CHAPTER VI
The Future of the Sciences
The preceding pages have very broadly indicated the way in which current physical researches may influence the scientific outlook on the problems of matter, life, and mind. The view has been put forward that we are on the eve of a profound scientific synthesis of which the main outlines are already determined. These general suggestions will now be made more precise in order to offer to anyone who is interested the opportunity of testing for himself some definite prophecies regarding the future of scientific thought. The forecast made here does not involve any supernatural reading of the future, but is based on tendencies already inherent in the different departments of science. For convenience it is expressed in the form of separate assertions concerning the future of physics, biology, and psychology.
1. Before 1940 a very remarkable simplification will be made in atomic theory, which will indicate that in quantum processes physics has ‘touched bottom’ and that—for the time being—we may consider that nature is not infinitely complex within the heart of the atom. The proof of this apparent if not absolute limit to the micro-structure of nature will take the form of the discovery of simple relationships between the fundamental constants of atomic structure, e, m, M, c, and h. (The electronic charge and mass, the mass of the hydrogen nucleus, the velocity of light, and Planck’s constant.) Such relations are already known but are considered to be of no significance since they are ruled out by the accepted theory of electrical dimensions.
Yet this dimensional system is not based on direct observation, and the importance of these relationships will soon be recognized in consequence of experiments aimed at a direct determination of an ‘electron velocity’, in a curved track. ‘Electron velocity’ as calculated from deflection experiments will be found not to be the same as the directly measurable cms. per sec., and in the case of straight electron tracks, the measured velocity may be found to be always that of light, though this does not mean much since the velocity of light in one direction has never been measured.
As the result of the study of individual radiation tracks, for instance in the reflection of electrons by crystals, and particularly of any time measurements that can be made, a new system of physical conceptions will be built up appropriate to irreversible processes, which will be substituted for the Newtonian reversible system. The new scheme will probably be based on the conception of the atom, with its radiating electron tracks, as a natural clock which not only can be used to measure out equal time intervals, but also to yield an objective criterion of past and future. In order to make this idea, or at least one part of it, capable of empirical test the following hypothesis is put forward: The time-interval between any two point-events on any electron track is a simple function of the length and curvature of the part of the track between the two points. This hypothesis contradicts the current interpretation of electron theory on a point which has never yet been subjected to experimental test.
The conceptions which will be built up on electron velocity experiments will very quickly bring within one simple theory the facts of chemical combination and colloidal processes. For these depend upon irreversible effects connected with radiation and electrons, and will therefore be amenable to treatment by the new conceptions for the very reason which necessarily puts them beyond the scope of Newtonian laws.
2. As the result of the alteration in physical conceptions biology will soon cease to draw a definite line between inanimate and living systems. The normal characters of life will be recognized as appearing in steps as one passes up the series atom, molecule, colloid, protoplasm, cell, and through further stages to mammal and man. In each class of organism a central controlling process will be discovered and its laws formulated with some precision, in terms of irreversible electrochemical processes. The process which in each organism represents the co-ordinating factor and is the life of the organism considered as a unit may for instance be described in terms of a quantity which we shall call ‘f’. ‘f’ would be such that so long as ‘f’ keeps on increasing the organism is alive, while if ‘f’ stands still the organism dies. The rate of increase of ‘f’ indicates the tempo or intensity of the organism’s life. In a simple case ‘f’ might be directly related to the intake of oxygen or food, and just as respiration and assimilation are irreversible, so is the change in ‘f’. ‘f’ must go on increasing, or else cease to represent any quantity in nature; as soon as it ceases to increase the process to which it corresponds cannot be identified any longer.
The most important factors which influence the life-function ‘f’ (i.e. which affect the central controlling process in any organism) will be known before about 1950, with the result that local rebellions such as cancer will not only be controllable, but easily prevented. Harmless methods for increasing the rate of change of ‘f’, i.e. for increasing the élan vital of the organism, will be discovered, so that, for instance, the duration of child-birth will be reduced to a natural minimum. If child-birth sometimes takes very long nowadays, this is presumably because the woman’s body is tired, exhausted, or partially poisoned by her mode of living, and by raising her vitality at the critical moment we may expect to be able to let the process go on at its natural speed. There must be some minimum time necessary for the act, since a vast number of complex organic processes have to complete themselves in a certain order, but probably this time is considerably shorter than that during which many women in this country have to suffer.
It is already known that the Mendelian genes which determine heredity are related to the rates of development of special processes in the organism, and a control over the life-tempo, or rate of increase of ‘f’ in any organism or group of cells within an organism, will provide a new method of tackling the practical problem of heredity. It is possible that hereditary tendencies to specific weakness or disease will be overcome by accelerating or retarding the rate of development of the human system at some special moment between conception and maturity.
Rejuvenation will soon be safe and efficient, but not as a means for attempting immortality. It will be socially recognized as healthy and legitimate only when undertaken to compensate for premature ageing due to specific repressions, illness, or anxiety.
The elimination of known diseases by a genuine science of life does not mean that other diseases will spring up perhaps worse than before. A theoretical science of life will know the meaning of all disease, and will not prevent one in such a way as to give rise to another. Instead of making campaigns against influenza or any other one disease, it will determine the conditions in which no disease can survive, and thus gradually eliminate all the organic diseases which attack the body.
But this does not mean the attainment of a hygienic Utopia in which human life necessarily fulfils itself. A balance will be made to the disappearance of cancer and syphilis, not by the arising of other diseases but as a result of the consequent increase in the sensitiveness of the human brain.
The supremely difficult task of the next hundred years will be to keep the mind of the race healthy and stable through a period of critical sensitiveness. We are in a transition stage of violent instability, of intense cruelty coupled with compassion (America), of blended love of liberty and need of discipline, of emotional religions and of wars—but we must hope that it will lead to some mode of life with greater inherent stability.
3. Psychology is now occupied with the discovery that the human response to perceptions is not additive, i.e. that the effect made by a group of sounds or colours depends on the pattern in space and time in which they are arranged. (Gestalt-theorie.) For instance, the effect made on a man by the individual notes of ‘God save the King’ when played in the wrong order is negligible, and bears no relation to his response when he hears the tune played in a cinema, and it reminds him of ‘patriotism’ and the War. So far no scientific method has been found of describing when a group of elements is to be treated as a ‘whole’ for the purposes of psychology, and this is where the greatest advances may be expected.
Most scientific conceptions have been based on the method of spatial analysis, i.e. the reduction, where possible, of a thing to its smallest spatial elements. Physics, biology, and psychology have all lacked the equipment to describe what makes the atom, organism, or the pattern function as a unit, and how we are to know if some group is a unit or not. The analytical method is fully developed, but we lack even the basis for a synthetic treatment. This leads some hard-headed scientists of the materialistic school who will ‘stand no nonsense’ to assert that there is no such thing as ‘synthesis’, that this is a mystical idea left over from primitive anthropomorphism. Yet to any mind that is guided not by prejudice but by a simple search for truth, the fact of synthesis is obvious, though not yet properly formulated.
Here modern physics can supply a clue. Analysis is the method required in a search for instantaneous spatial structure; the synthetic method which we need must deal with the temporal history and behaviour of systems. The fact that the human being reacts in the ways he does to a tune as a whole is evidence of something in his history, that he has heard the tune often under certain emotional surroundings. The unity of any synthesis, whole, or organism is not an instantaneous fact explicable in terms of structure, for we can recognize this unity only from a continued observation over a period of time.
Physics can invent one law to describe the approach of the two hydrogen atoms to form a molecule, and in doing so treats the two together as a unit. This suggests that the fact of organic unity is to be defined and formulated in terms of an irreversible law which governs the system as a whole. Thus a group of atoms, cells, or any other elements is to be called a unit when, and only when, one irreversible law can be found which expresses the behaviour of the different elements as contributing towards some common end, like the formation of the molecule in the case of the hydrogen atoms.
We can now draw a practical conclusion for the future of psychology, which is in great need of a moral principle to guide its treatment of disintegrated human personality. On the analogy of the two atoms, a human being is to be considered as a unity when his whole behaviour displays continuous co-ordination towards some end. But there is an important difference in the two cases: the atoms move towards an end which we know because it has already happened in history, whereas man’s development is creative, that is it proceeds towards an end we cannot know exactly before it comes into being. Thus the parent or psychologist need not trouble if he cannot understand what his child or subject is aiming towards: so long as some consistency and harmony of functioning is apparent, the ‘end’ can be left to nature to look after, because such harmony means that the organism is tending towards some ultimate condition.
The psychologists of the future will therefore have to follow some principle such as this: their only legitimate aim is the maintenance and restoration of harmonious co-ordination of all the human functions, and no concern need be paid to ultimate intellectual or spiritual ideals. Of course if the person considered is apparently tending towards some degenerate condition, that is known to the onlooker because it is not new but a repetition of what many human beings have done before, then this tendency can be altered. At least, it can be altered if the onlooker can use his intuition to discover signs of repressed conflict which show that the immediate tendency is not whole-natured, but based on the repression of some more profound aspiration or desire. Then by bringing this repressed aspiration back into consciousness the degenerate tendency may be arrested. But this control over the lives of others can only be effectively exercised by the intuitive discovery that their present tendencies are not whole-natured.
Prophecy can never be scientific, and forecasting in the realm of science is perhaps the most dangerous form of intellectual acrobatics. Science must be thorough, and all vague speculation is its enemy. But there are moments when a profound revision is necessary, and amidst the responsibilities and rich appeal of daily life no one will undertake this task who does not believe that it offers an adequate reward to science and to man. To-day prophecy can call attention to unjustified limitations inherent in current scientific thought, and encourage the students of matter and of life to get together and try to discover the single system of natural law which we must believe covers both realms. It may even help them to find crucial experiments by which to guide their search.
The reward is certainly great. The indifference to the destruction of life which has marked recent years is no cause either for surprise or for despair after an epoch of orthodox and insincere religion coupled with an abstract science of matter. One thing only can guide humanity to a saner and richer life: the recognition and valuation of life. This can be assisted by science and art both revealing life in all its significant forms. But the roots of art have been destroyed by the domination of a science which had not recognized the significance of life within the realm of natural law. For great art can only arise from a profound reverence for life, whereas to the scientific mood of this period life appeared as an arbitrary impulse in continual conflict with the laws of matter.
Physics is now studying light. The radiant influence of light nourishes life and within human body forms the fabric of consciousness. We are alive and conscious, but our consciousness is immature for we do not yet know the laws that govern our own lives and thoughts. Yet it is certain that light, life, and consciousness are bound together by some undiscovered law. This secret of nature’s alchemy is still hidden from us within our own bodies. By revealing it physics will create a new hope for man.