Aspects of science

That our thinking, and with it our feeling, is largely conditioned by assumptions which have no logical necessity, is a commonplace of philosophy, and is indeed apparent to the slightest introspection. Characteristic of any age is a body of beliefs, resting on more or less good evidence, and a group of feelings associated with those beliefs. The German language, so rich in indefinite but valuable general terms, afforded the word Zeitgeist for this complex, a word we have directly translated into the Spirit of the Age. The name is a good one; it indicates that we are dealing with something which is widely diffused and also subject to change. It is subject to change, but it plays a dominating rôle in the age to which it belongs. The Spirit of the Age is something that practically all the intellectual life of the age has in common. It is not manifested only in philosophical treatises or in works of art; it is often manifested even more strikingly in statesmen’s speeches and a country’s domestic and foreign policy. It is a kind of intellectual and emotional atmosphere of which everybody is aware, but which probably nobody could define. We see, however, that a very important part of it consists of a sense of probability, of a tendency to accept certain kinds of explanation and to reject others.

For the last few decades, at any rate, Science has been the chief factor in forming this omnipresent sense of probability. As a matter of fact, it is probable that the influence of Science in forming the Spirit of the Age can be traced a very long way back, as far back as Copernicus. Not that we assert the existence of a close connection between the Science and the other intellectual activities of Copernicus’s own age. The influence of which we speak is likely to manifest itself gradually; in particular, it may take a long time to affect the arts. And by the time it has percolated so far its origin may be forgotten; it may appear as a subconscious rather than as a conscious group of assumptions. By the time a scientific discovery becomes part of the mental furniture of an age, many of what were originally its possible implications will have become an integral part of it. The original discovery will then be merely the nucleus of a rich intellectual and, possibly, emotional complex, of which the parts are no longer envisaged separately. The work of Newton, for example, and the great body of exact investigations he made possible, influenced the outlook of the nineteenth century chiefly in the direction of making determinism plausible. Such lecturers as Tyndall could confidently appeal to this mental predisposition on the part of their audience, although they had no need to postulate any direct acquaintance with the work of Newton and of his successors. The fact that Newton successfully formulated exact laws for the description of natural phenomena is the important aspect of his work from our present point of view. The influence of Copernicus was rather different. From the point of view of the history of Science his importance is that he made Newton possible; from our present point of view his importance is that he made Darwin possible. Copernicus’ destruction of the isolated position of man’s planet in the solar system prepares the mind for Darwin’s destruction of the isolated position of man in the animal kingdom. They each shocked the same set of prepossessions.

The “materialistic philosophy” which was so marked a feature of the latter part of the nineteenth century, and which still forms, we believe, the prevalent intellectual complexion, owed the whole of its plausibility to its supposed scientific backing. Its basis was not merely biological; physics played quite as great a part as biology. The notion of determinism derived its strength, as we have said, chiefly from physics; biology was not in a position to demonstrate the exact correspondences required. The ultimate grandiose vision of the purely natural and inevitable march of evolution from the atoms of the primitive nebula to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as outlined by Tyndall in his Belfast Address, assumed the results of physics and astronomy as much as Darwin’s Origin of Species. It was because biology was not the only science involved that it was possible to found a “materialistic” philosophy on Darwinism. One primary assumption of that philosophy, that life arises from “dead” matter, not only had no biological support, but had been decisively refuted by the experiments of Pasteur. But, as related to the general movement of Science, the hypothesis had the necessary plausibility. Considering the then existing evidence, this hypothesis, together with the hypothesis that mental states are produced by atomic movements in a strictly determinist manner, are, indeed, striking instances of the way in which the Zeitgeist, as much as the evidence, determines the direction of our thinking.

The importance of such conceptions cannot be over-estimated. Directly or indirectly they influence the whole life, if not of their time, then of an age which succeeds them. The philosophy in question had existed for centuries, of course; what made it influential was the scientific backing it received, for, in these matters, Science has for some time past played the dominant rôle. Neither religion nor philosophy has been able successfully to oppose it; nowadays, indeed, they seem concerned only to agree with it. And if, here and there, a few artists have felt themselves outraged by what were supposed to be the teachings of Science, their influence has not been sufficient to deflect the stream. Such isolated protestants have had nothing but their feelings to oppose to what were considered to be facts, and the world, with what may have been a stupid honesty, has followed after the supposed facts. But the influence of Science on the arts would require a separate investigation. A certain stability is given to some serious art by its own tradition, and this may lessen its sensitiveness regarded merely as an indication of the spirit of its age. It is, nevertheless, very sensitive. In a history of modern literature, for example, it is impossible to exclude direct references to Darwin; it is usual, indeed, to devote some space to such “influences.” And the artist who is not at home in his age may be reduced to impotence by it. Dostoevsky is a magnificent example of a writer who, extremely sensitive to the spirit of his age, and profoundly understanding it, strove to transcend it. A smaller Dostoevsky might well have been nothing. And is a post-Darwinian Beethoven, or a post-Darwinian Dante, really conceivable?

Now it is unfortunate that, so far as scientific discoveries form the Spirit of the Age, they do so at second-hand. The Origin of Species happens to be easy to read, but even so that body of thought known as “Darwinism” owes its influence chiefly to such expositors as Huxley and Tyndall. The thing becomes set; it assumes hard, bold outlines; the issue has to be presented with something of the simplicity of an election cry. The universe of Science becomes finally a universe from which all mystery is banished and where the only ultimates are small, incompressible spheres whose movements and combinations produce—everything. The chasm separating this conclusion from the actual scientific evidence is not realised. Very tentative and almost fantastic hypotheses become dogmas, and it is as dogmas that they become influences. As a matter of fact the scientific evidence, even of Darwin’s day, suggested quite other possibilities than those popularised as a “materialistic” philosophy. James Clerk Maxwell, who had a profounder insight into physical reality than any other man of his time, in a very little known essay, draws attention to the “singularities” characteristic of certain natural phenomena, and suggests that there are more singular points the higher the rank of the existence. “At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being, may produce results of the greatest importance,” and he warns his readers against “that prejudice in favour of determinism which seems to arise from assuming that the physical science of the future is a mere magnified image of that of the past.”

Maxwell’s remark is now seen to have been prophetic. The extraordinarily profound and far-reaching philosophical implications of the theory of relativity have hardly yet begun to be investigated, but we have already a general sense of their direction. Hermann Weyl’s Raum, Zeit, Materie, for instance, the most thorough mathematical exposition of the whole theory which has yet appeared, hints not obscurely at the philosophical bearing of the new investigations. Now that, by Weyl’s own work, Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations are included by the theory, it seems to be scientifically complete. It presents us with a picture of the universe which is wholly unlike the picture of the early physics. In particular, an altogether different rôle is assigned to the human mind. So far as the exterior universe and the laws of nature are concerned, we see that the primary entity is the mind itself. It is the mind which has created, not only space and time, but the matter it has put within that framework. The mind has not created the universe out of nothing, it is true. But it is almost impossible to say anything intelligible in the old sense about the fundamental entities to which Einstein’s theory leads us. Professor Eddington suggests that they may be “the very stuff of our consciousness,” a somewhat mystical remark which nevertheless shows the trend of the new speculations. And, as a striking confirmation of Maxwell’s view of the possible development of physical science, we may quote one of the last sentences of Weyl’s profound discussion: “It must be emphatically stated that the present state of physics lends no support whatever to the belief that there is a causality of physical nature which is founded on rigorously exact laws.” Unfortunately not all men are mathematicians. The great and wonderful vista now opened up by Science—greater and more significant, we believe, than has existed at any previous time in the history of thought—is at present a consequence of highly abstruse investigations. The sheer technical difficulty of these inquiries will long hinder them from exerting their due influence on philosophy and, through philosophy, on the whole of the intellectual life of the age. But the new conceptions exist, and they derive their unshakable strength from the fact that they are the result of the severest Science. And surely no one can fail to see that they promise not only fascinating regions for thought, but a new liberation of the human spirit. Mystery, but more wonderful and full of promise than ever, has been restored to the universe.