Gallio

The notion that we live in a purposeless universe is so opposed to the mental habits we have inherited that it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to bear it constantly in mind. Most of the people who hold this belief to-day would not do so but for three reasons: the disillusionment caused by the War, their respect for science, and their belief that science preaches materialism. As for the War, that is an experience to which we must accommodate ourselves as best we may. It is consistent with the belief that man is a developing spirit, but it is certainly a proof that he is not very far developed. The respect for science is, I believe, on the whole rather overdone. The respect is a little excessive even when it relates to mathematical physics, but it becomes almost absurd when it relates to some other branches of science. I believe, for instance, that Freud’s form of psycho-analysis, some forms of behaviourism, and many of the statements of the eugenists really are as silly as they look. All that they have in common with such first-class mental activities as physics and chemistry is the name “science.” It is this name that secures for them such attention as they get from intelligent people who are not cranks. But even physics is a more provisional and more human thing than some romantic references to it would lead one to suppose. Even the tower of the mathematician, which Mr Bernard Shaw imagines to have been always unshaken, has been seriously disturbed on more than one occasion. The student of the history of science will not be too confident even of the “indubitable certainties” of physics when he reflects on the universal passion of belief that attached to the notion of a mechanical ether, for whose present absence from the universe some men of science are still inconsolable, and when he reflects on the fate that has overtaken that “most perfect and perfectly established law”, Newton’s law of gravitation. There are no indubitable certainties in science, a fact that we who are contemporary with the destruction of the Newtonian system are not likely to forget. There are only provisional hypotheses. It may even be, as Mr J. B. S. Haldane prophesies, that physiology will one day invade and destroy mathematical physics, by which somewhat dark saying I suppose phenomena mathematically may be given up. Whether he means that or not, it is a possibility, as Professor Eddington has hinted. The scientific practitioner usually treats his hypotheses as tools, but to the layman they become dogmas. One is led to believe this by seeing that many of those who accept materialism on what they suppose to be scientific evidence are rendered acutely unhappy by their belief. A truer knowledge of the status of scientific theories would render this agony unnecessary. There are people with a natural leaning towards materialism, and science, preferably somewhat old-fashioned science, will give them quite sufficient grounds to indulge their propensity with complete intellectual honesty. But science does not, and never has, brought forward sufficient evidence to justify a man turning materialist against his will. And perhaps no man has ever done so. Perhaps one can take the agonies of modern poets too seriously. Many artists, not only small ones, have no real indwelling force such as a man like Beethoven obviously possessed. They are merely very impressionable and adopt an attitude towards life, and this attitude is accepted and maintained, not because they really think it is true, but because they derive strength from it. It gives them a centre from which they can work; it gives them a feeling of strength and completeness. The maintenance of their attitude towards life may become the condition that they exist and function as artists at all. Nevertheless, the attitude is maintained only by a constant effort of will, although, since the motive is self-preservation, the artist will nearly always think himself perfectly sincere. But I shall, without going into these refinements, take the unhappiness of our modern literary men at its face-value, those, that is, who believe that the universe is purposeless and think this belief is founded on scientific evidence.

The point of view has been well put recently by Mr I. A. Richards,⁠[3] a literary critic who thinks it possible that poetry may be destroyed by science. He speaks of the “neutralization of nature” which has been effected by science, and contrasts this with the “magical view” of the world that has hitherto been accepted by artists. What he means by this is that science reveals to us a universe quite indifferent to all human aspirations, whereas artists have hitherto assumed that man is of cosmic significance. The poet must learn to accept the scientific universe and give up believing in things like “inspiration”, “a reality deeper than the reality of science”, and so on. “Experience”, says Mr Richards, “is its own justification”, by which he appears to mean that experience just happens to be what it is by some kind of accident. It points to nothing beyond itself. The ground for this belief is not, in Mr Richards’ case, old-fashioned materialism. “It is not what the universe is made of but how it works, the law it follows, which makes knowledge of it incapable of spurring on our emotional responses.” This reminds one of the “iron laws” of the Victorian age, which many people found so depressing, although the logical connection between existence having conditions and existence being purposeless is a little hard to follow. But although the particular iron laws of the Victorians have gone, Mr Richards finds the theory of relativity no more cheering. “A god voluntarily or involuntarily subject to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity does not make an emotional appeal and physics does not find it necessary to mention him.” Apparently it is the existence of any law at all that is resented: the poet can feel happy only in a world of pure miracle. I strongly doubt the correctness of Mr Richards’ diagnosis.⁠[4] I am certain that not all poets have been as childish as that. No—the essential element in this general outlook is not that phenomena occur in an orderly way, but that man’s existence is not regarded as forming part of some universal purpose. The essential element is the same as in old-fashioned materialism, the “accidental collocations of atoms” theory. The emphasis was on the “accidental” not on the “atoms”. This becomes clear when Mr Richards describes the appropriate emotional reaction to his view. “A sense of desolation and uncertainty, of futility, of the baselessness of aspirations, of the vanity of endeavour, and a thirst for a life-giving water which seems suddenly to have failed, are the signs in consciousness of this necessary reorganization of our lives.” It is difficult to believe that this state of mind can be produced by the recognition of such facts as that unsupported stones always fall to the ground. But if Mr Richards is right, I suggest that the poets who are so depressed by law and order should study, besides the theory of relativity, Quantum Theory. They will find there much that is, at present, agreeably miraculous. But one need not fly to miracles to get rid of the bug-bear of “unalterable law”. It is only necessary to understand the true status of the unalterable laws, and this is just what relativity theory enables us to do.