecedent life are inherited as the partial pattein which endures throughout all the various periods of the life Thus a favourable environment is essential to the maintenance of a physical object Nature, as we know it, comprises enormous permanences There are the permanences of ordinary matter The mole- cules within the oldest rocks known to geologists may have existed unchanged for over a thousand million years, not only unchanged m themselves, but unchanged in their rela- tive dispositions to each other In that length of time the number of pulsations of a molecule vibrating with the fre- quency of yellow sodium light would be about 16 3 v 10-2 = 163,000 X (10<s)® Until recently, an atom was appar- ently indestructible We know bettei now But the indestruc- tible atom has been succeeded by the apparently indestructi- ble electron and the indestructible proton Another fact to be explained is the great similarity of these practically indestructible objects All electrons arc very similar to each other We need not outrun the evidence, and say that they are identical, but our powers of observa- tion cannot detect any differences Analogously, all hydrogen nuclei are alike Also we note the great numbers of these analogous objects There are throngs of them It seems as though a certain similarity were a favourable condition for endurance Common sense also suggests this conclusion. If organisms are to survive, they must work together Accordingly, the key to the mechanism of evolution is the necepity for the evolution of a favourable environment, con- jointly with the evolution of any specific type of enduring organisms of great permanence Any physical object which by Its influence deteriorates its envuorunent, commits sui-

One of the simplest ways of evolving a favourable envi- ronment concurrently with the development of the individual organism, is that the influence of each organism on the en- vironment should be favourable to the endwance of other f'ivomrtL° T>urthei, ,f the oiganism also

tC organisms of the same

I t **'*''j obtained a mechanism of evolution adapted to produce the observed state of large multitudes of analogous entities, with high powers of endurance For the environment automatically develops with the species and the species with the environment ana

The first question to ask is, whether there is any direct

104 Science and the Modern Worid

evidence for such a mechanism for tlie evolution of endunng organisms In suiveying nature, we must remember that theie are not only basic organisms whose ingredients are merely aspects of eternal objects Theie are also organisms of or- ganisms Suppose for the moment and foi the wise of sim- plicity, we assume, without any evidence that electrons and hydiogen nuclei are such basic organisms Then the atoms, and the molecules, are organisms of a higher type, which also lepresent a compact definite organic unity But when we come to the larger aggreg.itions of matter, the organic unity fades into the background It appeals to be hut faint and elementary It is there, but the pattein is vague and in- decisive It IS a mere aggregation of eflccts When we come to living beings, the definiteness of pattern is recovered, and the organic character again rises into prominence Ac- cordingly, the characteristic taws ot inorganic matter aie mainly the statistic,il averages lesulting from confused ag- giegatcs So far are they from throwing light on the ultimate nature of things, that they blur and obliterate the individual characters of the individual organisms If we wish to throw light upon the facts relating to oiganisms, we must study Cither the individual molecules and elections or the individ- ual living beings In between we find compaiative confusion Now the difficulty of studying the individual molecule is that we know so little about its life histoiv We cannot keep an individual under continuous observation In gcner.il, we deal with them in large aggregates So far as individuals are con- cerned, sometimes with difficulty a gieat expeumenter throws, so to speak, a flash light on one ot them, and just observes one type of instantaneous effect Acco-dinglv, the history of the functioning of individual molecules, or electrons, is kirgely hidden from us

But in the case ot living beings w'e can tiace the history of individuals We now find exactly the mechanism which is here demanded In the first place, there is the propagation of the species from members of the same species There is also the careful provision of the favourable enviionment tor the endurance of the family, the race, or the seed m the fruit

It IS evident, however, that I have explained the evolution- ary mechanism in terras which aie far too simple We find associated species of living things, providing for each other a favourable environment Thus just as the members ot the s,ime species mutually favoui each other, so do members ot associated species We find the rudimentary fact ot associa- tion in the existence of the two species, electrons and hydro- gen nuclei The simplicity of the dual association, and the apparent absence of competition from othei antagonistic spe-

The Nineteenth Century 105

cies accounts for the massive endurance which we find among

th®® . . . j ,

Uiere are thus two sides to the machinery involved in the

development of nature On one side, there is a given environ- ment with organisms adapting themselves to it The scientific materialism ot the epoch m question emphasised this aspect From this point of view, there is a given amount of material and only a limited number or organisms can take advantage of It The givenness of the enviionment dominates every- thing Accoidmgly, the last words of science appeared to be the Struggle for Existence, and Natural Selection Darwin’s own writings are for all time a model of refusal to go beyond the direct evidence, and of careful letention of every pos- sible hypothesis But those virtues were not so conspicuous in his followers, and still less m his camp-followers The imagination of European sociologists and publicists was stained by exclusive attention to this aspect of conflictmg interests The idea prevailed that there was a peculiar strong- minded realism in discarding ethical considerations m the determination of the conduct of commercial and national interests

The other side of the evolutionary machinery, the neg- lected side, IS expressed by the word creativeness The or- ganisms can create their own environment For this purpose, the single organism is almost helpless The adequate forces require societies of cooperating organisms But with such cooperation and m proportion to the effort put foiward, the environment has a plasticity which alters the whole ethical aspect of evolution

In the immediate past, and at present, a muddled state of mind IS prevalent The increased plasticity of the environ- ment for mankind, resulting from the advances m scientific technology, is being const! ued in terms of habits of thought which find their justification in the theory of a fixed environ- ment

The riddle of the universe is not so simple There is the aspect ot permanence in which a given type of attainment is endlessly repeated for ils own sake, and there is the aspect of transition to other things — it may be of higher worth, and it may be of lower worth Also there are its aspects of struggle and of friendly help But romantic ruthlessness is no nearer to real politics, than is romantic self-abnegation

7 / Relativity

In the ruLVioub lectures of this course we have consid- ered the iintcccdent conditions which led up to the scientific movement, and have traced the progress of thought from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century In the nineteenth century this history falls into three parts, so far as it is to be grouped around science These divisions are, the contact be- tween the romantic movement and science, the development of technology and physics m the earliei pait of the century, and lastly the theory of evolution combined with the general advance of the biological sciences

The dominating note of the whole period of three centuries IS that the doctrine of materialism atTorded an adequate basis for the concepts of science It was practically unques- tioned When undulations were wanted, an ether was sup- plied, in order to perform the duties of an undulatory ma- teudl To show the full assumption thus involved, I have sketched in outline an alternative doctrine of an organic theory of natuie In the last lectuie it was pointed out that the biological developments, the doctrine of evolution, the doctrine of energy, and the molecular theories were rapidly undermining the adequacy of the orthodox materialism But until the close of the century no one drew that conclusion Materialism reigned supreme

The note ot the piesent epoch is that so many complexities have developed regarding material space, time, and energy, that the simple security of the old orthodox assumptions has vanished It is obvious that they will not do as Newton left them, or even as Clerk Maxwell left them There must be a reorganization The new situation in the thought of today arises from the fact that scientific theory is outrunning com- mon sense The settlement as inherited by the eighteenth century was a triumph oi organised common sense It had got rid of medieval phantasies, and of Cartesian vortices As a result it gave lull rein to its anti-rationalistic tendencies derived from the historical revolt of the Reformation peiiod It grounded itself upon what every plain man could see with his own eyes, or with a microscope of moderate power It measured the obvious things to be measured, and it general- ized the obvious things to be geneialised For example, it generalised the ordinary notions of weight and massiveness The eighteenth century opened with the quiet confidence that

106

Relativity

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at last nonsense had been got nd of. To-day we are at the opposite pole of thought Heaven knows what seeming non- sense may not to-morrow be demonstrated truth We have recaptured some of the tone of the early nmeteenth century, only on a higher imaginative level The reason why we are on a higher imaginative level is not because we have finer imagination, but because we have better instruments In science, the most important thmg that has happened during the last forty years is the advance m instrumental design This advance is partly due to a few men of genius such as Michelson and the German opticians It is also due to the progress of technological process of manu- facture, particularly m the region of metallurgy The de- signer had now at his disposal a variety of material of differ- ing physical properties He can thus depend upon obtaining the material he desires, and it can be ground to the shapes he desires, within very narrow limits of tolerance These in- struments have put thought on to a new level A fresh instru- ment serves the same puipose as foreign travel, it shows things in unusual combinations The gain is more than a mere addition, it is a transformation The advance in experimental ingenuity is, perhaps, also due to the larger proportion of national ability which now flows mto scientific pursuits Any- how, whatever be the cause, subtle and ingenious experiments have abounded within the last generation The result is, that a great deal of information has been accumulated in regions of nature very far removed from the ordinary experience of mankind

Two famous expenments, one devised by Galileo at the outset of the scientific movement, and the other by Michelson with the aid of his famous interferometer, fiist carried out m 1881, and repeated in 1887 and 190S, illustrate the assertions I have made Galileo dropped heavy bodies from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa, and demonstrated that bodies of different weights, if released simultaneously, would reach the earth together So far as experimental skill, and delicacy of apparatus were concerned, this experiment could have been made at any time within the preceding five thousand years The ideas involved merely concerned weight and speed of travel, ideas which are familiar in ordinary life The whole set of ideas might have been familiar to the family of King Minos of Crete, as they dropped pebbles into the sea from high battlements rising from the shore. We cannot too care- fully realise that science started with the orgamsaUon of or- dinary experiences It was in this way that it coalesced so readily with the anti-rationalistic bias of the historical revolt It was not askmg for ultimate meanings It confined itself

108 Science and the Modern World

to investigating the connections regulating the succession of obvious occui fences

Michclson s experiment could not have been made earlier than It was It requiied the general advance in technology, and MicheKon’s experimental genius It concerns the deter- mination ot the earth’s motion through the ether, and it as- sumes that light consists of waves of vibration advancing at a fixed rale through the ether in any direction Also, of course, the earth is moving through the ether, and Michelson’s apparatus is moving with the earth In the centre of the ap- paratus a ray of light is divided so that one half-ray goes in one direction alony: the apparatus through a given distance, and is reflected back to the centie by a mirror m the appara- tus The other half-ray goes the same distance acioss the apparatus m a direction at right angles to the former ray, and It also IS reflected back to the centre These reunited rays are then leflected onto a screen in the apparatus If precau- tions are taken you will see interference bands, namely bands of blackness wheie the crests of the waves of one ray have filled up the troughs of the other rays, owing to a minute difference m the lengths of paths of the two halt-iays, up to certain paits of the screens These differences in length will be affected by the motion of the earth For it is the lengths of the paths in the ether which count Thus, since the apparatus is moving with the eaith, the path of one halt-ray will be disturbed by the motion in a different manner from the path of the other half-ray Think of youiselt as moving m a railway carriage, first along the tram and then across the tram, and mark out youi paths on the railway track which in this analogy coriesponds to the ether Now the mo- tion of the earth is very slow compared to that of light Thus in the analogy you must think ot the tram almost at a stand- still, and of yourself as moving very quickly

In the experiment this effect of the earth’s motion would affect the positions on the screen of the inteiference bands Also if you tuin the apparatus round, through a right-angle, the effect ot the earth’s motion on the two half-rays will be interchanged, and the positions of the interference hands would he shitted We can calculate the small shift which should result owing to the eaith’s motion round the sun Also to this effect, we have to add that due to the sun’s mo- tion through the ether The delicacy of the instrument can be tested, and it can be proved that these effects of shitting are large enough to be observed by it Now the point is. that nothing was observed There was no shifting as you turned the instrument round

The conclusion is either that tlie earth is always stationary

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m the ether, or that there is something wrong with the funda- mental principles on which the interpretation of the experi- ment relies It is obvious that, in this experiment, we are very far away from the thoughts and the games of the children of King Minos The ideas of an ether, of waves in it, of interference, of the motion of the earth through the ether, and of Michelson’s interferometer, are remote from or- dinary experience But remote as they are, they are simple and obvious compared to the accepted explanation of the nugatory result of the experiment The ground of the explanation is that the ideas of space and of time employed m science are too simple-minded, and must be modified This conclusion is a direct challenge to common sense, because the earlier science had only refined upon the ordinary notions of ordinary people Such a radical reorganisation ot ideas would not have been adopted, unless it had also been supported by many other observations which

we need not enter upon Some form of the relativity theory stems to be the simplest way of explaimng a large number of facts which otherwise would each require some ad hoc ex- planation The theory, therefore, does not merely depend upon the experiments which led to its origination The central point of the explanation is that every instru- ment, such as Michelson’s apparatus as used in the experi- ment, necessarily records the velocity of hght as having one and the same definite speed relatively to it I mean that an interferometer in a comet and an interferometer on the eaith would necessarily bring out the velocity of light, relatively to themselves, as at the same value This is an obvious paradox, since the light moves with a definite velocity through the ether Accordingly two bodies, the earth and the comet, mov- ing with unequal velocities through the ether, might be ex- pected to have different velocities relatively to rays of light For example, consider two cars on a road, moving at ten and twenty miles an hour respectively, and being passed by another car at fifty miles an hour The rapid car will pass one of the two cars at the relative velocity of forty miles per hour, and the other at the rate of thirty miles per hour The allegation as to hght is that, if we substituted a ray of light

V oulil be exactly the same as its velocity relatively to either of the two cars which it overtakes The^ velocity of light is large, being about three hundred thousand^kilo-

as to space and

It follows Sft peculiar character

rLa?t But hi. T niust be

recast But these notions are the immediate outcome of our

110 Science and the Modern World

habitual notions as to space and time So we come back to the position, that there has been something oveilooked in the cuirent expositions ot what we mean by space and ot what we mean by time

Now our habitual fundamental assumption is that there is a unique meaning to be given to space and a unique meaning to be given to time, so that whatever meaning is given to spatial relations in respect to the instrument on the earth, the same meaning must be given to them in lespect to the instrument on the comet, and the same meaning for an instrument at rest in the ether In the theory of relativity, this is denied As tai as concerns sp.ace, there is no difficulty in agieeing, if you think of the obvious facts of relative motion But even here the change m meaning has to go fuither than would be sanctioned by common sense Also the same demand is made foi time, so that the relative dating of events and the lapses ot time between them arc to be reckoned as different foi the instrument on the eaith, for the instru- ment m the comet, and for the instrument at rest in the ether. This IS a greater strain on our credulity We need not piobe the question fuither than the conclusion that tor the earth and for the comet spatiality and temporality aie each to have different meanings amid different conditions, such as those piesentod by the eaith and the comet Accordingly velocity has different meanings for the two bodies Thus the modern scientific assumption is that if anything has the speed of light by reference to am one meaning ot space and time, then it has the same speed according to any other meaning ot space and tune

This IS a heavy blow at the classical scientific materialism, which presupposes a definite piesent instant at which all matter is simultaneously real In the modern theory theie is no such unique present instant You can find a meaning for the notion of the simultaneous instant throughout ail nature, but it will be a ditleient meaning for different notions of temporality

There has been a tendency to give an extreme subjectivist inteipretation to this new doctrine I mean that the relativity ot space and time has been construed as though it were dependent on the choice of the observer It is perfectly legiti- mate to bring in the observer, if he facilitates explanations But it IS the observer’s body that we want, and not his mind Even this body is only useful as an example ot a very famil- iar form of apparatus On the whole, it is better to concen- trate attention on Michelson’s mteiferometer, and to leave Michelson’s body and Michelson’s mind out of the picture The question is, why did the interferometer have black bands

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on Its screen, and why did not these bands slightly shift as the instrument turned The new relativity associates space and time with an intimacy not hitherto contemplated, and presupposes that their separation m concrete fact can be achieved by alternative modes of abstraction, yielding alter- native meanings But each mode of abstraction is directing attention to something which is m nature, and thereby is isolating it for the purpose of contemplation. The fact rel- evant to experiment, is the relevance of the interferometer to )ust one among the many alternative systems of those spatio- temporal relations which hold between natural entities What we must now ask of philosophy is to give us an m- terpretation of the status m nature of space and time, so that the possibility of alternative meanings is preserved These lectures are not suited for the elaboration of details; but there is no difficulty m pomting out where to look for the origin of the discrimination between space and time I am presupposing the organic theory of nature, which I have outlined as a basis for a thoroughgomg objectivism.

An event is the grasping into unity of a pattern of aspects. The effectiveness of an event beyond itself arises from the aspects of itself which go to form the prehended unities of other events Except for the systematic aspects of geometri- cal shape, this effectiveness is tnvial, if the mirrored pattern attaches merely to the event as one whole If the pattern endures throughout the successive parts of the event, and also exhibits itself in the whole, so that the event is the life history of the pattern, then m virtue of that enduring pat- tern the event gains in external effectiveness. For its own ef- fectiveness IS reenforced by the analogous aspects of all its successive parts The event constitutes a patterned value with a permanence inherent throughout its own parts, and by reason of this inherent endurance the event is important for the modification of its environment It IS m this endurance of pattern that time differentiates itself from space The pattern is spatially now, and this tem- poral determination constitutes its relation to each partial event For it is reproduced m this temporal succession of these spatial parts of its own life I mean that this particular rule of temporal order allows the pattern to be reproduced m each temporal slice of its history So to speak, each en- during object discovers in nature and requires from nature a principle discriminating space from time Apart from the fact of an enduring pattern this principle might be there, but it would be latent and trivial Thus the importance of space as against time, and of time as against space, has developed with the development of enduring organisms Endurmg ob-

112 Science and the Modern World

jects aie significant of a differentation of space from time in respect to the patterns ingredient within events, and con- versely the differentiation of space from time in the patterns mgredient within events expresses the patience of the com- munity of events for enduring objects There might be the community without objects, but there could not be the en- during objects without the community with its peculiar pa- tience for them

It IS very necessary that this point should not be mis- understood Endurance means that a pattern which is exhibited m the prehension of one event is also exhibited in the prehension of those of its parts which are discriminated by a certain rule It is not hue that any part of the svhole event will yield the same pattern as does the whole For ex- ample, consider the total bodily pattern exhibited in the life of a human body during one minute One of the thumbs during the same minute is pait of the whole bodily event. But the patteiii of this pait is the pattern of the thumb, and is not the pattcin of the whole body Thus enduiance re- quires a definite lule for obtaining the pints In the above example, we know at once what the rule is You must take the life of the whole body during any poition of that same minute, foi example, during a second or a tenth of a second In other woids, the me.injng of endurance presupposes a meaning for the lapse of time withm the spatio-temporal continuum

The question now arises whether all enduring objects dis- cover the same principle of differentiation ot space from time, or even whether at different stages of its own life- history one object may not vary in its spatio-temporal discrim- ination Up till a few years ago, everyone unhesitatingly assumed that there was only one such piinciple to be dis- covered Accordingly, in dealing with one object, time would have exactly the same meaning in reference to endurance as III dealing with the endurance of another object It would also follow then that spatial relations would have one unique meaning But now it seems that the observed effectiveness of objects can only be explained by assuming that objects m a state of motion i datively to each other aie utilising, tor their endurance, meanings of space and of time which are not identical liom one object to another Every enduring object IS to be conceived as at rest in its own proper space, and in motion thioughout any space defined m a way which IS not that inheicnt m its peculiar endurance If two objects are mutually at rest, they aie utilising the same meanings of space and of time for the purposes of expressing their en- durance, it in relative motion, the spaces and times differ It

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follows that, if we can conceive a body at one state of its life history as m motion relatively to itself at another stage, then the body at these two stages is utilising diverse mean- ings of space, and correlatively diverse meanings of time

In an organic philosophy of nature there is nothing to decide between the old hypothesis of the uniqueness of the time discrimination and the new hypothesis of its multiplic- ity It is purely a matter for evidence drawn from obser- vations 1

In an eailier lecture, I said that an event had contempo- raries It IS an mteiesting question whether, on the new hy- pothesis, such a statement can be made without the qualifi- cation of a reference to a definite space-time system It is possible to do so, in the sense that in some time-system oi other the two events are simultaneous In othei time-systems the two contemporary events will not be simultaneous, though they may overlap Analogously one event will pre- cede another without qualification, if in eveiy time-system this precedence occurs It is evident that if we start from a given event A, other events in general are divided into two sets, namely those which without qualification are contem- poraneous with A and those which either precede or succeed A But there will be a set left over, namely, those events which bound the two sets There we have a critical case You will remember that w« have a critical velocity to ac- count for, namely the theoretical velocity of light in vacuo * Also you will remember that the utilisation of different Spatio-temporal systems means the relative motion of ob- jects When we analyse this cntical relation of a special set of events to any given event A, we find the explanation of the critical velocity which we lequire I am suppressing all details It IS evident that exactness of statement must be in- troduced by the introduction of points, and lines, and in- stants Also that the origin of geometry requires discussion, for example, the measurement of lengths, the straightness of lines, and the flatness of planes, and perpendicularity I have endeavouied to carry out these investigations in some earlier books, under the heading of the theory of extensive abstrac- uom but they are too technical foi the present occasion If there be no one definite meaning to the geometrical re- lations of distance, it is evident that the law of gravitation needs restatement For the formula expressing that law is that two paiticles attract each other m proportion to the product of their masses and the inverse square of their dis-

I cf my Principles oj Naiwal Knowledge, Sec 52 3

“ ^ravitanonal field or m a

114 Science and the Modern World

tances. This enunciation tacitly assumes that there is one def- inite meaning to be ascribed to the instant at which the at- traction IS considered, and also one definite meaning to be ascribed to distance But distance is a purely spatial notion, so that m the new doctrine, there are an indefinite number of such meanings according to the space-time system which you adopt It the two particles are relatively at rest, then we might be content with the space-time systems which they are both utilising Unfortunately this suggestion gives no hint as to procedure when they are not mutually at lest It is, therefore, necessary to reformulate the law m a way which does not ptesuppose any particular space-time system Ein- stein has done this Naturally the result is more complicated He introduced into mathematical physics certain methods of pure mathematics which render the formulae independent of the particular systems of measurement adopted The new formula introduces various small effects which are absent m Newton’s law But for the major effects Newton’s law and Einstein’s law agree Now these extra effects of Einstein’s law serve to explain irregularities of the planet Meicury’s orbit which by Newton’s law were inexplicable This is a strong confirmation of the new theory Curiously enough, there is more than one alternative formula, based on the new theory of multiple space-tune systems, having the property of embodying Newton’s law and in addition of explaining the peculiarities of Mercury’s motion The only method of selec- tion between them is to wait for experimental evidence re- specting those effects on which tire formulae differ Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians

It only remains to add that Einstein would probably reject the theory of multiple space-time systems which 1 have been expounding to you He would interpret his formula in terms of contortions in space-time which alter the mvariance theory for measiiie properties, and of the proper times of each his- torical route His mode of statement has the greater mathe- matical simplicity, and only allows of one law of gravitation, excluding the alternatives But, for myself, I cannot reconcile It with the given facts of our experience as to simultaneity, and spatial arrangement There are also other difficulties of a more abstract character

The theory of the relationship between events at which we have now arrived is based first upon the doctnne that the relatednesses of an event are all internal relations, so far as concerns that event, though not necessarily so far as concerns the other relata For example, the eternal objects, thus in- volved, are externally related to events, This mternal related-

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ness IS the reason why an event can be found only just where It IS and how it is, — ^that is to say, in just one definite set of relationships For each lelationship enters into the essence of the event, so that, apart from diat relationship, the event would not be itself This is what is meant by the very notion of internal relations It has been usual, indeed, universal, to hold that spatio-temporal relationships are external. This doc- trine IS what is here denied

The conception of internal relatedness involves the analysis of the event into two factors, one the underlying substantial activity of individualisation, and the other the complex of aspects — that is to say, the complex of relatednesses as enter- ing into the essence of the given event — which are unified by this individualised activity. In other words, the concept of internal relations requires the concept of substance as the activity synthesising the relationships into its emergent char- acter The event is what it is, by reason of the unification in itself of a multiplicity of relationships The general scheme of these mutual relationships is an abstraction which presup- poses each event as an independent entity, which it is not, and asks what remnant of these formative relationships is then left m the guise of external relationships The scheme of re- lationships as thus impartially expressed becomes the scheme of a complex of events variously related as wholes to parts and as joint parts within some one whole Even here, the internal relationship, forces itself on our attention for the part evidently is constitutive of the whole Also an isolated event which has lost its status m any complex of events is equally excluded by the very nature of an event So the whole is evidenUy constitutive of the part Thus the mternal character of the relationship really shows through this im- partial scheme of abstract external relations But this exhibition of the actual universe as extensive and divisible has left out the distinction between space and time It has m fact left out the process of realisation, which is the adjustment of the synthetic activities by virtue of which the vanous events become their realised selves This adjustment IS thus the adjustment of the underlying active substances whereby these substances exhibit themselves as the mdmdual- isations or modes of Spinoza’s one substance This adjustment is what introduces temporal process Thus, in some sense, time, m its character of the adjust- ment of the process of synthetic realisation, extends beyond the spatio-temporal continuum of nature ^ There is no neces- sity that temporal process, in this sense, should be constituted by one single series of linear succession Accordingly, m order to satisfy the present demands of scientific hypothesis.

116 Science and the Modern World

we introduce the metaphysical hypothesis that this is not the case We do assume (basing ourselves upon direct observa- tion), however, that temporal process of realisation can be analysed into a group of linear seiial processes. Each of these linear series is a space-time system In support of this assump- tion of definite serial processes, we appeal (1) to the im- mediate presentation through the senses of an extended um- verse beyond ourselves and simultaneous with ourselves (2) to the intellectual apprehension of a meamng to the question which asks what is now immediately happening in regions beyond the cognisance of our senses, (3) to the analysis of what IS involved m the endurance of emergent objects This endurance of objects involves the display of a pattern as now realised This display is the display of a pattern as inher- ent in an event, but also as exhibiting a temporal slice of nature as lending aspects to eternal objects (or, equally, of eternal objects as lending aspects to events) The pattern is spatidlised in a whole duration for the benefits of the event into whose essence the pattern enters The event is part of the duration, i e , is part of what is exhibited in the aspects inher- ent in Itself, and conversely the duration is the whole of nature simultaneous with the event, m that sense of simulta- neity Thus an event m lealismg itself displays a pattern, and this pattern requires a definite duration determined by a definite meaning of simultaneity Each such meaning of simultaneity relates the pattern as thus displayed to one defi- nite space-tune system The actuality of the space-time system IS constituted by the realisation of pattern, but it is inherent m tlie general scheme of events as constituting its patience for the temporal process of realisation

Notice that the pattern requires a duration involving a definite lapse of time, and not merely an instantaneous mo- ment Such a moment is more abstract, m that it merely de- notes a certain relation of contiguity between the concrete events Thus a duration is spatiahsed, and by ‘spatiahsed’ is meant that the duration is the field for the realised pattern constituting the character of the event A duration, as the field of the pattern realised m the actualisation of one of its contained events, is an epoch, i e , an arrest Endurance is the repetition of the pattern in successive events Thus endurance requires a succession of durations, each exhibiting the pat- tern In this account ‘time’ has been separated from ‘exten- sion’ and from the ‘divisibility’ which arises from the character of spatio-temporal of extension Accordingly we must not proceed to conceive time as another form of exten- siveness Time IS sheer succession of epoched durations But

1 Cf my Concept of Nature, Ch. Ill

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the entities which succeed each other m this account are durations The duration is that which is required for the realisation of a pattern in the given event Thus the divisibility and extensiveness is within the given duration The epochal duration is not realised via its successive divisible parts, but IS given with its parts In this way, the objection which Zeno might make to the joint validity of two passages from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is met by abandoning the earlier of the two passages I refer to passages from the section ‘Of the Axioms of Intuition’, the earlier from the sub- section on Extensive Quantity, and the latter from the subsec- tion on Intensive Quantity wheie considerations respecting quantity m general, extensive and intensive, are summed up. The earlier passage runs thus ^

‘I call an extensive quantity that in which the representa- tion of the whole is rendered possible by the representation of its parts, and therefore necessarily preceded by it^ I cannot repiesent to myself any line, however small it may be, without drawing it in thought, that is, without producmg all Its parts one after the other, starting from a given pomt, and thus, first of all, drawing its intuition. The same applies to every, even the smallest, portion of time I can only think in it the successive progress from one moment to another, thus producmg m the end, by all the portions of time, and their addition, a definite quantity of time.’

The second passage runs thus

‘This peculiar property of quantities that no part of them IS the smallest possible part (no part indivisible) is called con- tinuity Time and space are quanta continua, because there is no part of them that is not enclosed between limits (points and moments), no part that is not itself again a space or a time Space consists of spaces only, time of times Points and moments ate only limits, mere places of limitation, and as places presupposing always those intuitions which they are meant to limit or to determine Mere places or parts that might be given before space or time, could never be com- pounded into space or time ’

I am m complete agreement with the second extract if ‘time and space’ is the extensive continuum, but it is incon- sistent with Its predecessor Foi Zeno would object that a VICIOUS infinite regress is involved Every part of time m- volves some smaller pait of itself, and so on Also this senes regresses backwaids ultimately to nothing, since the imtial moment is without duration and merely marks the relation of continguity to an earlier tune Thus time is impossible, if the

1 Max Muller’s translation

2 Italics mine, and also in the second passage

118 Science and the Modern World

two extracts are both adhered to I accept the later, and re- ject the earlier, passage Realisation is the becoming of time in the field of extension Extension is the complex of events, qua their potentialities In realisation the potentiality be- comes actuality But the potential pattern requires a dura- tion, and the duration must be exhibited as an epochal whole, by tte realisation of the pattern Thus time is the succession of elements m themselves divisible and contiguous A dura- tion, in becoming temporal, thereby incurs realisation in re- spect to some enduring object Temporalisation is reahsation. Temporalisation is not another continuous process It is an atomic succession Thus time is atomic (/ e , epochal), though what IS temporalised is divisible This doctrine follows from the doctrine of events, and of the nature of enduring ob- jects In the next chapter we must consider its relevance to the quantum theory of recent science

It IS to be noted that this doctrine of the epochal character of time does not depend on the modern doctrine of relativity, and holds equally — and indeed, more simply — if this doc- trine be abandoned It does depend on the analysis of the in- trinsic character of an event, considered as the most con- crete finite entity

In reviewing this argument, note first that the second quo- tation from Kant, on which it is based, does not depend on any peculiar Kantian doctrine The latter of the two is m agreement with Plato as against Aristotle ^ In the second place, the argument assumes that Zeno understated his argument He should have urged it against the current notion of time m Itself, and not against motion, which involves relations be- tween time and space For, what becomes has duration But no duration can become until a smaller duration (part of the former) has antecedently come into being [Kant’s earlier statement] The same argument applies to this smaller dura- tion, and so on Also the infinite regress of these durations converges to nothing — and even to the Aristotelian view there is no first moment Accordingly time would be an ir- rational notion Thirdly, m the epochal theory Zeno’s diffi- culty is met by conceiving temporalisation as the realisation of a complete organism This organism is an event holding m its essence its spatio-temporal relationships (both within it- self, and beyond itself) throughout the spatio-temporal con- tinuum

1 Cf ‘Euclid m Greek,' by Sir T L Heath, Camb. Univ. Press, in a note on Points

8 f The Quantum Theory

The theory of relativity has justly excited a great amount of public attention But, for all its importance, it has not been the topic which has chiefly absorbed the recent interest of physicists Without question that position is held by the quantum theory The point of interest in this theory IS that, according to it, some effects which appear essentially capable of gradual increase oi gradual diminution are m reality to be increased or decreased only by certain definite jumps It IS as though you could walk at three miles per hour or at four miles per hour, but not at three and a half miles per hour

The effects m question are concerned with the radiation of light from a molecule which has been excited by some colli- sion Light consists of waves of vibration m the electromag- netic field After a complete wave has passed a given point everything at that point is restored to its original state and is ready for the next wave which follows on Picture to your- selves the waves on the ocean, and reckon from crest to crest of successive waves The number of waves which pass a given point in one second is called the frequency of that system of waves A system of light-waves of definite fre- quency corresponds to a definite colour m the spectnim Now a molecule, when excited, vibrates with a certam number of definite frequencies In other words, there are a definite set of modes of vibration of the molecule, and each mode of vi- bration has one definite frequency Each mode of vibration can stir up m the electromagnetic field waves of its own fre- quency These waves carry away the energy of the vibration, so that finally (when such waves are in being) the molecule loses the energy of its excitement and the waves cease. Thus a molecule can radiate light of certain definite colours, that IS to say, of certain definite frequencies You would think that each mode of vibration could be excited to any intensity, so that the energy carried away by light of that frequency could be of any amount But this is not the case There appear to be certain minimum amounts of energy which cannot be subdivided The case is analo- gous to that of a citizen of the United States, who, in paying his debts in the currency of his country, cannot subdivide a cent so as to correspond to some minute subdivision of the goods obtained. The cent corresponds to the minimum quan-

120 Science and the Modern World

tity of the light energy, and the goods obtained correspond to the energy of the exciting cause This exciting cause is either strong enough to procure the emission of one cent of energy, or fails to procure the emission of any energy what- soever In any case the molecule will only emit an integral number of cents of energy There is a further peculiarity which we can illustrate by bringing an Englishman onto the scene. He pays his debts in English currency, and his smallest umt IS a farthing which differs in value from the cent The farthing is in fact about half a cent, to a very rough approxi- mation In the molecule, different modes of vibration have different frequencies. Compare each mode to a nation One mode corresponds to the Umted States, and another mode corresponds to England One mode can only radiate its energy m an integral number of cents, so that a cent of energy is the least it can pay out, whereas the other mode can only radiate its energy in an integral number of far- things, so that a farthing of energy is the least that it can pay out Also a rule can be found to tell us the relative value of the cent of energy of one mode to the farthing of energy of another mode. The rule is childishly simple. Each smallest com of energy has a value m strict proportion to the fre- quency belonging to that mode By this rule, and comparing farthings with cents, the frequency of an American would be about twice that of an Englishman In other words, the Amer- ican would do about twice as many things m a second as an Englishman I must leave you to judge whether this corre- sponds to the reputed characters of the two nations Also I suggest that there are merits attaching to both ends of the solar spectrum Sometimes you want red light and sometimes violet light

There has been, I hope, no great difficulty in comprehend- ing what the quantum theory asserts about molecules The perplexity arises from the effort to fit the theory into the cur- rent scientific picture of what is going on in the molecule or atom

It has been the basis of the materialistic theory, that the happenings of nature are to be explained in terms of the locomotion of matenal In accordance with this principle, the waves of light were explained in terms of the locomotion of a matenal ether, and the internal happenings of a mole- cule are now explained in terms of the locomotion of sepa- rate matenal parts In respect to waves of light, the matenal ether has retreated to an indeterminate position in the back- ground, and IS rarely talked about But the principle is un- questioned as regards its application to the atom For exam- ple a neutral hydrogen atom is assumed to consist of at least

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two lumps of matenal; one lump is the nucleus consisting of a material called positive electricity, and the other is a single electron which is negative electricity The nucleus shows signs of being complex, and of being subdivisible into smaller lumps, some of positive electricity and others elec- tronic The assumption is, that whatever vibration takes place in the atom is to be attributed to the vibratory locomotion of some bit of matenal, detachable from the remainder The difhculty with the quantum theory is that, on this hypothesis, we have to picture the atom as providing a limited number of deflmte grooves, which are the sole tracks along which vibration can take place, whereas the classical scientific pic- ture provides none of these grooves The quantum theory wants troUey-cars with a limited number of routes, and the scientific picture provides horses galloping over prairies. The result is that the physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus

On the organic theory of nature there are two sorts of vibrations which radically differ from each other There is vibratory locomotion, and there is vibratory organic deforma- tion, and the conditions for the two types of changes are of a different character In other words, there is vibratory loco- motion of a given pattern as one whole, and there is vibratory change of pattern

A complete organism m the organic theory is what corre- sponds to a bit of material on the materiahstic theory There will be a primary genus, comprising a number of species of organisms, such that each primary organism, belonging to a species of the primary genus, is not decomposable into sub- ordinate Organisms I will call any orgamsm of the primary genus a primate There may be different species of primates.

It must be kept in mind that we are dealing with the ab- stractions of physics Accordingly, we are not thinking of what a primate is m itself, as a pattern arising from the pre- hension of the concrete aspects, nor are we thinking of what a primate is for its environment, in respect to its concrete aspects prehended therein We are thinking of these various aspects merely m so far as their effects on patterns and on locomotion are expressible in spatio-temporal terms Accord- ingly, in the language of physics, the aspects of a primate are merely its contributions to the electromagnetic field This is in fact exactly what we know of electrons and protons An electron for us is merely the pattern of its aspects m its en- vironment, so far as those aspects are relevant to the electro- magnetic field

Now in discussing the theory of relativity, we saw that the

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relative motion of two primates means simply that their organic patterns are utilising diverse space-time systems If two primates do not continue either mutually at rest, or mutually in uniform relative motion, at least one of them is changing its intrinsic space-time system The laws of motion express the conditions under which these changes of space- time systems are effected The conditions for vibratory loco- motion are founded upon these general laws of motion But It is possible that certain species ot primates are apt to go to pieces under conditions which lead them to effect changes of space-time systems Such species would only ex- penence a long range of endnrance, if they had succeeded in forming a favourable association among primates of different species, such that in this association the tendency to collapse IS neutralised by the environment of the association We can imagine the atomic nucleus as composed of a laige number of primates of differing species, and perhaps with many primates of the same species, the whole association being such as to favour stability An example of such an association IS afforded by the association of a positive nucleus with negative electrons to obtain a neutral atom The neutral atom IS thereby shielded from any electric field which would other- wise produce changes in the space-time system of the atom The requirements of physics now suggest an idea which is very consonant with the organic philosophical theory I put it in the form of a question Has our organic theory of endui- ance been tainted by the materialistic theory in so far as it assumes without question that endurance must mean undif- ferentiated sameness throughout the life-history concerned? Perhaps you noticed that (in a previous chapter) I used the word ‘reiteration’ as a synonym of ‘endurance ’ It obviously is not quite synonymous in its meaning, and now I want to suggest that reiteration where it differs trom endurance is more nearly what the organic theory requires The difference is very analogous to that between the Galileans and the Ans- totelians Aristotle said ‘rest’ where Galileo added ‘or uni- form motion in a straight hne ’ Thus in the organic theory, a pattern need not endure in undifferentiated sameness through time The pattern may be essentially one of aesthetic con- trasts requiring a lapse of time for its unfolding. A tune is an example of such a pattern Thus the endurance of the pattern now means the reiteration of its succession of con- trasts This IS obviously the most general notion of endurance on the organic theory, and ‘reiteration’ is perhaps the word which expresses it with most directness But when we translate this notion into the abstractions of physics, it at once becomes the technical notion of ‘vibration.’ This vibra-

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tion IS not the vibratory locomotion- it is the vibration of organic deformation There are certain indications in modern physics that for the role of corpuscular organisms at the base of the physical field, we require vibratory entities Such cor- puscles would be the corpuscles detected as expelled from the nuclei of atoms, which then dissolve into waves of light We may conjecture that such a corpuscular body has no great stability of endurance, when in isolation Accordingly, an u nf avourable environment leading to rapid changes in its proper space-time system, that is to say, an environment jolting It into violent accelerations, causes the corpuscles to go to pieces and dissolve into light-waves of the same period of vibration

A proton, and perhaps an electron, would be an association of such primates, superposed on each other, with then fre- quencies and spatial dimensions so arranged as to promote the stabihty of the complex organism, when jolted into ac- celeration of locomotion The conditions foi stability would give the associations of periods possible for protons The ex- pulsion of a primate would come from a jolt which leads the proton either to settle down into an alternative association, or to generate a new primate by the aid of the energy re- ceived

A primate must be associated with a definite frequency of vibratory organic deformation so that when it goes to pieces It dissolves into light waves of the same frequency, which then carry off all its average energy It is quite easy (as a particular hypothesis) to imagine stationary vibrations of the electromagnetic field of definite frequency, and direct- ed radially to and from a centre, which, m accordance with the accepted electromagnetic laws, would consist of a vi- bratory spherical nucleus satisfying one set of conditions and a vibratory external field satisfying another set of conditions. This IS an example of vibratory organic deformation Further [on this particular hypothesis], there are two ways of de- termining the subsidiary conditions so as to satisfy the ordi- nary requirements of mathematical physics The total energy, according to one of these ways, would satisfy the quantum condition, so that it consists of an integral number of units or cents, which are such that the cent of energy of any prim- ate IS proportional to its frequency I have not worked out the conditions for stability or for a stable association I have mentioned the particular hypothesis by way of showing by example that the organic theory of nature affords possibilities for the reconsideration of ultimate physical laws, which are not open to the opposed materialistic theory

In this particular hypothesis of vibratory primates, the

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Maxwellian equations are supposed to hold throughout all space, including the interior of a proton They express the laws governing the vibratory production and absorption of energy The whole process for each primate issues in a cer- tain average energy charactenstic of the primate, and pro- portional to Its mass. In fact the energy is the mass There are vibratory radial streams of energy, both without and within a primate Within the primate, there are vibratory distributions of electric density On the materialistic theory such density marks the presence of material on the organic theory of vibration, it marks the vibratory production of energy Such production is restricted to the mtenor of the pnmate

All science must start with some assumptions as to the ultimate analysis of the facts with which it deals These as- sumptions are justified partly by their adherence to the types of occurrence of which we are directly conscious, and partly by their success m representing the observed facts with a certain generality, devoid of ad hoc suppositions The general theory of the vibration of primates, which I have outlined, is merely given as an example of the sort of possibilities which the organic theory leaves open for physical science The point IS that It adds the possibility of organic deformation to that of mere locomotion Light waves form one great example of organic deformation

At any epoch the assumptions of a science are giving way, when they exhibit symptoms of the epicyclic state from which astronomy was rescued in the sixteenth century Physi- cal science is now exhibiting such symptoms In order to reconsider its foundations, it must recur to a more concrete view of the character of real things, and must Conceive its fundamental notions as abstractions derived from this direct intuition It IS in this way that it surveys the general possi- bilities of revision which are open to it.

The discontinuities introduced by the quantum theory re- quire revision of physical concepts in order to meet them. In particular, it has been pointed out that some theory of discontinuous existence is required What is asked from such a theory, is that an orbit of an electron can be regarded as a series of detached positions, and not as a continuous line

The theory of a primate or a vibrating pattern given above, togethei with the distinction between temporality and exten- siveness in the previous chapter, yields exactly this result It will be remembered that the continuity of the complex of events arises from the relationships of extensiveness, whereas the temporality arises from the realisation m a subject-event

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of a pattern which requires for its display that the whole of a duration be spatialised (le , arrested), as given by its aspects in the event Thus realisation proceeds via a succession of epochal durations, and the continuous transition, te., the organic deformation, is within the duration which is already given The vibratory organic deformation is in fact the reiter- ation of the pattern One complete period defines the dura- tion required for the complete pattern Thus the primate is realised atomically in a succession of durations, each dura- tion to be measured from one maximum to another Accord- ingly, so far as the prmiate as one enduring whole entity is to be taken account of, it is to be assigned to these durations successively If it is considered as one thing, its orbit is to be diagrammatically exhibited by a series of detached dots Thus the locomotion of the primate is discontinuous m space and time If we go below the quanta of time which are the suc- cessive vibratory periods of the primate, we find a succes- sion of vibratory electromagnetic fields, each stationary m the space-time of its own duration Each of these fields ex- hibits a single complete period of the electromagnetic vibra- tion which constitutes the primate This vibration is not to be thought of as the becommg of reality, it is what the prim- ate is in one of its discontinuous realisations Also the suc- cessive durations in which the primate is realised are contigu- ous, it follows that the life history of the primate can be ex- hibited as being the continuous development of occurrences in the electromagnetic field But these occurrences enter into realisation as whole atomic blocks, occupymg defimte pe- riods of time

There is no need to conceive that time is atomic m the sense that all patterns must be realised m the same successive durations In the first place, even it the periods were the same in the case of two primates, the durations of realisation may not be the same In other words, the two primates may be out of phase Also if the periods are different, the atomism of any one duration of one primate is necessarily subdivided by the boundary moments of durations of the other pnmate

The laws of the locomotion of primates express under what conditions any primate will change its space-time system

It is unnecessary to pursue this conception further. The justification of the concept of vibratory existence must be purely experimental The point illustrated by this example is that the cosmological outlook, which is here adopted, is per- fectly consistent with the demands for discontinuity which have been urged from the side of physics Also if this con- cept of temporalisation as a successive realisation of epochal

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durations be adopted, the difficulty of Zeno is evaded The particulai form, which has been given here to this concept, is purely for that purpose of illustration and must necessar- ily require recasting before it can be adapted to the results of experimental physics

9 / Science and Philosophy

In the present lecture, it is my object to consider some reactions of science upon the stream of philosophic thought during the modern centuries with which we are concerned I shall make no attempt to compress a history of modern phi- losophy within the limits of one lectuie We shall meiely con- sider some contacts between science and philosophy, in so far as they lie within the scheme of thought which it is the purpose of these lectures to develop For this reason the whole of the great German idealistic movement will be ig- nored, as being out of effective touch with its contempoiary science so far as reciprocal modification of concepts is con- cerned Kant, from whom this movement took its rise, was saturated with Newtonian physics, and with the ideas of the great French physicists — such as Clairaut,^ for instance — who developed Newtonian ideas But the philosophers who developed the Kantian school of thought, or who trans- formed it into Hegelianism, either lacked Kant’s back- ground of scientific knowledge, or lacked his potentiality of becoming a great physicist if philosophy had not absorbed his main energies

The origin of modern philosophy is analogous to that of science, and is contemporaneous The general trend of its development was settled m the seventeenth century, partly at the hands of the same men who established the scientific principles This settlement of purpose followed upon a transi- tional period dating from the fifteenth century There was in fact a general movement of European mentality, which car- ried along with its stream, religion, science and philosophy It may shortly be characterised as being the direct recur-

' Cy the curious evidence of Kant’s scientific reading m the Critique of Pure Reauin, Pianscenditl Analytic, Second Analogy of Experience, where he refers to the phenomenon of capillary aetion This js an un- necessarily coinplet illustration, a book resting on a table would have equally well sufficed But the subject had just been adequately treated for the first lime by Clairaut in an appendix to his Figuie of the Earth Kant evidently had read this appendix, and his mind was full of it

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rence to the onginal sources of Greek inspiration on the part of men whose spiritual shape had been denved from inherit- ance from the Middle Ages There was therefore no revival of Greek mentality Epochs do not rise from the dead The principles of aesthetics and of reason, which animated the Greek civilisation, were reclothed m a modern mentality. Be- tween the two there lay other religions, other systems of law, other anarchies, and other racial inheritances, dividmg the hving from the dead

Philosophy IS peculiarly sensitive to such differences For, whereas you can make a replica of an ancient statue, there IS no possible replica of an ancient state of mind There can be no nearer approximation than that which a masquerade bears to real life There may be understanding of the past, but there is a difference between the modern and the ancient reactions to the same stimuli

In the particular case of philosophy, the distinction in tonality lies on the surface Modern philosophy is tinged with subjectivism, as against the objective attitude ot the ancients The same change is to be seen m religion In the eaily his- tory of the Christian Church, the theological interest cen- tred in discussions on the nature of God, the meaning of the Incarnation, and apocalyptic forecasts of the ultimate fate of the world At the Reformation, the Church was torn asunder by dissension as to the individual experiences of believers m respect to justification The individual subject of experience had been substituted for the total drama of all reality Luther asked, ‘How am I justified'^’; modern philosophers have asked, ‘How do I have knowledge^’ The emphasis lies upon the subject of experience This change of standpoint is the work of Chiistianity in its pastoral aspect of shepherding the company of believers For century after century it insisted upon the infinite worth of the individual human soul Ac- cordingly, to the mstmctive egotism of physical desires, it has super-added an mstmctive feeling of justification for an egotism of intellectual outlook Every human being is the natural guardian of his own importance Without a doubt, this modern direction of attention emphasises truths of the highest value For example, in the field of practical life, it has abolished slavery, and has impressed upon the popular im- agination the primary rights of mankind

Descartes, m his Discourse on Method, and in his Medita- tions, discloses with great clearness the general conceptions which have since influenced modern philosophy There is a subject receiving experience m the Discouise this subject is always mentioned m the first person, that is to say, as being Descartes himself Descartes starts with himself as being a

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mentality, which in virtue of its consciousness of its own inherent presentations of sense and of thought, is thereby conscious of its own existence as a umt entity The subse- quent history of philosophy revolves round the Cartesian formulation of the primary datum The ancient world takes its stand upon the drama of the Universe, the modern world upon the inward drama of the Soul Descartes, in his Medi- tations, expressly grounds the existence of this inward drama upon the possibility of error. There may be no correspond- ence with objective fact, and thus theie must be a soul with activities whose reality is purely derivative from itself For example, here is a quotation^ from Meditation 11 ‘But it will be said that these presentations are false, and that I am dreaming Let it be so At all events it is certain that I seem to see light, hear a noise, and feel heat, this cannot be false, and that is what in me is properly called perceiving {lentire), which IS nothing else than thinking From this I begin to know what I am with somewhat greater clearness and dis- tinctness than heretofore ’ Again in Meditation III ‘ . , for,

as I before remarked, although the things which I perceive or imagine are perhaps nothing at all apart from me, I am nevertheless assured that those modes of consciousness which I call perceptions and imaginations, in as far only as they are modes of consciousness, exist in me ’

The objectivism of the medieval and the ancient worlds passed ovei into science Nature is there conceived as for itself, with its own mutual reactions Under the recent influ- ence of relativity, there has been a tendency towards sub- jectivist formulations But. apart from this recent exception, nature, in scientific thought, has had its laws formulated without any reference to dependence on individual observ- ers. There is, however, this difference between the older and the later attitudes towards science The anti-rationalism of the moderns has checked any attempt to harmonise the ulti- mate concepts of science with ideas drawn from a more con- crete survey of the whole of reality The material, the space, the time, the various laws concerning the transition of ma- terial configurations, are taken as ultimate stubborn facts, not to be tampered with

The effect of this antagonism to philosophy has been equally unfortunate both for philosophy and for science In this lecture we are concerned with philosophy Philosophers are rationalists They are seeking to go behind stubborn and ineducible tacts they wish to explain in the light of univer- sal principles the mutual reference between the various de- tails entering into the flux of things Also, they seek such

1 Quoted from Veitch’s translation.

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principles as will eliminate mere arbitranness; so that, whatever portion of fact is assumed or given, the existence of the remamder of things shall satisfy some demand of ration- ality. They demand meaning In the words of Henry Sidg- wick^ — ‘It IS the primary aim of philosophy to unify complete- ly, bring into clear coherence, all departments of rational thought, and this aun camiot be realised by any philosophy that leaves out of its view the important body of judgments and reasonings which form the subject matter of ethics ’ Accordingly, the bias towards history on the part of the phys- ical and social sciences with their refusal to rationahse be- low some ultimate mechanism, has pushed philosophy out of the effective currents of modern life It has lost its proper r61e as a constant critic of partial formulations It has re- treated into the subjectivist sphere of mmd, by reason of its expulsion by science from the objectivist sphere of matter Thus the evolution of thought m the seventeenth century cooperated with the enhanced sense of individual personality derived from the Middle Ages We see Descartes taking his stand upon his own ultimate mmd, which his philosophy as- sures him ot, and asking about its relations to the ultimate matter — exemplified, in the second Meditation, by the human body and a lump of wax — ^which his science assumes There IS Aaron’s rod, and the magicians’ serpents, and the only question for philosophy is, which swallows which, or whether, as Descartes thought, they hved happily together In this stream of thought are to be found Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant Two great names lie outside this list, Spinoza and Leibniz But there is a certain isolation of both of them m respect to their philosophical influence so far as science is concerned, as though they had strayed to extremes which he outside the boundaries of safe philosophy, Spinoza by retain- ing older ways of thought, and Leibniz by the novelty of his monads.

The history of philosophy runs curiously parallel to that of science In tbe case of both, the seventeenth century set the stage for its two successors But with the twentieth century a new act commences It is an exaggeration to attribute a general change in a climate of thought to any one piece of wilting, or to any one author No doubt Descartes only ex- pressed definitely and in decisive form what was already in the air of his peiiod Analogously, in attributing to Wil- li.im James the inauguration of a new stage in philosophy, we should be neglecting other influences of his time But, admitting this, there still remains a certain fitness in con- trasting his essay. Does Consciousness Exist, published in

1 Cf Henry Sidgwick' A Memoir, Appendix I.

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1904, with Descartes’ Discourse on Method, published in 1637 James cleais the stage of the old paraphernalia; or rather he entirely alters its lighting Take for example these two sentences from his essay. ‘To deny plumply that “con- sciousness” exists seems so absurd on the face of it — ^for un- deniably “thoughts” do exist — ^that 1 fear some readers will follow me no farther Let me then immediately explain that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function ’

The scientific materialism and the Cartesian Ego were both challenged at the same moment, one by science and the other by philosophy, as represented by William James with his psychological antecedents, and the double challenge marks the end of a period which lasted for about two hun- dred and fifty years Of course, ‘matter’ and ‘consciousness’ both express something so evident m ordmary experience that any philosophy must provide some things which answer to their respective meanings But the point is that, in respect to both of them, the seventeenth century settlement was m- fected with a presupposition which is now challenged James denied that consciousness is an entity, but admits that it is a function The discrimination between an entity and a func- tion IS therefore vital to the understandmg of the challenge which James is advancing against the older modes of thought. In the essay in question, the character which James assigns to consciousness is fully discussed But he does not unam- biguously explain what he means by tlie notion of an entity, which he refuses to apply to consciousness In the sentence which immediately follows the one which I have already quoted, he says

‘There is, I mean, no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with that of which material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made, but there is a func- tion in experience which thoughts perform, and for the per- formance of which this quality of being is mvoked That func- tion IS knowing “Consciousness” is supposed necessary to explain the fact that things not only are, but get reported, are known ’

Thus James is denying that consciousness is a ‘stuff ’

The term ‘entity,’ or even that of ‘stuS,’ does not fully tell its own tale, The notion of ‘entity’ is so general that it may be taken to mean anything that can be thought about You cannot think of mere nothing, and the something which is an object of thought may be called an entity In this sense, a function is an entity Obviously, this is not what James had in his mind.

In agreement with the orgamc theory of nature which I

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have been tentatively putting forward m these lectures, I shall for my own puiposes construe James as denying exactly what Descartes asserts in his Discoune and his Meditations Descartes discriminates two species of entities, matter and soul The essence of matter is spatial extension, the essence of soul IS Its cogitation, in the full sense which Descartes assigns to the woid cogitare For example, m Section Fifty- three of Part I of his Punciples of Philosophy, he enunciates. ‘That of every substance theie is one principal attribute, as thinking of the mind, extension ot the body ’ In the earlier, Fifty-first Section, Descartes states ‘By substance we can conceive nothmg else than a thing which exists m such a way as to stand m need of nothmg beyond itself m order to ite existence.’ Fuithermore, later on, Descaites says ‘For ex- ample, because any substance which ceases to endure ceases also to exist, duration is not distinct from substance except in thought, ’ Thus we conclude that, lor Descartes, minds and bodies exist in such a way as to stand in need of nothing beyond themselves individually (God only excepted, as being the foundation of all things), that both minds and bodies endure, because without endurance they would cease to ex- ist; that spatial extension is the essential attribute of bodies, and that cogitation is the essential attribute of minds It IS difficult to praise too highly the genius exhibited by Descartes m the complete sections of his Principles which deal with these questions It is worthy of the century m which he writes, and of the clearness of the French intellect Descartes in his distinction between time and duration, and in his way of grounding time upon motion, and in his close relation between matter and extension, anticipates, as far as it was possible at his epoch, modern notions suggested by the doctrine of relativity, or by some aspects of Bergson’s doctrine of the geneiation ot things But the fundamental principles are so set out as to presuppose independently ex- isting substances with simple location in the community of temporal durations, and in the case of bodies, with simple location in the community of spatial extensions Those prin- ciples lead straight to the theory of a materialistic, mechan- istic nature, surveyed by cogitating minds After the close of the seventeenth century, science took charge of the material- istic nature, and philosophy took charge of the cogitating minds Some schools of philosophy admitted an ultimate dualism; and the various idealistic schools claimed that na- ture was merely the chief example of the cogitations of minds But all schools admitted the Cartesian analysis of the ultimate elements of nature. I am excluding Spinoza and Leibniz from these statements as to the mam stream of modern phi-

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losophy, as derivative from Descartes, though of course they were influenced by him, and in their turn influenced phi- losophers. I am linking mainly of the effective contacts between science and philosophy

This division of territory between science and philosophy was not a simple business, and in fact it illustrated the weak- ness of the whole cut-and-dried presupposition upon which it rested We are aware of nature as an interplay of bodies, colours, sounds, scents, tastes, touches and other various bodily feelings, displayed as m space, m patterns of mutual separation by intervening volumes, and of mdividual shape. Also the whole is a flux, changing with the lapse of tune This systematic totality is disclosed to us as one complex of things. But the seventeenth century dualism cuts straight across it The objective world of science was confined to mere spatial material with simple location m space and time, and subjected to definite rules as to its locomotion The sub-

jective world of philosophy annexed the colours, sounds, scents, tastes, touches, bodily feelings, as forming the sub- jective content of the cogitations of the individual minds. Both worlds shared in the general flux, but time, as measured, is assigned by Descartes to the cogitations of the observer’s mind There is obviously one fatal weakness to this scheme. The cogitations of mind exhibit themselves as holding up j entities, such as colours for instance, before the mind as the |termmi of contemplation. But in this theory these colours ; are, after all, merely the furniture of the mind Accordingly, the mind seems to be confined to its own private world of cogitations The subject-object conformation of experience m its entirety lies within the mind as one of its puvate pas- sions This conclusion from the Cartesian data is the starting point from which Berkeley, Hume, and Kant developed them respective systems And, antecedently to them, it was the point upon which Locke concentrated as being the vital ques- tion Thus the question as to how any knowledge is obtained ot the truly objective world of science becomes a problem of the first magnitude Descartes states that the objective body is perceived by the intellect He says (Meditation 11) T must, toerefore, admit that I cannot even comprehend by imagina- hon what the piece of wax is, and that it is the mind alone which perceives it I speak of one piece m particular, for, as o wax in general, this is still more evident But what is the piece of wax that can be perceived only by tlie mind? . .

The perception of it is neither an act of sight, of touch, nor ot imagination, and never was either of these, though it might formerly seem so, but is simply an mtiution (inspectio) of the , . . . It must be noted that the Latin word ‘mspecUo’ is

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associated in its classical use with the notion of theory as opposed to practice.

The two gieat preoccupations of modern philosophy now lie clearly before us The study of mind divides into psychol- ogy, or the study of mental functionings as considered in themselves and m their mutual relations, and into epistemol- ogy, or the theory of the knowledge of a common objective world In other words, there is the study of the cogitations, qua passions of the mind, and their study qua leading to an mspection (intuition) of an objective world This is a very uneasy division, giving rise to a host of perplexities whose consideration has occupied the intervening centunes

As long as men thought in terms of physical notions for the objective world and of mentality for the subjective world, the setting out of the problem, as achieved by Descartes, suf- ficed as a stalling point But the balance has been upset by the rise of physiology In the seventeenth century men passed from the study of physics to the study of philosophy Towards the end of the nineteenth century, notably in Germany, men passed from the study of physiology to the study of psychology The change m tone has been decisive Of course, m the earlier period the intervention of the human body was fully con- sidered, for example, by Descartes m Part V of the Discourse on Method But the physiological instinct had not been de- veloped In considering the human body, Descartes thought With the outfit of a physicist, whereas the modern psychol- ogists are clothed with the mentalities of medical physiolo- gists The career of William James is an example of t his change in standpoint He also possessed the clear, incisive genius which could state in a flash the exact point at issue

The reason why I have put Descartes and James in close juxtaposition is now evident Neither philosopher finished an epoch by a final solution of a problem Their great merit is of the opposite sort They each of them open an epoch by their clear formulation of terms in which thought could profit- ably express itself at particular stages of knowledge, one for the seventeenth century, the other for the twentieth century In this respect, they are both to be contrasted with St Thomas Aquinas, who expressed the culmination of Aristotelian scho- lasticism

In many ways neither Descartes nor James were the most characteristic philosophers of then respective epochs I should be disposed to asciibe these positions to Locke and to Bergson respectively, at least so far as concerns their rela- tions to the science of their times Locke developed the lines of thoug^ht which kept philosophy on the move, for example he emphasised the appeal to psychology He initiated the

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age of epoch-making enquiries into urgent problems of limit- ed scope Undoubtedly, in so doing, he infected philosophy with something of the antirationalism of science But the very groundwork of a fruitful methodology is to start from those clear postulates which must be held to be ultimate so far as concerns the occasion in question The criticism of such methodological postulates is thus reserved for another opportunity Locke discovered that the philosophical situa- tion bequeathed by Descartes involved the problems of epis- temology and psychology

Bergson introduced into philosophy the organic concep- tions of physiological science He has most completely moved away from the static materialism of the seventeenth century His protest against spatialisation is a protest against taking the Newtonian conception of nature as being anything ex- cept a high abstraction His so-called anti-intellectualism should be construed m this sense In some respects he recurs to Descartes, but the recurrence is accompamed with an m- stinctive grasp of modern biology

There is another reason for associating Locke and Berg- son The germ of an oiganic theory of nature is to be found in Locke His most recent expositor, Professor Gibson,^ states that Locke’s way of conceiving the identity of self-con- sciousness ‘like that of a living organism, involves a genuine transcending of the mechanical view of nature and of mind, embodied in the composition theoiy ’ But it is to be noticed that in the first place Locke wavers in his grasp of this po- sition, and in the second place, what is more important still, he only applies his idea to self-consciousness The physio- logical attitude has not yet established itself The effect of physiology was to put mind back into nature The neurolo- gist traces first the effect of the stimuli along the bodily nerves, then integration at nerve centres, and finally the rise of a projective reference beyond the body with a resulting motor efficacy in renewed nervous excitement In biochem- istry, the delicate adjustment of the chemical composition of the parts to the preservation of the whole organism is de- tected Thus the mental cognition is seen as the reflective experience of a totality, reporting for itself what it is in itself as one unit of occurrence This unit is the integration of the simi of its partial happenings, but it is not their numerical aggregate It has its own unity as an event This total umty, considered as an entity for its own sake, is the prehension into unity of the patterned aspects of the universe of events Its knowledge of itself arises from its own lelevance to the

^ C/ his book, Locke'i Theory o/ Knowledge and its Historical Re- lations, Camb Univ Press, 1917

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things of which it prebends the aspects It knows the world as a system of mutual relevance, and thus sees itself as mir- rored in other things. These other things include more espeeially the various parts of its own body

It IS impoitant to discriminate the bodily pattern, which endures, from the bodily event, which is pervaded by the enduring pattern, and from the parts of the bodily event The parts of the bodily event are themselves pervaded by their own enduring patterns, which form elements in the bodily pattern The parts of the body are really portions of the environment of the total boddy event, but so related that their mutual aspects, each in the other, are peculiarly eflfective in modifying the pattern of either This arises from the intimate character of the relation of whole to part Thus the body is a portion of the environment for the part, and the part is a portion of the environment for the body; only they are peculiarly sensitive, each to modifications of the other This sensitiveness is so arranged that the part adjusts Itself to preserve the stability of the pattern of the body. It IS a particulai example of the favourable environment shield- ing the organism The relation of part to whole has the special reciprocity associated with the notion of organism, in which the part is for the whole, but this relation reigns throughout nature and does not start with the special case of the higher organisms

Further, viewing the question as a matter of chemistry, there is no need to construe the actions of each molecule m a living body by its exclusive particular reference to the pat- tern of the complete hvmg organism It is true that each molecule is affected by the aspect of this pattern as mirrored m it, so as to be otherwise than what it would have been if placed elsewhere In the same way, under some circumstances an electron may be a sphere, and undei other circumstances an egg-shaped volume The mode of approach to the problem, so far as science is concerned, is merely to ask if molecules exhibit in living bodies properties which are not to be observed amid inorganic surroundings In the same way, in a magnetic field soft iron exhibits magnetic properties which are m abey- ance elsewhere The prompt self-preservative actions of living bodies, and oui experience of the physical actions of our bodies following the determinations of will, suggest the modi- fication of molecules in the body as the result of the total pat- tern It seems possible that there may be physical laws ex- pressing the modification of the ultimate basic organisms when they form part of higher organisms with adequate com- pactness of pattern It would, however, be entirely m conso- nance with the empirically observed actions of environments.

136 Science and the Modern World

if the direct effects of aspects as between the whole body and its parts were negligible We should expect transmission. In this way the modification of total pattern would transmit itself by means of a series of modifications of a descending senes of parts, so that finally the modification of the cell changes Its aspect in the molecule, thus effecting a corresponding al- teration in the molecule — or in some subtler entity Thus the question for physiology is the question of the physics of molecules m cells of different characters

We can now see the relation of psychology to physiology and to physics The private psychological field is merely the event considered from its own standpoint The unity of this field IS the unity of the event But it is the event as one entity, and not the event as a sum of parts The relations of the parts, to each other and to the whole, are their aspects, each m the other A body for an external observer is the aggregate of the aspects for him of the body as a whole, and also of the body as a sum of parts For the external observer the aspects of shape and of sense-objects are dominant, at least for cognition But we must also allow for the possibility that we can detect m ourselves direct aspects of the mentalities of higher organisms The claim that the cognition of alien mentalities must necessarily be by means of indirect infer- ences from aspects of shape and of sense-objects is wholly lunwarranted by this philosophy of organism The funda- Imental principle is that whatever merges mto actuality, im- 'plants its aspects in every individual event

Further, even for self-cogmtion, the aspects of the parts of oiir own bodies partly take the form of aspects of shape, and of sense-objects But that part of the bodily event, m re- spect to which the cognitive mentality is associated, is for Itself the unit psychological field Its ingredients are not refer- ent to the event itself, they are aspects of what lies beyond that event Thus the self-knowledge inherent in the bodily event is the knowledge of itself as a complex unity, whose ingredients involve all reality beyond itself, restricted undei the limitation of its pattern of aspects Thus we know ourselves as a function of unification of a plurality of things which arc other than ourselves Cognition discloses an event as being an activity, organising a real togetherness of alien things But this psychological field does not depend on its cognition; so that this field is still a umt event as abstracted from its self-cogmtion

Accordingly, consciousness will be the function of know- ing But what is known is already a prehension of aspects of the one real universe These aspects are aspects of other events as mutually modifying, each the others In the pat-

Science and Philosophy 137

tern of aspects they stand m their pattern of mutual related- ness.

The aboriginal data in terms of which the pattern weaves itself are the aspects of shapes, of sense-objects, and of other eternal objects whose sclf-identity is not dependent on the flux of things Wherever such objects have mgression into the general flux, they interpret events, each to the other They are here m the perceiver, but, as perceived by him, they con- vey for him something of the total flux which is beyond him- self The subject-object relation takes its origin m the double role of these eternd objects They are modifications of the subject, but only in their character of conveying aspects of other subjects m the community of the universe Thus no individual subject can have independent reality, since it is a prehension of limited aspects of subjects other than itself

The technical phrase ‘subject-object’ is a bad term tor the fundamental situation disclosed m experience It is really reminiscent of the Aristotelian ‘subject-predicate ’ It already presupposes the metaphysical doctrine of diverse subjects qualified by their private predicates This is the doctrine of subjects with private worlds of experience If this be granted, there is no escape from solipsism The point is that the phrase ‘subject-object’ indicates a fundamental entity underlymg the objects Thus the ‘objects,’ as thus conceived, are merely the ghosts of Aristotelian predicates The primary situation dis- closed in cognitive experience is 'ego-object amid objects ’ By this I mean that the primary fact is an impartial world transcending the ‘here-now’ which marks the ego-object, and transcending the ‘now’ which is the spatal world of simul- taneous realisation It is a world also including the actuality of the past, and the limited potentiality of the future, to- gether with the complete world of abstract potentiality’ the realm of eternal objects which transcends, and finds exempli- fication m and comparison with, the actual course of realisa- tion The ego object, as consciousness here-now, is conscious of Its experient essence as constituted by its internal related- ness to the world of realities, and to the world of ideas But the ego-object, in being thus constituted, is within the world of realities, and exhibits itself as an organism requiring the mgression of ideas for the purpose of this status among realities. This question of consciousness must be reserved for treatment on another occasion

The point to be made for the purpose of the present dis- cussion IS that a philosophy of nature as organic must start at the opposite end to that requisite for a materialistic phi- losophy The materialistic starting point is from independently existing substances, matter and mind The matter suffers

138 Science and the Modern World

modifications of its external relations of locomotion, and the mind suffers modifications of its contemplated objects There are, in this materialistic theory, two sorts of mdependent substances, each qualified by their appropriate passions, The organic starting point is from the analysis of process as the realisation of events disposed in an interlocked community. TTie event is the unit of things real The emergent enduring pattern is the stabilisation of the emergent achievement so as to become a fact which retains its identity throughout the process It wiU be noted that endurance is not primarily the property of enduring beyond itself, but of endurmg within Itself I mean that endurance is the property of find- ing its pattern reproduced m the temporal parts of the total event It is in this sense that a total event carries an endur- mg pattern There is an mtrinsic value identical for the whole and for its succession of parts Cognition is the emergence, into some measure of individualised reality, of the general substratum of activity, poising before itself possibility, ac- tuality, and purpose

It IS equally possible to arrive at this organic conception of the world if we start from the fundamental notions of modem physics, instead of, as above, from psychology and physiology In fact by reason of my own studies m mathe- matics and mathematical physics, I did in fact arrive at my convictions in this way Mathematical physics presumes m the first place an electromagnetic field of activity pervading space and time The laws which condition this field are noth- ing else than the conditions observed by the general activity of the flux of the world, as it individualises itself m the events In physics, there is an abstraction The science ignores what anything is in itself Its entities are merely considered in respect to their extrmsic reality, that is to say, m respect to their aspects in other things But the abstraction reaches even further than that, for it is only the aspects in other things, as modifying the spatio-temporal specifications of the life histones of those other things, which count The mtrmsic reality of the observer comes in. I mean what the observer is for himself is appealed to For example, the fact that he will see red or blue enters into scientific statements. But the red which the observer sees does not in truth enter into science What IS relevant is merely the baie diversity of the ob- server’s red experiences from all of his other experiences Accordingly, the intrinsic character of the observer is merely relevant m order to fix the self-identical mdividuality of the physical entities These entities are only consideied as agencies in fixing the routes m space and in time of the hfe histones of enduring entities

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The phraseology of physics is derived from the materialistic ideas of the seventeenth century But we find that, even in its extreme abstraction, what it is really piesupposing is the organic theory of aspects as explained above First, consider any event m empty space where the word ‘empty’ means devoid of electrons, oi protons, or of any other form of electiic charge Such an event has three roles in physics In the lirst place, it is the actual scene of an adventure of energy, either as its habitat or as the locus of a particular stream of energy anyhow, in this role the energy is there, either as located in space during the time considered, or as streaming through space

In its second rSle, the event is a necessary link m the pattern of transmission, by which the character of every event receives some modification from the character of every other event.

In Its third role, the event is the repository of a possibility, as to what would happen to an electric charge, either by way of deformation oi of locomotion, it it should have happened to be there

If we modify our assumption by considering an event which includes in itself a portion of the life-history of an electric charge, then the analysis of its three roles still re- mains, except that the possibility embodied in the third role is now transformed into an actuality In this replacement of possibility by actuality, we obtain the distinction between empty and occupied events

Recuinng to the empty events, we note the deficiency in them of individuality of intrinsic content Considering the first role of an empty event, as being a habitat ot energy, we note that there is no individual discnmmation of an individ- ual bit of energy, either as statically located, or as an element in the stream There is simply a quantitative determmation of activity, without individualisation of the activity m itself This lack of individualisation is still more evident in the sec- ond and third roles An empty event is something in itself, but it fails to realise a stable individuality of content So far as its content is concerned, the empty event is one realised element m a general scheme of organized activity

Some qualification is required when the empty event is the scene of the transmission of a definite tram of recurrent wave-forms. There is now a definite pattern which remains permanent m the event We find here the first faint trace of enduring individuality But it is individuality without the faintest capture of originality for it is merely a perma- nence arising solely from the implication of the event m a larger scheme of natternma

140 Science and the Modern World

Turning now to the examination of an occupied event, the electron has a determmate individuality It can be traced throughout its lifc-history through a variety of events A col- lection of electrons, together with the analogous atomic charges of positive electricity, forms a body such as we ordi- narily perceive The simplest body of this kind is a molecule, and a set of molecules forms a lump of ordinary matter, such as a chair, or a stone Thus a charge of electricity is the mark of individuality of content, as additional to the mdividuality of an event in itself This individuality of content is the strong point of the materialistic doctrine,

It can. however, be equally well explained on the theory of organism When we look mto the function of the electric charge, we note that its role is to mark the origination of a pattern which is transmitted through space and time It is the key of some particular pattern For example, the field of force m any event is to be constructed by attention to the adventures of elections and protons, and so also are the streams and distributions of energy Further, the electric waves find then oiigin in the vibratory adventures of these charges Thus the transmitted pattern is to be conceived as the flux of aspects throughout space and time derived from the life history of the atomic charge The individualisation of the charge arises by a conjunction of two characters, in the first place by the continued identity of its mode of func- tioning as a key for the determination of a diffusion of pattern, and, m the second place, by the unity and contmuity of Its life history

We may conclude, therefore, that the organic theory rep- resents directly what physics actually does assume respecting its ultimate entities We also notice the complete futility of these entities, if they are conceived as fully concrete individ- uals So far as physics is concerned, they are wholly occupied in moving each other about, and they have no reality outside this function In paiticular for physics, there is no intrmsic reality

It is obvious that the basing of philosophy upon the presup- position of organism must be traced back to Leibniz ^ His monads are tor him the ultimately real entities But he re- tained the Cartesian substances with their qualifying passions, as also equally expiessing for him the final characterisation of real things Accordingly for him there was no concrete reality of internal lelations He had therefore on his hands two distinct points of view One was that the final real entity is an organising activity, fusing ingredients into a unity, so that this unity is the reality The other point of view is that the final real entities are substances supporting qualities The

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first point of view depends upon the acceptance of internal relations binding together all reality The lattei is inconsis- tent with the reality of such relations To combine these two pomts of view, his monads were therefore wmdowless, and their passions merely mirrored the umverse by the divine arrangement of a preestablished harmony This system thus presupposed an aggregate of mdependent entities He did not discriminate the event, as the unit of experience, from the enduring organism as its stabilisation into importance, and from the cogmtive organism as expressmg an increased com- pleteness of individualisation Nor did he admit the many- termed relations, relating sense-data to various events in di- verse ways These many-termed relations are m fact the perspectives which Leibniz does admit, but only on the condition that they are purely qualities of the orgamsmg monads The difficulty really arises from the unquestioned acceptance of the notion of simple location as fundamental for space and time, and from the acceptance of the notion of mdependent individual substance as fundamental for a real entity The only road open to Leibniz was thus the same as that later taken by Berkeley [in a prevalent interpretation of his meaning], namely an appeal to a deus ex machina who was capable of nsmg superior to the difficulties of meta- physics.

In the same way as Descartes introduced the tradition of thought which kept subsequent philosophy m some measure of contact with the scientific movement, so Leibniz mtroduced the alternative tradition that the entities, which are the ulti- mate actual thmgs, are in some sense procedures of orgamsa- tion This tradition has been the foundation of the great achievements of German philosophy Kant reflected the two traditions, one upon the other Kant was a scientist, but the schools derivative from Kant have had but slight effect on the mentality of the scientific world It should be the task of the philosophical schools of this century to bring together the two streams into an expression of the world-picture derived from science, and thereby end the divorce of science from the aflBrmahons of our aesthetic and ethical experiences.

1 Cf Bertrand Russell, The Tlulosophy o/ Leibniz, for the sug- gestion of this line of thought

10 / Abstraction

In the previous chapters I have been examining the reac- tions of the scientific movement upon the deeper issues which have occupied modern thinkers No one man, no limited society of men, and no one epoch can think of everything at once, Accordingly foi the sake of eliciting the various im- pacts of science upon thought, the topic has been treated histoiically In this retrospect I have kept in mind that the ultimate issue of the whole story is the patent dissolution of the comfortable scheme of scientific materialism which has dominated the three centuiies under review Accordingly various schools of criticism of the dominant opmions have been stressed, and I have endeavoured to outline an alterna- tive cosmological doctrine, which shall be wide enough to in- clude what IS fundamental both for science and for its critics In this alternative scheme, the notion of material, as funda- mental, has been replaced by that of organic synthesis But the approach has always been fioni the consideration of the actual intricacies of scientific thought, and of the peculiar perplexities which it suggests

In the present chapter, and in the immediately succeeding chapter, we will forget the peculiar problems of modern science, and will put ourselves at the standpoint of a dis- passionate consideration of the nature of things antecedently to any special investigation mto their details Such a stand- point is termed ‘metaphysical ’ Accordingly those readers who find metaphysics, even in two slight chapters, irksome, will do well to proceed at once to the chapter on ‘Religion and Science.’ which resumes the topic of the impact of science on modern thought.

These metaphysical chapters are purely descriptive. Their justification is to be sought, (i) lu our direct knowledge of the actual occasions which compose our immediate experi- ence, and (ii) in their success as forming a basis for harmonising our systematised accounts of vanous types of experience, and (iii) in their success as providing the con- cepts in terms of which an epistemology can be fiamed By (ill) 1 mean that an account of the general character of what we know must enable us to frame an account of how knowl- edge IS possible as an adjunct within things known

In any occasion of cognition, that which is known is an 142

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actual occasion of experience, as diversifled^ by reference to a realm of entities which transcend that immediate occasion m that they have analogous or different connections with other occasions of experience For example a definite shade of red may, in the immediate occasion, be implicated with the shape of sphericity m some definite way But that shade of red, and that spherical shape, exhibit themselves as tran- scendmg that occasion, in that either of them has other re- lationships to other occasions Also, apart from the actual occurrence of the same thmgs in other occasions, every actual occasion is set within a realm of alternative intercon- nected entities This realm is disclosed by all the untrue prop- ositions which can be predicated significantly of that oc- casion It IS the realm of alternative suggestions, whose foot- hold in actuality transcends each actual occasion The real relevance of untrue propositions for each actual occasion IS disclosed by art, romance, and by criticism in reference to ideals It IS the foundation of the metaphysical position which I am maintaining that the understanding of actuality requires a refeience to ideality. The two realms are intrinsically inher- ent in the total metaphysical situation The truth that some proposition respecting an actual occasion is untrue may ex- press the vital truth as to the aesthetic achievement It expresses the ‘great refusal’ which is its primary characteristic An event is decisive in proportion to the importance (for it) of its untrue propositions their relevance to the event cannot be dissociated from what the event is m itself by way of achievement These transcendent entities have been termed ‘universals ’ I prefer to use the term ‘eternal objects,’ in order to disengage myself from presuppositions which cling to the former term owing to its prolonged philosophical history Eternal objects are thus, in their nature, abstract By ‘abstract’ I mean that what an eternal object is m itself — that is to say, its essence — is comprehensible without reference to some one particular occasion of experience To be abstract is to trans- cend particular concrete occasions of actual happemng But to transcend an actual occasion does not mean being discon- nected from It On the contrary, I hold that each eternal ob- ject has Its own proper connection with each other such oc- casion, which I term its mode of ingression mto that oc- casion. Thus an eternal object is to be comprehended by acquaintance with (i) its particular individuality, (n) its general relationships to other eternal objects as apt for real- isation in actual occasions, and (iii) the general principle which expresses its ingression m particular actual occasions

iC/. my Principles of Natural Knowledge, Ch V, Seo 13

144 Science and the Modern World

These three headings express two principles The first prin- ciple IS that each eternal object is an individual which, m its own peculiar fashion, is what it is This particular individ- uality IS the individual essence of the object, and cannot be described otherwise than as being itself Thus the mdividual essence is merely the eternal object considered as adding its own unique contribution to each actual occasion This unique contribution is identical for all such occasions in respect to the fact that the object in all modes of mgression is just its identical self But it vanes from one occasion to another in respect to the differences of its modes of mgression Thus the metaphysical status of an eternal object is that of a pos- sibility for an actuality. Every actual occasion is defined as to Its character by how these possibilities are actualised for that occasion Thus actiiahsation is a selection among pos- sibilities More accurately, it is a selection issuing in a grada- tion of possibilities in respect to their realisation in that oc- casion. This conclusion brings us to the second metaphysical principle An eternal object, considered as an abstract entity, cannot be divorced from its reference to other eternal objects, and from its reference to actuality generally, though it is dis- connected from Its actual modes of mgression into definite actual occasions This principle is expressed by the statement that each eternal object has a ‘relational essence ’ This rela- tional essence determines how it is possible for the object to have mgression into actual occasions

In other words If A be an eternal object, then what A is in itself involves A's status m the umveise, and A cannot be divorced from this status In the essence of A there stands a determinateness as to the relationships of A to other eternal objects, and an mdeterminateness as to the relationships of A to actual occasions Since the relationships of A to other eternal objects stands determmately in the essence of A, it follows that they are internal relations I mean by this that these relationships are constitutive of A, for an entity which Stands in internal relations has no being as an entity not in these relations In other words, once with mternal relations, always with internal relations The internal relationships of A conjointly form its significance

Again an entity cannot stand in external relations unless in Its essence theie stands an indeterminateness which is its patience for such exteinal relations The meaning of the term ‘possibility’ as applied to A is simply that there stands in the essence of ^ a patience for lelationships to actual occasions. The relationships of A to an actual occasion are simply how the eternal relationships of A to other eternal objects are graded as to then realisation m that occasion

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Thus the general principle which expi esses A’s mgression in the particular actual occasion « is the mdetermmateness which stands in the essence of A as to its mgression into and is the deternimateness which stands m the essence of « as to the mgression of A into « Thus the synthetic prehen- sion, which IS IS the solution of the mdetermmateness of A into the dcterminateiiess of “ Accoidingly the relationship between A and “ is exteinal as legards A, and is internal as regards « Every actual occasion “ is the solution of all modalities into actual categorical ingressions truth and false- hood take the place of possibility The complete mgression of A into a is expiessed by all the true propositions which are about A and and dso- — it may be — about other things The determinate relatedness of the eternal object A to every other eternal object is how A is systematically and by the necessity of its natuie i elated to every other eternal ob- ject Such relatedness repiesents a possibility for realisa- tion. But a lelalionship is a fact which concerns all the impli- cated relata, and cannot be isolated as if involving only one of the relata Accordingly theie is a general fact of system- atic mutual relatedness which is inherent m the chaiacter of possibility The realm of eternal objects is properly described as a ‘realm,’ because each eternal object has its status in this general systematic complex of mutual relatedness

In respect to the mgression of A into an actual occasion n, the mutual relationships ot A to other eternal objects, as thus graded m realisation, requiie for their expression a ref- erence to the status of A and of the other eternal objects in the spatio-temporal relationship Also this status is not ex- pressible (for this purpose) without a reference to the status of a and of other actual occasions in the same spatio-temporal relationship Accoidingly the spatio-temporal relationship, in terms of which the actual couise of events is to be expressed IS nothing else than selective limitation within the general sys- tematic relationships among eternal objects By ‘limitation,’ as applied to the spatio-temporal continuum, I mean those mat- ter-of-fact determinations — such as the three dimensions of space, and the four dimensions ot the spatio-temporal con- tinuum — which are inherent m the actual course of events, but which piesent themselves as arbitiary in respect to a more abstract possibility The consideration of these general limita- tions, at the base of actual things, as distinct from the limita- tions peculiar to each actual occasion, will be more fully re- sumed in the chapter on ‘God ’

Fuither, the status of all possibility m reference to actual- ity requires a reference to this spatio-temporal continuum In any particular consideration of a possibility we may con-

146 Science and the Modern World

ceive this continuum to be transcended But in so far as there is any definite reference to actuality, the definite hov/ of transcendence of that spatio-temporal continuum is required. Thus primarily the spatio-temporal continuum is a locus of relational possibility, selected from the more general realm of systematic relationship Tins limited locus of relational possi- bility expresses one limitation of possibility inherent in the general system of the process of realisation Whatever possi- bility IS generally coherent with that system falls within this limitation Also whatever is abstractedly possible in relation to the general course of events — as distinct from the particular limitations introduced by particular occasions — ^pervades the spatio-temporal continuum m every alternative spatial situa- tion and at all alternative times

Fundamentally, the spatio-temporal continuum is the gen- eral system of relatedness of all possibilities, in so far as that system is limited by its relevance to the general fact of actuality Also it is inherent in the nature of possibility that It should include this relevance to actuality For possibility IS that in which there stands achievability, abstracted from achievement

It has already been emphasised that an actual occasion is to be conceived as a limitation, and that this process of limitation can be still further characterised as a gradation This characteristic of an actual occasion (a, say) requires further elucidation An indeterminateness stands in the es- sence of any eternal object {A, say) The actual occasion a synthesises in itself every eternal object, and, in so domg, It mcludes the complete determinate relatedness of A to every other eternal object, or set of eternal objects This synthesis is a limitation of realisation but not of content Each relationship preserves its inherent self-identity But grades of entry into this synthesis are inherent in each ac- tual occasion, such as a These grades can be expressed only as relevance of value This relevance of value varies — as comparing different occasions — in grade from the inclusion of the individual essence of A as an element in the aesthetic synthe.sis (in some grade of inclusion) to the lowest grade which is the exclusion of the individual essence of A as an element m the aesthetic synthesis In so far as it stands in this lowest grade, every determinate relationship of A is merely ingicdient m tlie occasion in respect to the determin- ate how this relationship is an unfulfilled alternative, not contributing any aesthetic value, except as forming an ele- ment in the systematic substratum of unfulfilled content In a higher grade, it may remain unfulfilled, but be aesthetically relevant

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Thus A, conceived merely in respect to its relationships to other eternal objects, is ‘A conceived as not-being’, where ‘not-being’ means ‘abstracted from the determinate fact of inclusions in, and exclusions from, actual events ’ Also ‘A as not-being in respect to a definite occasion means that A in all its determinate relationships is excluded from a Agam ‘A as being m respect to «’ means that A in some of its de- terminate relationships is included in ol But there can be no occasion which includes A in all its determinate relation- ships, for some of these relationships are contraries Thus, m regard to excluded relationships, A will be not-being m even when in regard to other relationships A will be being in a In this sense, every occasion is a synthesis of being and not-being Furthermore, though some eternal objects are synthesised m an occasion « merely qua not-being, each eter- nal object which is synthesised qua being is also synthesised qua not-being ‘Being’ here means ‘individually effective in the aesthetic synthesis ’ Also the ‘aesthetic synthesis’ is the ‘experient synthesis’ viewed as self-creative, under the limita- tions laid upon it by its inteinal relatedness to all other actual occasions We thus conclude — ^what has alieady been stated above — that the general fact of the synthetic prehension of all eternal objects into every occasion wears the double as- pect of the indeterminate relatedness of each eternal object to occasions generally, and of its determinate relatedness to each particular occasion This statement summarises the ac- count of how external relations are possible But the account depends upon disengaging the spatio-temporal continuum from Its mere implication in actual occasions — according to the usual explanation — and upon exhibiting it in its origin from the general nature of abstract possibility, as limited by the general character of the actual course of events

The difficulty which arises m respect to internal relations IS to explain how any paiticular truth is possible In so far as there are internal relations, everything must depend upon everything else But if this be the case, we cannot know about anything till we equally know everything else Apparently, therefore, we are under the necessity of saying everything at once This supposed necessity is palpably untrue According- ly it IS incumbent on us to explain how there can be mternal relations, seeing that we admit finite truths

Since actual occasions are selections from the realm of possibilities, the ultimate explanation of how actual occasions have the general character which they do have, must he in an analysis of the general character of the realm of possibil- ity.

The analytic character of the realm of eternal objects

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IS the primary metaphysical truth concerning it By this char- acter it is meant that the status of any eternal object A in this realm is capable of analysis into an indefinite number of subordinate relationships of limited scope For example if B and C are two other eternal objects, then there is some per- fectly definite relationship R(A, B, C) which involves A, B, C only, as to require the mention of no other definite eternal objects in the capacity of relata Of course, the relationship R{A, B, C) may involve subordinate relationships which are themselves eternal objects, and R(A, B, C) is also itself an eternal object Also there will be other relationships which in the same sense involve only A, B, C We have now to ex- amine how, having regard to the internal relatedness of in- ternal objects, this limited relationship R{A, B, C) is pos- sible.

The reason for the existence of finite relationships in the realm of eternal objects is that relationships of these objects among themselves are entirely unselective, and are systemati- cally complete We are discussing possibility, so that every relationship which is possible is thereby m the realm of possibility Every such relationship of each eternal object is founded upon the perfectly definite status of that object as a relatum in the general scheme of relationships This definite status IS what I have termed the ‘relational essence’ of the object. 'Hus relational essence is determinable by reference to that object alone, and does not require reference to any other objects, except those which are specifically involved in its individual essence when that essence is complex (as will be explained immediately) The meaning of the words ‘any’ and ‘some’ springs from this principle — that is to say, the meaning of the ‘variable’ in logic The whole principle is that a particular determination can be made of the how of some definite relationship of a definite eternal object /4 to a definite finite number n of other eternal objects, without any deter- mination of the other n objects, Xj, Xj, . Xn, except that they have, each of them, the requisite status to play their respective paits in that multiple relationship This prin- ciple depends on the fact that the relational essence of an eternal object is not unique to that object The mere relation- al essence of each eternal object determines the complete uni- form scheme of relational essences, since each object stands mternally in all its possible relationships Thus the realm of possibility provides a uniform scheme of relationships among finite sets of eternal objects, and all eternal objects stand in all such relationships, so far as the status of each permits.

Accordingly the relationships (as m possibility) do not m-

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volve the individual essence of the eternal objects, they in- volve any external objects as lelata, subject to the proviso that these relata have the requisite relational essence [It is this pioviso which, automatically and by the nature of the case, limits the ‘any’ of the phiase ‘any eternal objects’] This principle is the principle of the halation of Eternal Ob- jects m the realm of possibility The eternal objects are iso- lated, because their relationships as possibilities are express- ible without reference to their respective individual essences In contrast to the realm of possibility the inclusion of eternal objects within an actual occasion means that in respect to some of their possible relationships theie is a togetherness of their individual essences This realised togetherness is the achievement of an emergent value defined — or, shaped — by the definite eternal relatedness in respect to which the real togetherness is achieved. Thus the eternal relatedness is the form — the ciSos— , the emergent actual occasion is the su- petject of informed value, value, as abstracted fiom any par- ticular superject, is the abstract matter — the '■ahj— which is common to all actual occasions, and the synthetic activity which prehends valueless possibility into superjicient in- formed value as the substantial activity This substantial activity IS that which is omitted in any analysis of the static factors m the metaphysical situation The analysed elements of the situation are the attributes of the substantial activity The difficulty inherent in the concept of fimte internal re- lations among eternal objects is thus evaded by two meta- physical principles, (i) that the relationships of any eternal object A, considered as constitutive of A, merely involve other eternal objects as bare relata without reference to their individual essences, and (ii) that the divisibility of the general relationship of A into a multiplicity of finite relation- ships of A stands therefore in the essence of that eternal object The second principle obviously depends upon the first To understand A is to understand the how of a general scheme of relationship This scheme of relationship does not require the individual uniqueness of the other relata for its comprehension This scheme also discloses itself as being analysable into a multiplicity of limited relationships which have their own individuality and yet at the same time pre- supposes the total relationship within possibility In respect to actuality there is first the geneial limitation of relation- ships, which reduces this general unlimited scheme to the four-dimensional spatio-temporal scheme. This spatio-tem- poral scheme is, so to speak, the greatest common measure of file schemes of relationship (as limited by actuality) inherent

150 Science and the Modern World

in all the eternal objects By this it is meant that, how select relationships of an eternal object (A) are realised in any actual occasion, is always exphcable by expressing the status of A in respect to this spatio-temporal scheme, and by ex- pressing in this scheme the relationship of the actual occa- sion to other actual occasions A definite finite relationship involving the definite eternal objects of a limited set of such objects is itself an eternal object it is those eternal objects as in that relationship I will call such an eteinal object ‘complex ’ The eternal objects which are the relata m a com- plex eternal object will be called the ‘components’ of that eternal object Also if any of these relata are themselves com- plex, their components will be called ‘derivative components’ of the original complex object Also the components of de- rivative components will also be called derivative components of the original object Thus the complexity of an eternal ob- ject means its analysabrlity into a relationship of component eternal objects Also the analysis of the general scheme of re- latedness of eternal objects means its exlnbition as a multi- phcity of complex eternal objects An eternal object, such as a definite shade of green, which cannot be analysed into a re- lationship of components, will be called ‘simple ’

We can now explain how the analytical character of the realm of eternal objects allows of an analysis of that realm into grades

In the lowest grade of eternal objects are to be placed those objects whose individual essences are simple TTiis is the grade of zero complexity Next consider any set of such objects, finite or infinite as to the number of its members. For example, consider the set of three eternal objects A, B, C, of which none is complex Let us write R(A, B, C) for some definite possible relatedness of A, B, C To take a simple ex- ample, A, B, C may be three definite colours with the spatio- temporal relatedness to each other of three faces of a regular tetr^edron, anywhere at any time Then R(A, B, C) is an- other eternal object of the lowest complex grade Analogous- ly there are eternal objects of successively bgher grades In respect to any complex eternal object, SfDi, D^, D,J, the eternal objects Dj, D,„ whose individual essences are constitutive of the individual essence of 5fDi,

DJ, are called the components of S(Dj, DJ It is obvious that the grade of complexity to be ascribed to S(Dj , . . DJ, is to be taken as one above the highest grade of com- plexity to be found among its components

There is thus an analysis of the realm of possibility into simple eternal objects, and into vaiious grades of complex

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eternal objects. A complex eternal object is an abstract situa- tion There is a double sense of ‘abstraction,’ m regard to the abstraction of definite eternal objects, i e , non-mathemat- ical abstraction There is abstraction from actuality, and ab- straction from possibility For example, A and R(A, B, C) are both abstractions from the realm of possibihty Note that A must mean A in all its possible relationships, and among them R(A, B, C), Also R(A, B, C) means R(A, B, C) m all Its relationships But this meamng of R(A, B, C) excludes other relationships mto which A can enter Hence A as in R{A, B, C) IS more abstract than A simphciter Thus as we pass from the giade of simple eternal objects to higher and higher grades of complexity, we are indulging in higher grades of abstraction from the realm of possibility

We can now conceive the successive stages of a definite progress towards some assigned mode of abstraction from the realm of possibility, involving a progress (m thought) through successive grades of increasing complexity I will call any such route of progress ‘an abstractive hierarchy ’ Any ab- stractive hierarchy, finite or infinite, is based upon some definite group of simple eternal objects This group will be called the ‘base’ of the hierarchy Thus the base of an ab- stractive hierarchy is a set of objects of zero complexity The formal definition of an abstractive hierarchy is as follows- An ‘abstractive hierarchy based upon g,' where g is a group of simple eternal objects, is a set of eternal objects which satisfy the following conditions,

(i) the members of g belong to it, and are the only simple eternal objects m the hierarchy,

(u) the components of any complex eternal object in the hierarchy are also members of the hierarchy, and

(ill) any set of eternal objects belonging to the hierarchy, whether all of the same grade or whether differing among themselves as to grade, are jointly among the components or derivative components of at least one eternal object which also belongs to the hieraichy

It IS to be noticed that the components of an eternal ob- ject are necessarily of a lower grade of complexity than itself Accordingly any member of such a hierarchy, which is of the first grade of complexity, can have as components only members of the gioup g, and any member of the second grade can have as components only members of the first grade, and members of g, and so on for the higher grades.

The third condition to be satisfied by an abstractive hier- archy will be called the condition of connexity Thus an

152 Science and the Modern World

abstractive hierarchy springs from its base; it includes every successive grade from its base either indefinitely onwards, or to Its maximum grade, and it is ‘connected’ by the reap- pearance (in a higher grade) of any set of its members be- longing to lower grades, m the function of a set of com- ponents or derivative components of at least one member of the, hierarchy

An abstractive hierarchy is called ‘fimte’ if it stops at a fimte grade of complexity It is called ‘infimte’ if it includes members belonging respectively to all degrees of complexity.

It IS to be noted that the base of an abstractive hierarchy may contain any number of members, fimte or infinite. Further, the infinity of the number of the members of the base has nothing to do with the question as to whether the hierarchy be finite or infinite

A finite abstractive hierarchy will, by definition, possess a grade of maximum complexity It is characteristic of this grade that a member of it is a component ot no other eternal object belonging to any grade of the hierarchy Also it is evident that this grade of maximum complexity must possess only one member, for otherwise the condition of connexity would not be satisfied Conversely any complex eternal ob- ject defines a finite abstractive hierarchy to be discovered by a process of analysis This complex eternal object from which we start will be called the ‘vertex’ of the abstractive hier- archy It IS the sole member of the grade of maximum com- plexity In the fiist stage of the analysis we obtain the components of the vertex These components may be of varying complexity, but there must be among them at least one member whose complexity is of a grade one lower than that of the vertex A grade which is one lower than that of a given eternal object will be called the ‘proximate grade’ for that object We take then those components of the vertex which belong to its proximate grade, and as the second stage we analyse them into their components Among these com- ponents there must be some belonging to the proximate grade for the objects thus analysed Add to them the com- ponents of the vertex which also belong to this grade of ‘second proximation’ from the vertex, and, at the third stage analyse as before We thus find objects belonging to the grade of third proximation from the vertex, and we add to them the components belonging to this grade, which have been left over from the preceding stages of analysis We proceed m this way through successive stages, till we reach the grade of simple objects. This grade forms the base of the hierarchy

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It is to be noted that ui dealing with hierarchies we are entirely within the realm of possibility Accordingly the eternal objects are devoid of real togetherness they remain within their ‘isolation ’

The logical instrument which Aristotle used for the anal* ysis of actual fact into more abstract elements was that of classification into species and genera This instrument has its overwhelmingly important application for science in its preparatory stages But its use in metaphysical description distorts the true vision ot the metaphysical situation The use of the term ‘universal’ is intimately connected with this Aris- totelian analysis the term has been broadened of late, but still It suggests that classificatory analysis. For this reason 1 have avoided it

In any actual occasion «, there will be a group g of simple eternal objects which are ingredient in that group m the most concrete mode This complete mgredience m an occasion, so as to yield the most complete fusion of individual essence with other eternal objects in the formation of the individual emergent occasion, is evidently of its own kmd and cannot be defined m terms of anything else. But it has a pecuhar characteristic which necessarily attaches to it This char- acteristic IS that there is an infinite abstractive hierarchy based upon g which is such that all its members are equally involved m this complete inclusion in a

The existence of such an mfimte abstractive hierarchy is what is meant by the statement that it is impossible to com- plete the description of an actual occasion by means of concepts I will call this infinite abstractive hierarchy which IS associated with ‘the associated hierarchy of a ’ it is also what IS meant by the notion of the co’nnectedness of an actual occasion This connectedness of an occasion is necessary for its synthetic unity and for its intelligibility There is a con- nected hierarchy of concepts applicable to the occasion, m- cluding concepts of all degrees of complexity Also m the ac- tual occasion, the individual essences of the eternal objects in- volved in these complex concepts achieve an aesthetic synthe- sis, productive of the occasion as an experience for its own sake This associated hierarchy is the shaper, or pattern, or form, of the occasion in so far as the occasion is constituted of what enters mto its full realisation

Some confusion of thought has been caused by the fact that abstraction from possibility runs m the opposite direction to an abstraction from actuality, so far as degree of ab- stractness IS concerned. For evidently m descnbmg an actual

154 Science and the Modern World

occasion a, we are nearer to the total concrete fact when we describe “ by predicating of it some member of its associated hierarchy, which is of a high grade of complexity We have then said more about « Thus, with a high grade of com- plexity we gain m approach to the full concreteness of a, and With a low grade we lose in this approach Accordingly the simple eternal objects represent the extreme abstraction from an actual occasion, whereas simple eternal objects rep- resent the mmimum of abstraction from the realm of pos- sibility It will, 1 tliink, be found that, when a high degree of abstraction is spoken of, abstraction from the realm of pos- sibility IS what is usually meant — other words, an elabo- rate logical construction

So far I have merely been considering an actual occasion on the side of its full concreteness It is this side of the oc- casion in virtue of which it is an event in nature But a natural event, m this sense of the term, is only an abstraction from a complete actual occasion A complete occasion includes that which m cognitive experience takes the form of memory, anticipation, imagination, and thought. These elements in an experient occasion are also modes of inclusion of complex eternal objects in the synthetic prehen- sion, as elements in the emergent value They differ from the concreteness of full inclusion In a sense this difference is inexplicable, for each mode of inclusion is of its own kind, not to be explained in terms of anything else But theie is a common difference which discriminates these modes of in- clusion from the full concrete ingression which has been discussed This diffeientia is abruptness. By ‘abruptness’ I mean that what is remembered, or anticipated, or imagined, or thought, IS exhausted by a finite complex concept In each Case there is one finite eternal object prehended within the occasion as the vertex of a finite hierarchy This breaking o2 from an actual illimitability is what in any occasion marks off that which is termed mental from that which belongs to the physical event to which the mental functioning is referred.

In general there seems to be some loss of vividness m the apprehension ot the eternal objects concerned for example, Hume speaks of ‘faint copies ’ But this faintness seems to be a very unsafe ground for differentiation Often things realised m thought are more vivid than the same things in inattentive physical experience But the things apprehended as mental are always subject to the condition that we come to a stop when we attempt to exploie ever higher grades of complexity in their realised relationships We always find that we have

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thought of just this — whatever it may be — and of no more. There is a limitation which breaks off the finite concept from the higher grades of illimitable complexity

Thus an actual occasion is a prehension of one infinite hierarchy (its associated hierarchy) together with various finite hierarchies The synthesis into the occasion of the infi- nite hierarchy is according to its specific mode of realisation, and that of the finite hierarchies is according to various other specific modes of realisation There is one metaphysical prin- ciple which IS essential for the rational coherence of this account of the general character of an experient occasion I call this principle, ‘The Translucency of Realisation’ By this I mean that any eternal object is just itself in v/hatever mode of realisation it is involved There can be no distortion of the individual essence without thereby producing a dif- ferent eternal object In the essence of each eternal object there stands an indeterminateness which expresses its indif- ferent patience for any mode of mgression into any actual occasion Thus m cognitive experience, there can be the cogni- tion of the same eternal object as m the same occasion having mgression with implication m more than one grade of real- isation Thus the translucency of realisation, and the possible multiplicity of modes of mgression into the same occasion, together form the foundation for the correspondence theory of truth

In this account of an actual occasion in terms of its con- nection, with the realm of eternal objects, we have gone back to the tram of thought in our second chapter, where the nature of mathematics was discussed The idea, ascribed to Pythagoras, has been amplified, and put fonvard as the first chapter m metaphysics The next chapter is concerned with the puzzling fact that there is an actual course of events which IS in Itself a lunited fact, m that metaphysically speak- ing It might have been otherwise But other metaphysical mvestigations are omitted, for example, epistemology, and the classification of some elements m the unfathomable wealth of the field of possibility This last topic brmgs meta- physics in sight of the special topics of the various sciences.

11 / God

Aristotle found it necessary to complete his metaphysics by the introduction of a Prime Mover — God This, for two reasons, is an important fact in the history of metaphysics In the first place if we are to accord to anyone the position of the greatest metaphysician, having regard to genius of msight, to general equipment in knowledge, and to the stim- ulus of his metaphysical ancestry, we must choose Aris- totle. Secondly, in his consideration of this metaphysical question he was entirely dispassionate, and he is the last European metaphysician of first-rate importance for whom this claim can be made After Aristotle, ethical and religious interests began to influence metaphysical conclusions The Jews dispersed, first willingly and then forcibly, and the Judaio-Alexandnan school arose Then Christianity, closely followed by Mahometanism, intervened The Greek gods who surrounded Aristotle were subordinate metaphysical en- tities, well within nature Accordmgly on the subject of his Prime Mover, he would have no motive, except to follow his metaphysical tram of thought whithersoever it led him It did not lead him very far towards the production of a God available for religious purposes. It may be doubted whether any properly general metaphysics can ever, without the illicit introduction of other considerations, get much further than Aristotle But his conclusion does represent a first step with- out which no evidence on a narrower experiential basis can

be of much avail m shaping the conception. . For nothing . within a nn-Ut oi t e<l typf of ftypp-nengR — "T ‘ ” to shape out ideas ot any entitv.at .

tEere be such an entity

'''TIIe~pffas"e,'~T’nme Mover, warns us that Anstotle’s thought was enmeshed in the details of an erroneous physics and an erioneous cosmology In Aristotle’s physics special

causes were required to sustain the motions of mateiial

things These could easily be fitted into his system, provided that the general cosmic motions could be sustained For then

m relation to the general working system, each thing could be provided with its true end Hence the necessity for a Prime Mover who sustains the motions of the spheres on which depend the adjustment of things. To-day we repudiate the

156

God

157

Aristotelian physics and the Aristotelian cosmology, so that the exact form of the above argument mamfestly fails But if our general metaphysics is in any way similar to that out- lined in the previous chapter, an analogous metaphysical problem arises which can be solved only m an analogous fashion In the place of Aristotle’s G od as Prim e Mover, we rpniiir p.Tiocl as lUe Principle of Goncrehon This oos^^ besctot Mtiated only by the di^ussioHoFthe general impk- cati bn ot the course ^f ^Tuar~pccaSQDsi—t&ar*E^o_say^^f The prncess -oLiea hsation

We conceive actuality as in essential relation to an un- fathomable possibility. Eternal objects inform actual occa- sions with hierarchic patterns, mcluded and excluded in every variety of discrimination Another view of the same truth is that every actual occasion is a limitation imposed on possibility, and that by virtue of this limitation the particular value of that shaped togetherness of thmgs emerges In this way we express how a single occasion is to be viewed m terms of possibility, and how possibility is to be viewed m terms of a single actual occasion But there are no smgle occasions, m the sense of isolated occasions Actuality is through and through togetherness — togetherness of other- wise isolated eternal objects, and togetherness of all actual occasions It-js -mv task in this chapter to descrih p-tEe-iinitv o f actual occasion s The previous_cli aiate&^eBtere d. its.,in tAEest in~IBe~abstract7~ th e present chanter deals with, the-concxeta. I e ■ that wh ich baiutinwi L.tQgethejr

Consider an occasion «, — we have to enumerate how other actual occasions are m «, in the sense that their relationships with “ are constitutive of theessence of « What “ is m itself is that It IS a unit of realised experience, accordingly we ask how other occasions are m the experience which is “ Also for the present I am excludmg cognitive experience The com- plete answer to this question is, th at the relationships aufinn g actual nccasinn.s are a s unfathom able in their variety of typ e -a s-arethose among eicmgrTiBIHcIs in the realm of abstra c- Uaa_ But there are rundanientai types of such relationships in terms of which the whole complex variety can find its description.

A prehmmary for the understandmg of these types of entry (of one occasion into the essence of another) is to note that they are mvolved in the modes of realisation of abstractive hierarchies, discussed in the previous chapter The spatio-temporal relationships, mvolved m those hierarchies as realised in «, have all a definition m terms of « and of the occasions entrant in a Thus the entrant occasions lend their aspects to the hierarchies, and thereby convert spatio-

158 Science and the Modern World

temporal modalities into categorical determinations; and the hierarchies lend their forms to the occasions and thereby limit the entrant occasions to being entrant only under those forms Thus m the same way (as seen in the previous chapter) that every occasion is a synthesis of all eternal objects under the limitation of gradations of actuality, so every occasion IS a synthesis of all occasions under the limitation of gra- dations of types of entry. Each occasion synthesises the totality of content under its own limitations of mode

In respect to these types of mternal relationship between a and other occasions, these other occasions (as constitutive of « can be classified in many alternative ways. These a re all flif f prpnt Epfinitinns - o f p ast— pre sent. aniTTn. turfi-Jt has been usual m philosophy to assume that these various definitions must necessarily be equivalent The present stWe of opinion in physical science conclusively shows that this assumption is without metaphysical justification, even al- though any such discrimination may be found to be unnec- essary for physical science This question has already been dealt with in the chapter on Relativity But the physical theory of relativity touches only the frmge of the various theories which are metaphysically tenable I t is importa nt for^my argument^ toynsist^^upon the unbonded,, free dom

^^v^ ^acfual *^occ^on%*Siibits itself as a process ItTTa becomingness In so disclosing itself, it places itself as one among a multiplicity of other occasions, without which it could not be itself It also defines itself as a particular individual achievement, focussmg m its hrmted way an unbounded realm of eternal objects.

A ny one occasion a issues from-other .oc ca sions which col- Rctivet yLliorm It displays for itself other oc casions

which collech ”°'^^- its present n is in rp.specf-frT'itc associated hierarchy, as displayed in this immediate present, that an occasion finds its own originality It is that display which is Its own contribution to the output of actuality It may be conditioned, and even completely determined by the past from which it issues But its display m the present under those conditions is what directly emerges fiom its pre- hensive activity The.. n‘V'asiP” “ also holds within itself an lIldet£rmln;J|^ l;^^^ m_thp. fnim nt . 4*-tiifnrft , which has narti Al d etermination by reason of its inclusion in and also has -deter minate spatio-temporal relatedne ss to a and to actual oc^

casion.s^iLS el’past Frofn a

JCha-iuture is a svnthp..sis -in-'a~rir~sfsrn'n| ~ohj^t.s as not- bemg_flDd as requirin g the passage from « to othiei: mdivid P

God

159

ualisati’ons (with determinate spatio-temporal relations to a) m which ndt-being becomes being There is also in « what, in the previous chapter, I have termed the ‘abrupt’ realisation of finite eternal objects This abrupt reahsation requires either a reference of the basic objects of the fimte hierarchy to determinate occasions other than a (as their situations, in past, present, future); or re- quires a reahsation of these eternal objects in determinate relationships, but under the aspect of exemption from mclu- sion in the spatio-temporal scheme of relatedness between actual occasions This abrupt synthesis of eternal objects m each occasion is the inclusion in actuality of the analytical character of the realm of eternahty This inclusion has those limited gradations of actuality which charactense every oc- casion by reason of its essential limitation It is this realised extension of eternal relatedness beyond the mutual related- ness of the actual occasions, which piehends into each oc- casion the full sweep of eternal relatedness I term this abrupt realisation the ‘graded envisagement’ which each oc- casion prebends into its synthesis This graded envisage ment is how the actual includes what (in one sense) is not- bemg as a positive factor m its own achievement It is the source of error, of truth, of art, of ethics, and of rehgion. By It, fact IS confronted with alternatives Th is gen eral concept, of an eve nt as .a proce ss whose out- ca me-is a unit ot ekpenencgrpomts to Ae analysis oY~a n event into'liV" substantial acFvity, (ii) conditioned polentid - itifis which are there tor svhth'esis. anJTiri~rthe~Schievi5out- cnmp. nf jhp sy'ntHeM f'THe^ unit^oFaIl'''actuar occasionsTor- bids the analysis “ df^ubstantial activities mto independent entities Each individual activity is nothing but the mode in which the general activity is mdividualised by the unposed conditions The envisagement which enters into the synthesis IS also a character which conditions the synthesising ac- tivity The general activity is not an entity m the sense m which occasions or eternal objects are entities It is a general metaphysical character which underlies all occasions, in a particular mode for each occasion There is nothmg with which to compare it it is Spinoza’s one infimte substance.

’ " tioa. intCEA. k • bjects-which ■ ! eternal pos-

, ■ multiplicity are the attributes of the one substance. In fact each general element of the metaphysical situation is an attribute of the substantial activity.

s ■

160 Science and the Modern World

YftI- flnnftiBr filament m the mpt aphvsicaL situati on js.,As- cl2Sfid_JlJLJhfi-coaHderatiott^at--the--generaL..jittuEut^ of modality is . limited This element must rank as an attribute of t£e substantial activity In its nature each mode is limited, so as not to he other modes But, beyond these limitations of particulars, the general modal individualisation is limited m two ways; In the first place it is an actual course of events, which might be otherwise so far as concerns eternal possi- bility, but w that course This limitation takes three forms, (i) the special logical relations which all events must conform to, (ii) the selection of relationships to which the events do conform, and (ui) the particularity which infects the course even withm those general relationships of logic and causa- tion. Thus this first 1 imitat|r>n_iB-.a— limitation of antpoprlp.r)! selecfidn . So~tar as the'general metaphysical situationTr^n- cerneHT there might have been an indiscriminate modal pluralism apart fiom logical or othei limitation. But there could not then have been these modes, for each mode repre- sents a synthesis of actualities which are limited to con- form to a standard. We here come to the second way of limit a- tion Restriction is the price of va lue I'heie cannot be value without antecedent standards of value, to discriminate the ac- ceptance or rejection of what is before the envisaging mode of activity Thus there is an antecedent limitation among values, introducing contraries, grades, and oppositions

According to this argument the fact that there is a process of actual occasions, and the fact that the occasions are the emergence of values which require such limitation, both re- qiiire that the course of events should have developed~arrnd -* an antece^nt limitation composed of conditions, particular - isation. and standards of value, .

Thus as a further element in the metaphysical_situation, tore is required a~pnnciple~~ of limif^on "Some particular Fow IS necessary, and some particularisation in the what of matter of fact is necessary The only alternative to this ad- mission, IS to deny the reality of actual occasions Their ap- parent irrational limitation must be taken as a proof of illusion and we must look for reality behind the scene If we reject this alternative behind the scene, we must provider

I : : ■ ’

^ . ; I . ■ Allan

■ . . ■■ ■ . , jjjjt,

Uoa is the iiltim.ite limitation, and Hi s existence is the Jdti- mate irrationality For no reason can Te give tutQr,-iuat,lhat.. l!mjtatiQn.jdii£li.i; «is.i T- ifi t.' i ^ <T,\' 's

not concrete, but I !>■ I il>-- .1 loi .'in. . u; -u ii luj. \o

Religion and Science 161

reason can be given for the nature of God, because that natuie is the ground of rationality

In this argument the point to notice is, that what is meta- physically indeterminate has nevertheless to be categorically determinate We have come to the limit of rationality For there is a categorical limitation which does not spring from any metaphysical reason There is a metaphysical need for a principle of determination, but there can be no metaphysical reason for what is determined If there weie such a reason, there would be no need for any further principle for meta- physics would already have provided the determination The general principle of empiricism depends upon the doctiine that there is a principle of concretion which is not discover- able by abstract reason What further can be known about God must be sought in the region of particular experiences, and therefoie rests on an empirical basis In respect to the interpretation of these experiences, mankind have differed profoundly He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, Fast Cause, Supreme Being, Chance Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used It

Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to es- tablish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation With its ultimate activity If this conception be ad- hered to, there can be no altei native except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good He is then the supreme author of the play, and to Him must therefore be asenbed its shortcomings as well as its success If He be conceived as the supreme ground for limitation, it stands in His very nature to divide the Good from the Evil, and to establish Reason 'within her dominions supreme ’

12 ! Keligion and Science

The DiFFicuiTY in approaching the question of the relations between Religion and Science is, that its elucidation requires that we have m our minds some clear idea of what we mean by either of the teims, ‘religion’ and ‘science ’ Also I wish to speak in the most general way possible, and to keep m the

162 Science and the Modern World

background any comparison of particular creeds, scientific or religious. We have got to understand the type of connection which exists between the two spheres, and then to draw some definite conclusions respecting the existing situation which at present confronts the world The conflict between religion and science is what naturally occurs to our minds when we think of this subject It seems as though, during the last half-century, the results of science and the beliefs of religion had come into a position of frank disagreement, from which there can be no escape, except by abandoning either the clear teaching of science, or the clear teaching of religion This conclusion has been urged by con- troversialists on either side Not by all controversialists, of course, but by those trenchant intellects which every contro- versy calls out into the open

The distress of sensitive minds, and the zeal for truth, and the sense of the importance of the issues, must com- mand our smcerest sympathy When we consider what re- ligion IS for mankind, and what science is, it is no exaggera- tion to say that the future course of history depends upon

the decision of this generation as to the relations between

them We have here the two strongest general forces (apart from the mere impulse of the various senses) which influence men, and they seem to be set one against the other — the force of our religious intuitions, and the force of our im- pulse to accurate observation and logical deduction A gieat English statesman once advised his countrymen to use large-scale maps, as a preservative against alarms, panics, and general misunderstandmg of the true relations between Ti (li ‘■_j,'i ' V. ■ .'tI'i g s th th, C.L '■h.'.tet'.i-'" '

.1- L '.1' ii I' "-'I u p ''III

III' ,‘1. .I'l j, J'. ''Cl l>) -C O l'■.•.^ - I'li'II '"II

'ill'. Ill >1' !■ i'>.) ',''■■1 II l''" ri' 11 C.'.'M' I (io

i II ..iii'i"' ■t.J.-'U i'wU-!.,. ‘ l- I the li'Tt

VI c—i. 'I .1 ."i bii ' “ii I'n '<■'

■science, and in the second place, ^b oth^jehginn and science khave always b een in.-a .state of continual develo mnent In the early days of Chnstianity, there was T general belief among Christians that the world was coming to an end m the lifetune of people then living We can make only indirect inferences as to how far this belief was authoritatively pro- claimed, but It IS certain that it was widely held, and that it formed an impressive part of the popular religious doctrine The belief proved itself to be mistaken, and Christian doc- trine adjusted itself to the change Again in the early Church mdividual theologians very confidently deduced from the

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Bible opinions concerning the nature of the physical univeise In the year A D 535, a monk named Cosmas^ wrote a book which he entitled, Christian Topography He was a travelled man who had visited India and Ethiopia, and finally he lived in a monastery at Alexandria, which was then a great centre of culture In this book, basing himself upon the direct mean- ing of Biblical texts as construed by him in a literal fashion, he denied the existence of the antipodes, and asserted that the world is a flat parallelogram whose length is double its breadth

In the seventeenth century the doctrine of the motion of the earth was condemned by a Catholic tribunal A hundred years ago the extension of time demanded by geological science distressed religious people, Protestant and Catholic. And to-day the doctrine of evolution is an equal stumbling- block These are only a few instances illustrating a general fact

Rut all our ideas will be m a wrong perspective if we think

th at this. ___ _ _ — T" ■ ’'T‘ ' .<

h(Uw£Sfl_. r ' *

rehgmn, \

The true facts of the case are very much more compl ex, sy^Tyitn-i sed in these sinigle terms

Theology itself exhibits exactiy°"tfie same~~cKMacter o f gradual flev elopment. arising^om an ^pe^~oT conflict be- pyf.f.n iig-rLuiri prp per idcas This fact IS a commonplace to theologians, but is often obscured in the stress of controversy. I do not wish to overstate my case, so I will confine myself to Roman Catholic writers In the seventeenth century a learned Jesuit, Father Petavius, showed that the theologians of the first three centuries of Christianity made use of phrases and statements which since the fifth century would be condemned as heretical Also Cardinal Newman devoted a treatise to the discussion of the development of doctrine. He wrote it before he became a great Roman Catholic ecclesiastic, but throughout his life, it was never retracted and continually reissued

. Science is even mo re chapgeahle tban-the ologv. No man of science confH siih scribe Without qualification to Oaldea’-s -iia- lie{s. _or to Newmn’s beliefs, or to all his own scientific be-

liefs of ten years ag o

' ‘ ’ litirms^- distinc tinns, ...an d

■_ ' ■ ' . , So that now, even when

^ s was made a thousand, or fifteen hundred years ago, it is made subject to limitations

1 Cf Lecky’s The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, Ch III.

164 Science and the Modern World

or expansions of meaning, which were not contemplated at the earlier epoch We are told by logicians that a proposition must be either true or false, and that theie is no middle term. But in practice, we may know that a proposition expresses an important truth, but that it is subject to limitations and quali- fications which at present remain undiscovered It is a gener al fe ature of our knowledge, that we are _.iasisl^tiy. aw are of I rriportant truth, and I'eL-tb.Rt. the_gBly-jQniUlla.tions of these whieh jiiia.iire-able-tQ jnakfi pi£SUppDSfl.j_gsagrdLstand- pn int of ponr.p.ptinns which may have to be mod ified I wll give you two illustrations, both from science Galileo said that the earth moves and that the sun is fixed, the Inquisition said that the earth is fixed and the sun moves, and Newton- ian astronomers, adopting an absolute theory of space, said that both the sun and the earth move But now we say tliat any one of these three statements is equally true, provided that you have fixed your sense of ‘rest’ and ‘motion’ in the way required by the statement adopted At the date of Gali- leo’s controversy with the Inquisition, Galileo’s way of stat- ing the facts was, beyond question, the fruitful procedure for the sake of scientific research But in itself it was not more true than the formulation of the Inquisition But at that time the modem concepts of relative motion were in nobody’s mind, so that the statements were made in ignorance of the qualifications requiied for their more perfect truth Yet this question of the motions of the earth and the sun expresses a real tact in the universe, and all sides had got hold of impor- tant truths concerning it But with the knowledge of those times, the truths appeared to be mconsistent

Again I will give you another example taken from the state of modern physical science Since the time of Newton and Huyghens in the seventeenth century there have been two theones as to the physical nature of light Newton’s theory was that a beam of light consists of a stream of very minute pai tides, or corpuscles, and that we have the sensation of light when these corpuscles strike the retinas of our eyes Huyghens’ theory was that hght consists of very mmute waves of trembling in an all-pervading ether, and that these waves are travelling along a beam of light The two theories are contradictory In the eighteenth century Newton’s theory was believed, in the nineteenth century Huyghens’ tlieory was believed To-day there is one large gioup of phenomena which can be explained only on the wave theory, and an- other large group which can be explained only on the cor- puscular theory Scientists have to leave it at that, and wait for the future, in the hope of attainmg some wider vision which reconciles both.

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We should apply these same principles to the questions in which there is a variance between science and religion We would believe nothing in either sphere of thought which does not appear to us to be certified by solid reasons based upon the critical research either of ourselves or of competent authoiities But gi anting that we have honestly taken this precaution, a clash between the two on points of detail wher e they^v&ilap-shoinfSSDeaOrha stilv to ^ban jl ao_doctrines for w hi ch "'p have ’ ’ ’ nay be that we are

more interested in than in the other

But, if we have any sense of perspective and of the history of thought, we shall wait and retrain from mutual anathemas We should wait but we should not wait passively, or in despair The clash is a sign that there aie widei truths and

In rher pf ore, the conflict between scien ce_apd

^ slight nt atter which has been unduly empTiasised A mere logical conti ^ctioiTTahhof 'in' TReir point to~lnore than the necessity of some readjustments, possibly of a very minor character on both sides Remember the widely differ- ent aspects of events which are dealt with in science and m religion respectively/ Sci ence is concerned with the gener al coni .. 1 yj ^ \ I 1 > -v . ‘c '' - _ 1 pheno m-

eria,-t m • % .‘c> ' l u"' .■_eanteni,-

platio-' cJ 1 1 .' I .. I • ’ •no,’/)’ ' ij 1 ■ ,ide there

IS the law ot gravitation, and on theJmtier the contemplation of the beauty of holiness j What one side sees, the other misses, and vice versa

Consider, for example, the lives of John Wesley and of Saint Francis of Assist For physical science you have in these lives merely ordinary examples of the operation of the principles of physiological chemistry, and of the dynamics of nervous reactions for religion you have lives of the most profound significance m the history of the world Can you be surprised that, in the absence of a perfect and complete phrasing of the principles of science and of the principles of religion which apply to these specific cases, the accounts of these lives fiom these divergent standpoints should involve discrepancies? It would be a miracle if it were not so

It wo uld however, be missing the point to think diat we

.cnce_^ iid rehmo n In an intellectual age there can be no ac- ti ye interest which, p urs as me all hoprT!frar~yiSTniT-<#-4he harmony ot trut h To acquiesce in discrepancy is destructive

oF cahdouf,^ and of moral cleanlmess It belongs to the self-

respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its

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final unravelment If you check that impulse, you will get no religion and no science from an awakened thoughtful- ness. The important question is, In what spirit are we going to face the issue‘s There we come to something absolutely vital

I^ll^eTplain my meaning by some illustrations fiom science^ The weight of an atom of mtrogen was well known. Also it was an established scientific doctrine that the average weight of such atoms m any considerable mass will be always the same. Two experimenters, the late Lord Rayleigh and the late Sir William Ramsay, found that if they obtained nitrogen by two difierent methods, each equally effective for that pur- pose, they always observed a persistent slight difference be- tween the average weights of the atoms m the two cases. Now I ask you, would it have been rational of these men to have despaired because of this conflict between chemical theory and scientific observation‘> Suppose that tor some rea- son the chemical doctrine had been highly prized throughout some distnct as the foundation of its social order — would it have been wise, would it have been candid, would it have been moral, to forbid the disclosure of the fact that the ex- periments produced discordant results? Or, on the other hand, should Sir William Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh have proclaimed that chemical theory was now a detected delu- sion? We see at once that either of these ways would have been a method of facing the issue in an entirely wrong spirit What Rayleigh and Ramsay did was this They at once per- ceived that they had hit upon a line of investigation which would disclose some subtlety of chemical theory that had hitherto eluded observation The discrepancy was not a dis- aster' it Was an opportunity to increase the sweep of chem- ical knowledge You all know the end of the story finally argon was discovered, a new chemical element which had lurked undetected, mixed with the nitrogen But the story has a sequel which torms my second illustration This discovery drew attention to the miportance of observing accurately minute differences in chemical substances as obtained by dif- ferent methods Further researches of the most careful accu- racy were undertaken Finally another physicist, P W Aston, working in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge in Eng- land, discovered that even the same element might assume two or more distinct forms, termed iwtopes, and that the law of the constancy of average atomic weight holds for each of these forms, but as between the different isotopes differs slightly The research has effected a great stride m

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the powei of chemical theory, far transcending m importance the discovery of argon from which it originated The moral of these stories lies on the surface, and I will leave to you their application to the case of religion and science.

■Tn formal logic, a coiLtmdictiQja_jsJlh6-ii£n_al p a defeat , but inJiia.ximJutian_o£-ieaLknowledgejt marks the first st^ in prngrEs&-tQa!atd s a victory, . This is one_gteaOS^ !^r the ntmn^ Linlpration of yg^t y_of opm ion,_X) nce and forever , this Hntv of tnleration has been~Tumm e d UP in the wolF as. ‘f'° t h'^t^'-&r-r" »' the harvest ’ The failure of Christians to act up to this precept, of the highest authority, IS one of the curiosities of rehgious history But we have not yet exhausted the discussion of the moral temper required for the pursuit of tnith There are short cuts leading merely to an illusory success It is easy enough to find a theory , logically harmonious and w ith important applm^ ons m the~ r egion of tact, provided "that you are content to dMe^ g a'rfi halP vfiiir evidence Every age produces people with' clear logical intellects, and with the most praiseworthy grasp ‘ of the importance of some sphere of human experience, who have elaborated, or inherited a scheme of thought which ex=^ actly fits those experiences which claim their interest Such people are apt resolutely to ignore, or to explain away, all evidence which confuses their scheme with contradictory instances .What the y canno^ fit i n is for them nonsens e An unflinching determination to'^Ee the whole evISence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluc- tuating extremes of fashionable opinion This advice seems so easy, and is m fact so difficult to follow

One reason for this difficulty is that we cannot think first and act afterwards From the moment of birth we are im- mersed m action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought We have, therefore, in various spheres of expeii- ence to adopt those ideas which seem to work within those spheres It is absolutely necessary to trust to ideas which are generally adequate, even though we know that there are subtleties and distinctions beyond our ken Also apart from the necessities of action, we cannot even keep before our minds the whole evidence except under the guise of doctrines which are incompletely harmonised We cannot think in terms of an indefinite multiplicity of detail, our evidence can acquire its proper importance only if it comes before us marshalled by general ideas These ideas we inhent — they form the tradition of our civilisation Such traditional ideas are never static They are either fading into meaningless formulae, or are gaming power by the new lights thrown by

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a more delicate apprehension They are transformed by the urge of critical reason, by the vivid evidence of emotional experience, and by the cold certainties of scientific percep- tion One fact is certain, you cannot keep them still No gen- eration can merely reproduce its ancestors You may pre- serve the life in a flux of form, or preserve the form amid an ebb of life, but you cannot permanently enclose the same life in the same mould

The present state of religion among the European races illustrates the statements which I have been making The phenomena are mixed There have been reactions and re- vivals But on the whole, during many generations there ha s been a gradual decay of religious innuence in Euriopeanm^ - isation. Each revival touches a lower peak than its predeces- and each period of slackness a lower depth The average curve marks a steady fall in religious tone In some countries the mteiest in religion is higher than in others But m those countries where the interest is relatively high, it still falls as the generations pass Religion is tending to deUPrip.rflm.-mtQ-a decent formula w h pff^W'*” pmEg-Uich .3.

A great histoiical movement on this scale results from the convergence of many causes I wish to suggest two of them which he within the scope of this chapter for consideration.

been one rvt imprer edented intellectual progress In this way a senes of novel situations have been produced for thought Each such occasion has found the religious thinkers unpre- pared Something, which has been proclaimed to be vital, has finally, after struggle, distress, and anathema, been modified and otherwise interpreted The next generation of religious apologists then congratulates the religious world on the deeper insight which has been gamed The result of the con- tinued repetition of this undignified retreat, during many generations, has at last almost entirely destroyed the intel- lectual authonty of religious thinkers. Consider this contrast when Darwin or Emstein proclaims theories which modify our ideas, it is a tnumph for science We do not go about saying that there is another defeat for science, because its old ideas have been abandoned We know that another step of scientific insight has been gained

Religion w ill not r egain its old power iintiL it f-an .fpop chaa£e _i mSiH~smju sphii as does science Its pnnciples may be eternal, butthe^ipf^slOirof those“pr1nciples requires con- tinual development This evolution of religion is in the mam a disengagement of its own proper ideas from the adventi- tious notions which have crept into it by reason of the ex-

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pre'bion of its own ideas m terms of the imaginative picture of the world entertained in previous ages Such a release of religion from the bonds of imperfect science is all to the good It stresses its own genuine message Thg-great -point to kept ■ . ‘ ‘ ‘

shov. ' 1 ■ I ■

some sort-ef-modifieatien- It may be that they have to be expanded or explained, or indeed entirely restated If the re- ligion IS a sound expression of truth, this modification will only exhibit more adequately the exact point which is of im- portance This process is a gam In so far, therefore, as any religion has any contact with physical facts, it is to be ex- pected that the point of view of those facts must be con- tinually modified as scientific knowledge advances In this way, the exact relevance of these facts for religious thought will grow more and more clear The progress of science must result in the unceasing codification of religious thought, to tlie great advantage of religion

The religious controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries put theologians into a most unfortunate state of mind They were always attacking and defending They pic- tured themselves as the garrison of a fort surrounded by hostile forces. AU such pictures express half-truths That is why they are so popular But they are dangerous This par- ticular picture fostered a pugnacious party spirit which really expresses an ultimate lack of faith They dared not modify, because they shirked the task of disengaging their spiritual message from the associations of a particular imagery

Let me explain myself by an example In the early medie- val times. Heaven was m the sky, and Hell was underground, volcanoes were the jaws of Hell. I do not assert that these beliefs entered into the official formulations but they did enter mto the popular undei standing of the geneial doctrines of Heaven and Hell. These notions were what everyone thought to be impLed by the doctrine of the future state They entered into the explanations of the influential expo- nents of Christian behef For example, they occur in the Dia- logues, of Pope Gregory,^ the Great, a man whose high official position IS surpassed only by the magnitude of his services to humanity I am not saying what we ought to believe about the future state But whatever be the right doctrine, in this instance the clash between religion and science, which has relegated the earth to the position of a second-rate planet attached to a second-iate sun, has been greatly to the benefit

1 a Gregorovius’ History of Rome in the Middle Ages, Book III. Ch III, Vol II, English Trans

170 Science and the Modern World

of the spintuality of religion by dispersing these medieval fancies

Another way of looking at this question of the evolution of religious thought is to note that any verbal form o f state- men t which has been beforphe jprl.(L-fpr '..Sfmg„^^ cl osM~'amhi'euifre s'.-anii tha Loften such ambiguities 3 )xils£.at ffiever^ear tof the meaniofL The^ective sense m which a doctrine has been held m the past cannot be determined by the mere logical analysis of verbal statements, made in ignO' ranee of the logical trap You have to take into account the whole reaction of human nature to the scheme of thought. This reaction is of a mixed character, including elements of emotion derived from our lower natuies It is here that the impersonal criticism of science and of philosophy comes to the aid of religious evolution Example after example can be given of this motive force in development For example, the logical difficulties inherent in the doctrine of the moral cleansing of human nature by the power of rehgion rent Christianity in the days of Pelagius and Augustine — that is to say, at the beginning of the fifth century Echoes of that controversy still linger in theology

/ So far, my point has been this that religion is the expression / of one type of fundamental experiences of mankmd that re- ihgious thought develops into an increasing accuracy of ex- ' pression, disengaged from adventitious imagery that the in- teraction between religion and science is one great factor m promoting this development

I now come to my second reason for the modem fading of interest in religion This involves the ultimate question which I stated m my opening sentences. ^We have to k now what we mean by religion The i their preiehtatlgH~flf "Th'eu '

answers to this query, have put forward aspects of r eligion ' ^ch are expressed-uT terms e ithp.r siiitecl to thp. emntinpal reactions of bygone times or. directed. to excite modern emo - Tional interests of nonrelieious character ^What T mMn under the first heading is that religious appealns directed part- ly to excite that instinctive fear of the wrath of a tyrant which was inbred in the unhappy populations of the arbitrary em- pires of the ancient world, and in particular to excite that fear of an all-powerful arbitrary tyrant behind the unknown forces of nature ^This appeal to the ready instinct nf hnil e fear is losing itsmrce It lacks any directors of response, because modern science and modern conditions of life have taught us to meet occasions of apprehension by a critical analysis of then causes and conditions Religion is the re- action of human nature to its search for God The-prsaeutg-

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171

ttan-Qf-fifid under th ‘ - r '

UlsUnGt-'-ef-OFiticalj ■

lapses unless Us main positions command immediacy of as- sent In this respect the old phraseology is at vanance with the psychology of modern civilisations This change m psy- chology IS largely due to science, and is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened the hold of the old rehgious forms of expression. The nonieligious motive which has entered into modern religious thought is the desire for a comfortable oiganisation of modem society T lpliginn- ba(!-.b een presented as valuable for the ordering of life Its cla ims have~been~'reste^up on its functiM as a sanc- tinh to right condu ct A]so~tEe purposiToriipFconcluct quickly degenerates into the formation of pleasing social rela-

1 ii»,i j-4.- . e « ^ t,

tation of religion as a mere sanction of mles of conduct Saint Paul denounced the Law, and Puritan divines spoke of the filthy rags of righteousness The insistence upon rules of conduct marks the ebb of religious fervour Above and be- yond dll things, JheofiUgiQxis ltfe,jsjiaLa-rssfiaEeL.al ler com- Jfort I must now state, in all diffidence, what I conceive to 6e the essential character of the religious spirit ^Religion IS th e visinn of something which st anda-bevond. behind atid'^CTM^ttie" passing fluTT’oTinirnfidiate things. ■something ■whichis real , and veL waTtihg tO~~^ realist snmff.thing-w.hir,h is a rqip ole possibil ffy i’ and vet t he greatest of presen t— facts, something that gives meaning~to all that msses, and .itst _.eludes apprehension. sometlung_\iffi’QseIipo s'- sess iQii IS the final good, and v.et_is beyond all reach, some - thing. w.h.ich~a-the^.ultimat e ideal, and t heSoneTess'iqui^ The •H ganediaite reaction of human nature to the religious vision IS wojghiig Religion has emerged mto human experi- ence mixeBwiffi the crudest fancies of barbaric imagination Gradually, slowly, steadily the vision recurs in history under nobler form and with clearer expression It is the one element in human expenence which persistently shows an upward trend It fades and then lecurs But when it renews its force, It recurs with an added richness and purity of content The faclLfli-fh e rehgious vision, and its history of persis tent ex-, 4 iarision, is o ur on^ gmun(L JfaLiQp£imism~'°A^rt~Tr^rrt, hum an ufeTiT^ash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient expenence

172 Science and the Modern World

The vision claims nothmp .hiit, warshg), Md wors hip is a suiTpnfW to the~craim for^simi latlDiVJJ^MZ=wilSIthg~mcP tiro force oftnutualTw^ ‘lEei^on never overrules' Tt Ts always there, and it has the power of love presenting the one purpose whose fulfilment is eternal harmony Such order as we find in nature is never force — it piesents itself as the one harmonious adjustment of complex detail Evil is the brute motive force of fragmentary purpose, disregarding the eternal vision Evil IS overruling, retarding, hurting The power of God is the worship He inspires That religion is strong which in its ritual and its modes of thought evokes an apprehen- sion of the commanding vision The worship of God is not a rule of safety — it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable The death of religion comes with the re- pression of the high hope of adventure

13 / Requisites for Social Progress

It has been the puipose of these lectures to analyse the reactions of science informing that background of instinc- tive ideas which control the activities of successive genera- tions Such a background takes the form of a certain vague philosophy as to the last word about things, when all is said The three centuries, which form the epoch of modern science, have revolved round the ideas of Cod, mind, matter, and also of space and time m their characters of expressing simple location for matter Philosophy has on the whole emphasised mind, and has thus been out of touch with science during the two latter centuries. But it is creeping back into its old importance owmg to the rise of psychology and Its alliance with physiology Also, this rehabilitation of philosophy has been facilitated by the recent breakdown of the seventeenth century settlement of the principles of physi- cal science But, until that collapse, science seated itself se- curely upon the concepts of matter, space, time, and latterly, of energy Also there were arbitrary laws of nature determin- ing locomotion They were empirically observed, but for some obscure reason were known to be universal Anyone who m practice or theory disregarded them was denounced with unsparing vigour This position on the part of scientists was

Requisites for Social Progress 173

puie bluff, if one may credit them with believing their own statements, For then current philosophy completely failed to justify the assumption that the immediate knowledge in- herent in any present occasion throws any light either on its past, or its future

I have also sketched an alternative philosophy of science in which orgammi takes the place of matter For this purpose, the mind involved in the mateiiahst theoiy dissolves into a function of organism The psychological field then exhibits what an event is in itself Our bodily event is an unusually complex type of organism and consequently includes cogm- tion Further, space and time, m their most concrete significa- tion, become the locus of events An organism is the realisation of a definite shape of value The emergence of some actual value depends on limitation which excludes neu- tralising cross-lights Thus an event is a matter of fact which by reason of its limitation is a value for itself, but by reason of its very nature it also requites the whole universe in order to be itselt

Importance depends on endurance Endurance is the reten- tion through time of an achievement of value What endures IS identity of pattern, self-inherited Enduiance requires the favouiable enviionment The whole of science revolves round this question of enduring organisms

The general influence of science at the present moment can be analysed under the headings General Conceptions Respecting the Universe, Technological Applications, Piofes- sionalism m Knowledge, Influence of Biological Doctrines on the Motives of Conduct I have endeavoured m the pre- ceding lectures to give a glimpse of these points It lies within the scope of this concluding lecture to consider the reaction of science upon some problems confronting civilised societies

The general conceptions introduced by science into modern thought cannot be separated from the philosophical situ- ation as expressed by Descartes I mean the assumption of bodies and minds as independent individual substances, each existing in its own right apart from any necessary refer- ence to each other Such a conception was very concordant with the individualism which had issued from the moral discipline of the Middle Ages But, though the easy reception of the idea is thus explained, the derivation in itself rests upon a confusion, very natural but none the less unfortu- nate The moral discipline had emphasised the intrinsic value of the individual entity This emphasis had put the notions of the individual and of its experiences into the background of thought At this point the confusion commences The

174 Science and the Modern World

emergent individual value of each entity is transformed into the independent substantial existence of each entity, which IS a very different notion

I do not mean to say that Descartes made this logical, or rather illogical transition, m the form of explicit reasoning Far from it What he did, was first to concentrate upon his own conscious experiences, as being facts within the inde- pendent world of his own mentality He was led to speculate in this way by the current emphasis upon the individual value of his total self He implicitly transformed this emer- gent individual value, inherent in the very fact of his own reality, into a private world of passions, or modes, of inde- pendent substance

Also the independence ascribed to bodily substances ear- ned them away from the realm of values altogether They degenerated into a mechanism entiiely valueless, except as suggestive of an external ingenuity The heavens had lost the glory of God This state of mind is illustrated in the recoil of Protestantism from aesthetic effects dependent upon a material medium It was taken to lead to an ascription of value to what is m itself valueless This recoil was already m full strength antecedently to Descartes Accordingly, the Cartesian scientific doctrine of bits of matter, bare of intrinsic value, was merely a formulation, in explicit terms, of a doc- tiine which was current before its entrance into scientific thought or Cartesian philosophy Probably this doctrine was latent m the scholastic philosophy, but it did not lead to its consequences till it met with the mentality of northern Eu- rope in the sixteenth century But science, as equipped by Descartes, gave stability and intellectual status to a point of view which has had very mixed effects upon the moral presuppositions of modem communities Its good effects arose from Its efficiency as a method tor scientific researchers within those limited regions which were then best suited for exploration The lesult was a general clearing of the Eu- ropean mind away from the stains left upon it by the hysteria of remote baibaric ages This was all to the good, and was most completely exemplified m the eighteenth century

But in the nineteenth century, when society was under- going transformation into the manufacturing system, the bad effects of these doctrines have been very fatal The doctrine of minds, as independent substances, leads directly not merely to private woi Ids of experience, but also to private worlds of morals The moral intuitions can be held to apply only to the strictly private world of psychological experience Ac- cordingly, selt-iespect, and the making the most of your own mdividual opportunities, together constituted the efficient

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Requisites for Social Progress

morality of the leaders among the industrialists of that period The western woild is now suffering from the limited moral outlook of the tliree previous generations

Also the assumption of the bare valuelessness of mere matter led to a lack of reverence in the treatment of natural or artistic beauty Just when the urbanisation of the western world was entering upon its state of rapid development, and when the most delicate, anxious consideration of the aesthehc qualities of the new material environment was req- uisite, the doctnne of the irrelevance of such ideas was at Its height In the most advanced industrial countries, art was treated as a frivolity A strikmg example of this state of imnd m the middle of the nmeteenth century is to be seen in London where the marvellous beauty of the estuary of the Thames, as it curves through the city, is wantonly defaced by the Charing Cross railway bridge, constructed apart from any reference to aesthetic values

The two evils are one, the ignoration of the true relation of each organism to its environment, and the other, the habit of Ignoring the intrinsic worth of the environment which must be allowed its weight m any consideration of final ends

Another great fact confronting the modern world is the discovery of the method of training professionals, who spe- cialise in particular regions of thought and thereby progres- sively add to the sum of knowledge within their respective Imiitations of subject In consequence ot the success of this professionalising of knowledge, there are two points to be kept in mind, which differentiate our present age from the past In the first place, the rate ot progress is such that an individual human being, of ordinary length of life, wdl be called upon to face novel situations which find no parallel m his past The fixed person tor the fixed duties, who m older societies was such a godsend, m the future will be a pubhc danger In the second place, the modem professional- ism in knowledge works in the opposite duection so far as the intellectual sphere is concerned The modern chemist is likely to be weak m zoology, weaker still m his general knowledge of the Elizabethan drama, and completely ig- norant of the principles of rhythm in English veisification It IS probably safe to ignore his knowledge of ancient his- tory Of course I am speaking of general tendencies, for chemists are no worse than engineers, or mathematicians, or classical scholars Effective knowledge is professionalised knowledge, supported by a restricted acquaintance with use- ful subjects subservient to it

This situation has its dangers It produces mmds m a

176 Science and the Modern World

groove. Each profession makes progress, but it is progress in Its own groove Now to be mentally in a groove is to live in contemplating a given set of abstractions The groove pre- vents straying across country, and the abstraction abstracts from something to which no further attention is paid But there is no groove of abstractions which is adequate for the comprehension of human life. Thus in the modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been re- placed by a celibacy of the mtellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts Of course, no one is merely a mathematician, or merely a lawyer. Peo- ple have lives outside their professions or their businesses But the pomt is the restramt of serious thought within a groove The remainder of life is treated superficially, with the imperfect categories of thought derived from one pro- fession

The dangers arising from this aspect of professionalism are great, particularly in our democratic societies The directive force of reason is weakened The leading intellects lack bal- ance They see this set of circumstances, or that set, but not both sets together The task of coordination is left to those who lack either the force or the character to succeed m some definite career In short, the specialised functions of the com- munity are performed better and more progressively, but the generalised diiection lacks vision The progressiveness in de- tail only adds to the danger produced by the feebleness of coordination

This criticism of modern life applies throughout, in what- ever sense you construe the meaning ot a community It holds if you apply it to a nation, a city, a district, an insti- tution, a family, or even to an individual There is a devel- opment of particular abstractions, and a contraction of con- crete appreciation The whole is lost in one of its aspects It IS not necessary for my point that I should maintain that our directive wisdom, either as individuals or as commum- ties, IS less now than in the past Perhaps it has slightly im- proved But the novel pace of progress requires a greater force of direction if disasters are to be avoided The point IS that the discoveries of the nineteenth century weie in the direction of professionalism, so that we aie left with no ex- pansion of wisdom and with greater need of it

Wisdom IS the fruit of a balanced development It is this balanced growth of individuality which it should be the aim of education to secure The most useful discoveries for the immediate futuie would concern the furtherance of this aim without detriment to the necessary intellectual profession- alism

177

Requisites for Social Progress

My own criticism of our traditional educational methods is that they are far too much occupied with intellectual anal- ysis, and With the acquirement of formulaiised information What I mean is, that we neglect to strengthen habits of con- crete appreciation of the individual facts in their full inter- play of emergent values, and that we merely emphasise ab- stract formulations which ignore this aspect of the interplay of diverse values

In every country the problem of the balance of the gen- eral and specialist education is under consideration I can- not speak with first-hand knowledge of any country but my own I know that theie, among practical educationalists, there is considerable dissatisfaction with the existing practice Also, the adaptation of the whole system to the needs of a democratic community is very far from being solved I do not think that the seciet of the solution lies in terms of the antithesis between thoroughness in special knowledge and general knowledge of a slighter character The make-weight which balances the thoroughness of the specialist intellectual training should be of a radically different kind from purely intellectual analytical knowledge At present our education combines a thorough study of a few abstractions, with a slighter study of a larger number of abstractions We are too exclusively bookish in our scholastic routine The gen- eral training should aim at eliciting oui concrete apprehen- sions, and should satisfy the itch of youth to be doing some- thing There should be some analysis even here, but only just enough to illustrate the ways of thinking in diverse spheres In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animals be- fore he named them in the traditional system, children named the animals before they saw them

There is no easy single solution of the practical difficulties of education We can, however, guide ourselves by a certain simplicity m its general theory The student should concen- trate within a limited field Such concentiation should in- clude all practical and intellectual acquirements requisite for that concentration This is the ordinary procedure, and, in respect to it, I should be inclined even to increase the facili- ties for concentration rather than to dimmish them With the concentration there are associated certain subsidiary studies, such as languages for science Such a scheme of pro- fessional training should be directed to a clear end congenial to the student It is not necessary to elaboiate the qualifica- tions of these statements Such a framing must, of course, have the width requisite for its end. But its design should not be complicated by the consideration of other ends This piofessional training can only touch one side of education

178 Science and the Modern World

Its centre of gravity lies in the intellect, and its chief tool is the printed book The centre of giavity of the other side of training should lie in intuition without an analytical divorce from & total environment. Its object is immediate appre- hension with the minimum of eviscerating analysis The type of generality, which above all is wanted, is the appreciation of variety of value I mean an aesthetic growth There is something between the gross specialised values of the mere practical man, and the thin specialised values of the mere scholar Both types have missed somethmg, and if you add together the two sets of values, you do not obtain the missing elements What is wanted is an appreciation of the infinite variety of vivid values achieved by an organism in its proper environment When you understand all about the sun and all about the atmosphere and all about the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset There is no substitute for the direct perception of the concrete achieve- ment of a thing in its actuahty We want concrete fact with a high light thrown on what is relevant to its preciousness

What I mean is art and aesthetic education It is, how- ever, art in such a general sense of the term that I hardly like to call it by that name Art is a special example What we want is to draw out habits of aesthetic apprehension Ac- cording to the metaphysical doctnne which I have been de- veloping, to do so IS to increase the depth of individuality. The analysis of reality mdicates the two factors, activity emerging into individualised aesthetic value Also the emer- gent value IS the measure of the individualisation of the ac- tivity We must foster the creative imtiative towards the maintenance of objective values You will not obtain the ap- prehension without the initiative, or the initiative without the apprehension As soon as you get towards the concrete, you cannot exclude action Sensitiveness without impulse spells decadence, and impulse without sensitiveness spells bru- tality I am usmg the word ‘sensitiveness’ in its most general signification, so as to mclude apprehension of what lies be- yond oneself, that is to say, sensitiveness to all the facts of the case Thus ‘art’ m the general sense which I require is any selection by which the concrete facts me so arranged as to elicit attention to particular values which are realisable by them For example, the mere disposing of the human body and the eyesight so as to get a good view of a sunset IS a simple foim of artistic selection. The habit of art is the habit of enjoying vivid values

But, in this sense, art concerns more than sunsets A fac- tory, with Its machmery, its community of operatives, its so-

Requisites for Social Progress 179

cial service to the general population, its dependence upon organising and designing genius, its potentialities as a source of wealth to the holders of its stock is an organism exhib- iting a vanety of vivid values What we want to tram is the habit of apprehending such an organism in its completeness It IS very arguable that the science of political economy, as studied m its first period after the death of Adam Smith (1790), did more harm than good It destioyed many eco- nomic fallacies, and taught how to think about the economic revolution then in progress But it riveted on men a certain set of abstractions which were disastrous in their influence on modern mentality It de-humanised industry. This is only one example of a general danger inherent in modern science Its methodological procedure is exclusive and intoleiant, and rightly so It fixes attention on a definite group of abstrac- tions, neglects everything else, and elicits every scrap of m- formation and theory which is lelevant to what it has re- tained This method is triumphant, provided that the abstrac- tions are judicious But, however triumphant, the triumph is within limits The neglect of these limits leads to disastrous oversights The anti-rationalism of science is partly justified, as a preservation of its useful methodology, it is partly mere irrational prejudice Modern professionalism is the training of minds to conform to the methodology The histoiical re- volt of the seventeenth century, and the earlier reaction to- wards naturalism, weie examples of transcending the ab- stractions which fascinated educated society in the Middle Ages These early ages had an ideal of rationalism, but they failed in its pursuit For they neglected to note that the methodology of reasoning requires the limitations involved m the abstract Accordingly, the true rationalism must al- ways transcend itself by recurrence to the concrete in search of inspiration A self-satisfied rationalism is in efliect a form of anti-rationalism It means an arbitrary halt at a particular set of abstractions This was the case with science.

There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things, recuning in some particulai embodiments whatever field we explore — the spiiit of change, and the spirit of con- servation There can be nothing real without both Mere change without conservation is a passage from nothing to nothing Its final integration yields mere transient non-entity Mere conservation without change cannot conserve For after all, there is a flux of circumstance, and the freshness of being evaporates under mere repetition The character of existent reality is composed of orgamsms enduring through the flux of things The low type of organisms have achieved a self-

180 Science and the Modern World

identity dominating their whole physical life Electrons, mole- cules, crystals, belong to this type They exhibit a massive and complete sameness In the higher types, where life ap- pears, there is greater complexity Thus, though there is a complex, enduring pattern, it has retreated into deeper re- cesses of the total fact In a sense, the self-identity of a hu- man being is more abstract than that of a crystal It is the life of the spirit It relates rather to the mdividualisation of the creative activity, so that the changing circumstances re- ceived from the environment are differentiated from the liv- ing personality, and are thought of as formmg its perceived field In truth, the field of perception and the perceiving mmd are abstractions which, m the concrete, combine mto the successive bodily events The psychological field, as re- stricted to sense-objects and passing emotions, is the minor permanence, barely rescued from the nonentity of mere change; and the mind is the major permanence, permeating that complete field, whose endurance is the living soul But the soul would wither without fertilisation from its transient experiences The secret of the higher oigamsms lies in their two grades of permanences By this means the freshness of the environment is absorbed mto the permanence of the soul The changing environment is no longer, by reason of its variety, an enemy to the endurance of the organism The pattern of the higher organism has retreated into the recesses of the individualised activity It has become a uniform way of dealing with circumstances, and this way is only strength- ened by having a proper variety of circumstances to deal with

Tins fertilisation of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art A static value, however serious and important, be- comes unendurable by its appalling monotony of endurance The soul cries aloud for release into change It suffers the agonies of claustrophobia The transitions of humour, wit, irreverence, play, sleep, and— above all — of art are necessary for it Great art is the arrangement of the environment so as to provide for the soul vmd, but transient, values Human beings require something which absorbs them for a time, something out of the routine which they can stare at But you cannot subdivide life, except m the abstract analysis of thought Accordingly, the gieat art is more than a transient refreshment It is something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul’s self-attainment It justifies itself both by Its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment, but by reason of it It transforms die soul into the permanent

181

Reqxjisites for Social Progress

realisation of values extending beyond its former self This element of transition m art is shown by the restlessness ex- hibited m Its history An epoch gets saturated by the master- pieces of any one style Something new must be discovered The human being wanders on Yet there is a balance m things Mere change before the attainment of adequacy of achievement, either in quality or output, is destructive of greatness But the importance of a living art, which moves on and yet leaves its permanent mark, can hardly be exag- gerated

In regard to the aesthetic needs of civihsed society the re- actions of science have so far been unfortunate Its materi- alistic basis has directed attention to things as opposed to values The antithesis is a false one, if taken m a concrete sense But it is valid at the abstract level of orduiary thought. This misplaced emphasis coalesced with the abstractions of political economy, which are in fact the abstractions m terms of which commercial affairs are earned on Thus all thought concerned with social organisation expressed itself m terms of material things and of capital Ultimate values were excluded They were politely bowed to, and then handed over to the clergy to be kept for Sundays. A creed of competitive business morality was evolved, in some respects curiously high, but entirely devoid of consideration for the value of human life The workmen were conceived as mere hands, drawn from the pool of labour To God’s question, men gave the answer of Cam — ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’; and they incurred Cain’s guilt This was the atmosphere m which the industrial revolution was accomplished in England, and to a large extent elsewhere The internal history of Eng- land during the last half century has been an endeavour slowly and painfully to undo the evils wrought m the first stage of the new epoch It may be that civilisation will never recover from the bad chmate which enveloped the introduc- tion of machinery This climate pervaded the whole com- mercial system of the progressive northern European races. It was partly the result of aesthetic errors of Protestantism and partly the result of scientific materialism, and partly the result of the natural greed of mankind, and partly the result of the abstractions of political economy An illustration of my point is to be found m Macaulay’s Essay criticising Southey’s Colloquies on Society It was written in 1830. Now Macaulay was a very favourable example of men living at that date, or at any date He had gemus, he was kind-

hearted, honourable, and a reformer This is the extract,

We are told, that our age has invented atrocities beyond the

182 Science and the Modern World

imagination of our fathers, that society has been brought into a state compared with which extermination would be a blessing, and all because the dwellings of cotton-spinners are naked and rectangular Mr Southey has found out a way he tells us, m which the effects of manufactures and agri- culture may be compared And what is this way? To stand on a hill, to look at a cottage and a factory, and to see which is the prettier.’

Southey seems to have said many silly things in his book, but, so far as this extract is concerned, he could make a good case for himself if he returned to earth after the lapse of neaily a century The evils of the early mdustnal system are now a commonplace of knowledge. The point which I am insisting on is the stone-blind eye with which even the best men of that time regarded the importance of aesthetics in a nation’s life I do not believe that we have as yet nearly achieved the right estunate A contributory cause, of sub- stantial efficacy to produce this disastrous error, was the sci- entific creed that matter in motion is the one concrete reality in nature, so that aesthetic values form an adventitious, ir- relevant addition.

There is another side to this picture of the possibilities of decadence At the present moment a discussion is raging as to the future of civilisation in the novel circumstances of rapid scientific and technological advance The evils of the future have been diagnosed in various ways, the loss of re- hgious faith, the malignant use of material power, the deg- radation attending a differential birth rate favouring the lower types of humanity, the suppression of aesthetic cre- ativeness Without doubt, these are all evils, dangerous and threatening But they are not new From the dawn of his- tory, mankind has always been losmg its religious faith, has always suffered from the malignant use of material power, has always suffered from the mfertihty of its best intellec- tual types, has always witnessed the periodical decadence of art In the reign of the Egyptian king, Tutankhamen, there was raging a desperate religious struggle between Modermsts and Fundamentahsts, the cave pictures exhibit a phase of delicate aesthetic achievement as superseded by a period of comparative vulgarity, the religious leaders, the great think- ers, the great poets and authors, the whole clerical caste m the Middle Ages, have been notably mfertile, finally, if we attend to what actually has happened in the past, and dis- regard romantic visions of democracies, aristocracies, kings, generals, armies, and merchants, mateiial power has gener- ally been wielded with blmdness, obstmacy and selfishness.

183

Requisites for Social Progress

often with brutal malignancy And yet, mankind has pro- gressed Even if you take a tiny oasis of peculiar excellence, the type of modern man who would have most chance of happiness in ancient Greece at its best period is probably (as now) an average professional heavy-weight boxer, and not an average Greek scholar from Oxford or Germany. Indeed, the mam use of the Oxford scholar would have been his ca- pability of writing an ode in glorification of the boxer Noth- ing does more harm in unnerving men for them duties in the present, than the attention devoted to the pomts of ex- cellence m the past as compared with the average failure of the present day

But, after all, there have been real periods of decadence; and at the present time, as at other epochs, society is decay- mg, and there is need for preservative action Professionals are not new to the world But m the past, professionals have formed unprogressive castes The pomt is that profes- sionalism has now been mated with progress. The world is now faced with a self-evolvmg system, which it cannot stop There are dangers and advantages in this situation It is ob- vious that the gain in matenal power affords opportumty for social betterment If mankind can rise to the occasion, there lies in front a golden age of beneficent creativeness But ma- terial power m itself is ethically neutral It can equally well work in the wrong direction The problem is not how to pro- duce great men, but how to produce great societies The great society will put up the men for the occasions The ma- terialistic philosophy emphasised the given quantity of ma- terial, and thence derivatively the given nature of the environment It thus operated most unfortunately upon the social conscience of mankind For it directed almost exclu- sive attention to the aspect of struggle for existence in a fixed environment To a large extent the environment is fixed, and to this extent there is a struggle for existence It is folly to look at the universe through rose-tinted spectacles We must admit the struggle The question is, who is to be eliminated In so far as we are educators, we have to have clear ideas upon that point, for it settles the type to be produced and the practical ethics to be inculcated

But during the last three generations, the exclusive direc- tion of attention to this aspect of things has been a disaster of the first magnitude The watchwords of the nmeteenth centuiy have been, struggle for existence, competition, class warfare, commercial antagonism between nations, military warfare The stmggle for existence has been construed into the gospel of hate The full conclusion to be drawn from a

184 Science and the Modern World

philosophy of evolution ib fortunately of a more balanced character Successful organisms modify their environment. Those organisms are successful which modify their environ- ments so as to assist each other This law is exemplified m natuie on a vast scale. For example, the North American Indians accepted their environment, with the result that a scanty population barely succeeded in mamtaimng themselves over the whole continent The European races when they ar- rived in the same continent pursued an opposite policy They at once cooperated m modifymg theu environment The result IS that a population more than twenty times that of the Indian population now occupies the same territory, and the continent is not yet full Again, there are associations of different species which mutually cooperate This differen- tiation of species is exhibited m the simplest physical entities, such as the association between electrons and positive nu- clei, and in the whole realm of animate nature The trees m a Brazilian forest depend upon the association of various species of organisms, each of which is mutually dependent on the other species A single tree by itself is dependent upon all the adverse chances of shifting circumstances The wind stunts if the variations in temperature check its fo- liage the rams denude its soil its leaves are blown away and are lost for the purpose of fertilisation You may obtain m- dividual specimens ot fine trees either in exceptional cir- cumstances, or where human cultivation has intervened But in nature the normal way in which trees flourish is by their association in a forest Each tree may lose something of its individual perfection of giowth, but they mutually assist each other in preserving the conditions for survival The soil IS preserved and shaded, and the microbes necessary for Its fertility are neither scorched, nor frozen, nor washed away A forest is the triumph of the organisation of mutually dependent species Further a species of microbes which kill the forest, dso exterminates itself Again the two sexes ex- hibit the same advantage of differentiation In the history of the world, the prize has not gone to those species which spe- cialised in methods of violence, or even in defensive armour In fact, nature began with producing animals encased m hard shells for defence against the ills of life It also ex- perimented m size But smaller animals, without external armour, warm-blooded, sensitive, and alert, have cleared these monsters off the face of the earth Also, the Lons and tigers are not the successful species There is something m the ready use of force which defeats its own subject Its main de- fect IS that it bars cooperation Every organism requures an

185

Requisites for Social Progress

environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants The Gospel of Force is incompatible with a social life. By force, I mean antagonism in its most general sense

Almost equally dangerous is the Gospel of Uniformity. The differences between the nations and races of mankind are required to preserve the conditions under which higher development is possible One mam factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering Per- haps this IS why the armour-plated monsters fared badly. They could not wander Animals wander into new coni- tions They have to adapt themselves or die Mankind has wandered from the trees to the plains, from the plains to the seacoast, fiom climate to climate, fiom continent to conti- nent, and from habit of life to habit of life When man ceases to wander, he will cease to ascend in the scale of being Physical wandering is still important, but greater still IS the power of man’s spiritual adventures — adventures of thought, adventures of passionate feeling, adventures of aes- thetic experience A diveisification among human commu- nities IS essential for the provision of the incentive and ma- terial for the Odyssey of the human spirit Other nations of different habits are not enemies they are godsends Men re- quire of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke atten- tion, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues We should even be satisfied if there is something odd enough to be in- teresting

Modern science has imposed on humanity the necessity for wandering Its piogressive thought and its progressive technology make the transition through time, from gen- eration to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure The very benefit of wandering is that it is dan- gerous and needs skill to avert evils We must expect, there- fore, that the future will disclose dangers It is the business of the future to be dangerous, and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties The prosper- ous middle classes, who ruled the mneteenth century, placed an excessive value upon placidity of existence They re- fused to face the necessities for social reform imposed by the new industrial system, and they are now refusing to face the necessities tor intellectual reform imposed by the new knowledge The middle class pessimism over the future of the world comes from a confusion between civilisation and security In the immediate future there will be less security

186 Science and the Modern World

than in the immediate past, less stability It must be admit- ted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilisation But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages

I have endeavoured in these lectmes to give a record ot a great adventure in the region of thought It was shared m by all the races of western Europe It developed with the slow- ness of a mass movement Half a century is its unit of time The tale is the epic of an episode in the manifestation of rea- son It tells how a particular direction of reason emerges in a race by the long preparation of antecedent epochs, how after its birth its subject-matter gradually unfolds itself, how it attains its triumphs, how its influence moulds the very springs of action of mankmd, and finally how at its moment of supreme success its limitations disclose themselves and call for a renewed exercise of the creative imagination The moral of the tale is the power of reason, its decisive influ- ence on the life of humanity The great conquerors, from Alexander to Caesar, and from Caesar to Napoleon, influ- enced profoundly the lives of subsequent generations But the total effect of this influence shrinks to insignificance, if compared to the entue transformation of human habits and human mentality produced by the long line of men of thought from Thales to the present day, men individually powerless, but ultimately the rulers of the woild

Index

The numbers refer to pages, and 'e s' stands for ‘ei seq', where the reference is to the succeedmg pages of the chapter m question.

Abruptness (m Ingression), 154. Absolute, The, 88.

Abstract, 143 Abstraction, 151, e s AbstracUon (in Mathematics), 25. fis

Abstractive Hierarchy, 1 5 1 , c s Acceleration, 48 Actualisation, 144.

Adam Smith, 179.

Aeschylus, 17 Alexander, S , Preface Algebra, 34, 35.

Alva, lO Ampere, 93

Aii^ytical Character (Eternal Objects), 147 Anselm, St , 57,

‘Any,’ 149

Aquinas, Thomas, 16, 133 Arabic Arithmetical Notation, 34

Archimedes, 13, 14 Arguments (of functions), 35. Aristotle, 13, e s , 33, 34, 47, es, 118, 122, 153, es Arnold, Matthew, 78, 79.

Art, 178

Art, Medieval, 20, e s Aspect, 68, 96, e s Associated Hierarchy, 153. Aston, F W , 166 Atom, 94, 96 Augustine, Saint, 170.

Bacon, Francis, 15, 42, es; 64,91

Bacon, Roger, 13 Base of Abstractive Hierarchy, 151.

Bemg, 147.

Bclisanus, 20 Benedict, Samt, 21 Bergson, 52, 133, es Berkeley, George, 65, es;

72, 129 BichM, 94 Biology, 43, 62, 97. Bonaventure, Samt, 16.

Boyle, Robert, 42 Brown Umversity, Preface. Bruno, Gioidano, 9 Byzantine Empue, 20.

Carlyle, 60 Cervantes, 42.

Change, 83.

Chaucer, 22 China, 13, 73 Clairaut, 60, 126 Classification, 33, e s Clough, A H , 79.

Cogmtion, 67 Coleridge, 79 Columbus, 22, 38.

Complex Eternal Objects, 150 Components, 150 Conic Sections, 34 Connexity (of a Hierarchy), 151

Connectedness (of an occa- sion), 153

Conservation of Energy, 95, e,s. Continuity, 94 Copernicus, 9, 22, 42,

Cosmas, 163 Cromwell, Oliver, 23.

D’Alembert, 57, 60.

Dalton, John, 95

INDEX

188

Da Vinci, Leonardo, 45. Darwm, 168 Democritus, 94.

Demos, R , Preface.

Density, 51, 124 Desargues, 56

Descartes, 24, 34, e r ,‘ 36, 42, 72, 78, 127 ei, 173, ei Determinism, 75 Differential Calculus, 56. Discontinuous Existence, 39, 124, e s Distance, 113 Divinity, Scholastic, 19. Divisibility, 116

Education, 177, e.s Egyptians, 21, 34 Einstein, 17, 33, 60, 62; 114,

e s , 168

Electron, 39, e^, 76, es;

121, es

Empty Events, 139 Endurance, 83; 98, e s ; 111, es, 122, es. 138 Endurance, Vibratory, 40 Energy, Physical, 40, e.s Environment, 103, e.s Envisagement, 99, e s Epochs, 116

Epochal Durations. 117, 125,

e s.

Essence, 115

Eternal Ob)ects, 83, e s , 97, e j , 144, e s Ether, 120 Euripides, 17 Event, 70, 111, e s Evolution, 89, 95, e s Exhaustion, Method of, 119. Extension, 116 Extensive Quantity, 117 External Relations, 144, e s. Extimsic Reality, 98

Fallacy of Misplaced Concrete- ness, 52, e s , 58 Faraday, 93.

Fate, 17 Fermat. 56

Finite Abstractive Hierarchy,

152

Form, 149 Force, 47, e.s.

Fourier, 60 Francis of Assisi, 165 Frederick the Great, 62. Fiequency, 1 19, e ^

Fresnel, 93 Frost, Robert, 22.

Future, 158, e s

Galileo, 10, e s , 34, 36, 42, es; 62, 107, 122, 163, es Oalvani, 62 Gauss, 60, 62 Geometry, 27, e.s.

George II, 65 Germany, 43, 92.

Gibson, 134

God, 19, 60, 88, 155, es Gradation of Envisagement,

159

Gravitation, 47, 113.

Greece, 14, e s Gregorovius, 169.

Giotto, 22

Gregory, The Great, 21, 169.

Harvey, 42, 43.

Heath, SirT L, 118.

Hegel, 33 Herz, 60, 62.

Historical Revolt, 1 6, e .s ; 42,

100

Hooker, Richard, 16, e s.

Hume, 11, 37, 45, 52, 53;

57, es, 73, 129 Huyghens, 36, 42, e ^ , 164.

Idealism, 62; 86, e s Immediate Occasion, 31, e s,‘

Individual Essence, 144, e s. Induction, 29, 44, e i Infinite Abstractive Hierarchy, 152

Ingression, 69, e s , 143 Integral Calculus, 34 Internal Relations, 115; 144, es. Intrinsic Reality, 98.

INDEX

189

Invention, 91, e s Ionian Philosophers, 14. Irresistible Grace, 72 Isolated Systems, 48 Isolation of Eternal Objects,

149

Isotopes, 166 Italy, 42. e s

James, Henry. 10 James, ’William, 10, 130, e s Joseph, Hapsburg Emperor, 62. Justiman, 20

Kant, 37. 65, e s , 82, 95, 117; 126, e s

Kepler, 14, 36, 42, 49.

Lagrange, 59, e s Laplace, 60, 95 Lavoisier, 59, 94 Law, Roman, 18 Laws of Nature, 35, 100 Least Action, 61, 100 Lecky, 18, 163 Leibniz, 34, 35, 37, 42, 64,

78, 129,

Life, 43

Limitation. 145, e s Lloyd Morgan, Preface Location, Simple. 50, e s . 57, e s , 66

Locke, John, 34, 37, 42, es;

62, 65, 78, 129 Locomotion. Vibratory, 121, e s

Logic, Abstract, 3 1, e j.

Logic, Scholastic, 19. Lucretius, 94.

Macaulay, 181.

Milton, 74, e s Mind, 56.

Mass, 47, e s ; 96 Mathematics, 14, 22; 25, es. Mathematics, Apphed, 29, es Matter, 43, 65, 96 Matter (philosophical), 149. Maupertuis, 60, e s

Maxwell, Clerk, 59, e s ; 93, e s , 106.

Mechanical Explanation. 23. Mechamsm, 73, e s Mechanistic Theory, 52. Memory, 52 Mersenne, 36 Michelson, 107, e s Mill, John Stuart, 75 Modal Character of Space,

63, e r

Modal Limitations, 60, e.s Mode, 68

Moral Responsibility, 75, e s. Motion, Laws of, 47, e s. Muller, Johannes, 94.

Muller, Max, 117.

Narses, 20.

Natural Selection, 104. Naturalism in Art 22 Newman, John Henry, 79, 163. Newton, 13, 14, 17; 34, es, 43, e s, 59, e s, 106, 163, e s. Not-Being, 147.

Objectivism, 84, e s Occasions, Community of, 46. Occupied Events, 140 Oersted, 93

Order of Nature, 11; 32, c s ;

Organic Mechanism, 76, 101. Organism, 39, e j , 43, 63, 72,

6 5,76,2 5,97,98, 121,6 5 ; 135,6 5

Padua, University of, 43.

Paley, 73 Papacy, 16, 20.

Pascal, 42, 56 Past, 157, 6 5 Pasteur, Louis, 95, e,s. Pelagius, 170.

Perception, 69

Periodic Law (Mendeleef), 95. Periodicity, 36, e 5.

Perspective, 68 Petavius, 163

190

INDEX

Philosophy, 83.

Physical Field, 92.

Physics, 43

Plato, 14, 33, « s; 118 Pope, Alexander, 74, e s. Possibility, 144 Prehension, 67, e,s , 135. Prehensive Character of Space, 63, e s

Present, 1 57, e j P nmary Qualities, 54 Primate, 121, e i.

Prime Mover, 156, e ^ Primordial Element, 40, e s Process, 70

Professionalism, 175, e s. Proton, 69, ei ; 121, es Psychology, 62, 71 Pusey, 79.

Pythagoras, 32, e s, 155. Quality, 61, a s

Quantum Theory, 39; 1 19, e s.

Rationalism, 16, c.s, 41. Ramsay, Sir William, 166. Ratviey, Dr . 43 Rayleigh, Lord, 166.

Realism, 119, es Reformation, 15 Reiteration, 98, 122, e s. Relational Essence, 144, e s. Relativity, 50, 108, e s. Retention, 98 Riemann, 60, 62 Romans, 13.

Roman Law, 20 Rome, 22

Rousseau, 39, 65, 90.

Royal Society, 34, 53 Russell, Bertrand, 140.

Sarpi, Paul, 16, 24.

Schleiden, 94.

Schwann, 94

Scientific Materialism, 23, 24 Scientific Movement, 15 Secondary Qualities, 54, 86. Seneca, 18 Sense-Object, 69.

Separative Character of Space, 63, e s

Shakespeare, 42.

Shape, 64 Shelley, 79, e s Sidgwick, Henry, 129 Simple Eternal Objects, 150 Simple Location, 50, e s , 57, e r , 66, 86, e s , 141. Simultaneity, 114 ‘Some,’ 148 Southey, 181, 182 Space, Physical, 27 Spatialisation, 52, 116, 134 Specious Present, 99 Spinoza, 34, 42, 68, 78, 79, 115, 129, 159 Sophocles, 17 Standpoint, 68, e s.

Stoicism, 18

Struggle for Existence, 105. Subjectivism, 84, e s Substance, 53, e 4 , 115 Substantial Activity, 101, 115, 149

Superject, 149.

Synthetic Prehension, 145, e s.

Technology, 9 1 , g s Temporalisation, 118. Tennyson, 74, e s Time, 111, e 4.

Tragedy, 17

Translucency of Realisation, 155

Trent, Council of, 16. Trigonometry, 34 True Proposition, 145.

Unknowns (m Mathematics), 35

Umversals, 143.

Untrue Piopositions, 143

Value, M, e s , 146, 160 Variable, The, 31, e 5, 148. Vasco da Gama, 22 Velocity, 47, e s„ 109, e s Veitex of Abstractive Hierarchy, 152.

Vesalius, 9

IND^

Vibration, 122, c.s.

Vibratory Organic Deformation,

121, e s

Vntual Work, 61.

Vitalism, 16, es, 96.

Washington, George, Watt James, 91 Weslc> , John, 65 Whitman, Walt, 22. Wordsworth, 22; 74,

Volta, 62

Voltaire, 43 ; 57, e ^ . 96.

Young, Thomas, 93.

62 .

es.

Walpole, 62.

Zeno, 117, 118, 126.

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