,,gallio ,,or ,,the ,,tyranny ,,of ,,science ,,gallio ,,or ,the ,tyranny of ,science ,,by ,j4 ,w4 ,n4 ,,sullivan ,illustration ,e4 ,p4 ,,dutton ,,co4 33 ,,new ,,york ,,gallio1 ,,or ,,the ,,tyranny ,,of ,,science ,,copyright #aibh ,,by ,e4 ,p4 ,,dutton ,,company ,,all ,,rights ,,reserved 33 ,,printed ,,in ,u4,s4,a4 ,,gallio ,,gallio ,,or ,,the ,,tyranny ,,of ,,science #a ,there can be no doubt that the prestige of science has greatly increased of recent times4 ,in the days when ,dickens wrote ,the ,mudfog ,papers the man of science1 to the general reading public1 was a purely comic figure4 ,after the man of science had knocked the bottom out of the ,victorian universe with his theory of ,natural ,selection he inspired the respect we accord to whatever is both powerful and sinister4 ,he was observed1 warily and acutely1 as an enemy4 ,this reaction was perfectly justified1 for science1 as expounded to the populace by such men as ,huxley and ,tyndall1 deprived life of all that had hitherto made it worth living4 ,the gravamen of their offence was not that they made man an integral part of the animal kingdom1 but that they presented him with a universe that was entirely purposeless4 ,such a doctrine would probably come as a shock even to a disillusioned and emaciated ,eastern ,sage1 but to the men of the ,victorian age1 almost every one of them brought up in an orthodox ,christian household and filled with that belief in a wise ,providence that comes of great material prosperity1 it was nothing short of an outrage4 ,even the men of science themselves found their great discovery more than a little disconcerting4 ,nobody who reads them can fail to detect something strained1 something occasionally almost frenzied1 in their insistence on the duty of intellectual honesty4 ,these men are1 half the time1 shouting aloud in order to hearten themselves4 ,they were quite consciously martyrs to the truth4 ,this is true1 at any rate1 of such men as ,huxley and ,clifford4 ,there were many men of science1 of course1 who were not sufficiently alive to live in a universe of any description4 ,outside1 their laboratories they had no perceptible existence4 ,many of them died simple ,christians4 ,but to all interested in such matters it became evident that the goal of science was the detailed explanation of man as the accidental outcome of 8matter and motion04 ,since the arguments of the man of science could not be met 7for only science can cast out science7 the only thing left was to abuse him4 ,this was magnificently done by ,nietzsche1 and rather less magnificently by ,dostoevsky and ,tolstoi4 ,nietzsche pointed out that the man of science was not a human being4 ,he was merely an instrument1 the most costly1 the most exquisite1 the most easily tarnished of instruments4 ,he was incapable of love2 he was incapable of hate4 ,his one purpose was to 8reflect0 such things as he was tuned to receive4 ,the philosophy evolved by such a creature would be expressive of nothing but his own limitations4 ,he would be incapable of understanding the problems that concerned a man4 ,this was also the line taken1 more or less1 by ,dostoevsky and ,tolstoi1 and it became very popular with artists of all kinds4 ,wordsworth's scorn for the botanist became the general attitude towards all men of science4 ,it must be admitted that1 judging from biographies of scientific men1 there is much to be said for this view4 ,their favourite authors appear to be ,shakespeare and ,ella ,wheeler ,wilcox3 they are kind fathers and faithful husbands2 in their social relations they are simple-minded snobs2 and they are really amused by 8lecture-room humour04 ,it seems unlikely that such people know much of the fierce vitality that sent ,saints to rot on pillars and in dungeons1 that sent martyrs to the stake1 or even that weaker form of vitality that causes our ,divorce ,court judges to be overworked4 ,that they can understand the universe1 when it is obvious they do not understand ,clapham1 does not seem likely4 ,that1 briefly1 was the case of the artist against the man of science4 ,the artist was conscious of more things in heaven and earth1 staring him in the face1 than he believed the man of science had ever dreamt of in his philosophy4 ,it is evident that the position to-day is rather different4 ,it has become different since the ,war4 ,it is probable1 as we shall see later1 that the ,war itself is partly responsible for the increased attention paid by the artist to science4 ,but the influence was not direct4 ,the artist was not transported with admiration for the men who could make poison-gas1#a although he may have been more inclined to believe their philosophy that existence is meaningless4 ,no1 the change was1 ,i believe1 due to ,einstein3 in this respect he must be likened to ,newton and ,darwin4 ,the fact that his theory is completely unintelligible to the enormous majority of those who take an interest in it is not at all to its disadvantage4 ,rather the contrary4 ,the artist is attracted by the theory1 and respectful to it1 not in the least because he understands it1 but because he feels it is the result of a most unusual and most powerful imaginative effort4 ,it gives him a new conception of the power of the human consciousness4 ,this theory1 he is convinced1 has come from the heights4 ,it is probable1 as a matter of fact1 he thinks this because he believes the theory to be about that mathematical platitude1 a fourth dimension4 ,the fourth dimension is a phrase to which imaginative people respond with quite extraordinary intensity4 ,its popularity is like that of giant telescopes1 as was proved when a thousand pounds was recently offered for a simple explanation of it4 ,it seems to be the phrase which1 to the non-mathematician1 is most pregnant with the vast and liberating unknown4 ,if its meaning is ever generally understood1 we may anticipate that interest in ,einstein's theory will decline4 ,this will be a pity1 because the popular reaction to ,einstein's theory is perfectly justified4 ,it is the most profound and original scientific theory that has ever been invented1 and it displays a kind of imagination almost#b unprecedented in the history of science4 ,the feeling of the artist about it is rightit is vastly important to him4 #a ,he ought to have been4 ,see ,callinicus1 by ,j4 ,b4 ,s4 ,haldane4 ,being convinced that the mathematician1 at any rate1 might be a poet1 the respect of imaginative people for science in general has greatly increased4 ,many of them have decided that science is worth looking into4 ,unfortunately mathematical physics1 the master science of the present day and the one which has furnished ideals for the other sciences1 is hopelessly technical4 ,it is agreed that a modern intelligent man1 conscious of his responsibilities as an inhabitant of the twentieth century1 should be familiar with 8the scientific outlook04 ,but to acquire this outlook by brooding over the teachings and implications of modern physics is not easy4 ,thus although it is the recent astonishing development in physics which is responsible for the renewed public interest in science1 it is other sciences that reap the benefit4 ,we have poets and painters who study anthropology and literary critics who read books on the nervous system4 ,the result appears to have been disastrous4 ,at a time when the physicists are abandoning materialism the artists are accepting it4 ,they are accepting1 as the last word of science1 a picture of the world that belongs to the early bad manner of physics4 ,again we hear1 but this time from our literary men1 that slightly hysterical insistence on the duty of intellectual honesty4 ,it must be admitted that they have been predisposed to accept this view by the ,war4 ,it is a curious but indisputable psychological fact1 perhaps first noted by ,tolstoi1 that the sight of a large number of naked human bodies makes it difficult to believe that they are animated by immortal spirits possessing an eternal destiny4 ,the sight of the 8wastage0 that occurred during the ,war1 for those who saw any of it1 produced the same curious effect4 ,also1 a psychological fact that cannot be denied1 it was difficult to preserve belief in the essential nobility of man when listening to patriotic non-combatants4 ,there can be no doubt that the ,war1 for a large number of those connected with it1 has made the acceptance of materialism easier4 ,even the creative artists1 at one time great champions of the spiritual nature of man1 are now sufficiently dubious about his nature to be reduced to impotence4 #b ,i say 8almost0 because there was ,bernhard ,riemann and his disciple ,w4 ,k4 ,clifford4 #b ,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 mind4 ,most of the people who hold this belief to-day would not do so but for three reasons3 the disillusionment caused by the ,war1 their respect for science1 and their belief that science preaches materialism4 ,as for the ,war1 that is an experience to which we must accommodate ourselves as best we may4 ,it is consistent with the belief that man is a developing spirit1 but it is certainly a proof that he is not very far developed4 ,the respect for science is1 ,i believe1 on the whole rather overdone4 ,the respect is a little excessive even when it relates to mathematical physics1 but it becomes almost absurd when it relates to some other branches of science4 ,i believe1 for instance1 that ,freud's form of psycho-analysis1 some forms of behaviourism1 and many of the statements of the eugenists really are as silly as they look4 ,all that they have in common with such first-class mental activities as physics and chemistry is the name 8science40 ,it is this name that secures for them such attention as they get from intelligent people who are not cranks4 ,but even physics is a more provisional and more human thing than some romantic references to it would lead one to suppose4 ,even the tower of the mathematician1 which ,mr ,bernard ,shaw imagines to have been always unshaken1 has been seriously disturbed on more than one occasion4 ,the student of the history of science will not be too confident even of the 8indubitable certainties0 of physics when he reflects on the universal passion of belief that attached to the notion of a mechanical ether1 for whose present absence from the universe some men of science are still inconsolable1 and when he reflects on the fate that has overtaken that 8most perfect and perfectly established law01 ,newton's law of gravitation4 ,there are no indubitable certainties in science1 a fact that we who are contemporary with the destruction of the ,newtonian system are not likely to forget4 ,there are only provisional hypotheses4 ,it may even be1 as ,mr ,j4 ,b4 ,s4 ,haldane prophesies1 that physiology will one day invade and destroy mathematical physics1 by which somewhat dark saying ,i suppose phenomena mathematically may be given up4 ,whether he means that or not1 it is a possibility1 as ,professor ,eddington has hinted4 ,the scientific practitioner usually treats his hypotheses as tools1 but to the layman they become dogmas4 ,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 belief4 ,a truer knowledge of the status of scientific theories would render this agony unnecessary4 ,there are people with a natural leaning towards materialism1 and science1 preferably somewhat old-fashioned science1 will give them quite sufficient grounds to indulge their propensity with complete intellectual honesty4 ,but science does not1 and never has1 brought forward sufficient evidence to justify a man turning materialist against his will4 ,and perhaps no man has ever done so4 ,perhaps one can take the agonies of modern poets too seriously4 ,many artists1 not only small ones1 have no real indwelling force such as a man like ,beethoven obviously possessed4 ,they are merely very impressionable and adopt an attitude towards life1 and this attitude is accepted and maintained1 not because they really think it is true1 but because they derive strength from it4 ,it gives them a centre from which they can work2 it gives them a feeling of strength and completeness4 ,the maintenance of their attitude towards life may become the condition that they exist and function as artists at all4 ,nevertheless1 the attitude is maintained only by a constant effort of will1 although1 since the motive is self-preservation1 the artist will nearly always think himself perfectly sincere4 ,but ,i shall1 without going into these refinements1 take the unhappiness of our modern literary men at its face-value1 those1 that is1 who believe that the universe is purposeless and think this belief is founded on scientific evidence4 ,the point of view has been well put recently by ,mr ,i4 ,a4 ,richards1#c a literary critic who thinks it possible that poetry may be destroyed by science4 ,he speaks of the 8neutralization of nature0 which has been effected by science1 and contrasts this with the 8magical view0 of the world that has hitherto been accepted by artists4 ,what he means by this is that science reveals to us a universe quite indifferent to all human aspirations1 whereas artists have hitherto assumed that man is of cosmic significance4 ,the poet must learn to accept the scientific universe and give up believing in things like 8inspiration01 8a reality deeper than the reality of science01 and so on4 8,experience01 says ,mr ,richards1 8is its own justification01 by which he appears to mean that experience just happens to be what it is by some kind of accident4 ,it points to nothing beyond itself4 ,the ground for this belief is not1 in ,mr ,richards' case1 old-fashioned materialism4 8,it is not what the universe is made of but how it works1 the law it follows1 which makes knowledge of it incapable of spurring on our emotional responses40 ,this reminds one of the 8iron laws0 of the ,victorian age1 which many people found so depressing1 although the logical connection between existence having conditions and existence being purposeless is a little hard to follow4 ,but although the particular iron laws of the ,victorians have gone1 ,mr ,richards finds the theory of relativity no more cheering4 8,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 him40 ,apparently it is the existence of any law at all that is resented3 the poet can feel happy only in a world of pure miracle4 ,i strongly doubt the correctness of ,mr ,richards' diagnosis4#d ,i am certain that not all poets have been as childish as that4 ,nothe essential element in this general outlook is not that phenomena occur in an orderly way1 but that man's existence is not regarded as forming part of some universal purpose4 ,the essential element is the same as in old-fashioned materialism1 the 8accidental collocations of atoms0 theory4 ,the emphasis was on the 8accidental0 not on the 8atoms04 ,this becomes clear when ,mr ,richards describes the appropriate emotional reaction to his view4 8,a sense of desolation and uncertainty1 of futility1 of the baselessness of aspirations1 of the vanity of endeavour1 and a thirst for a life-giving water which seems suddenly to have failed1 are the signs in consciousness of this necessary reorganization of our lives40 ,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 ground4 ,but if ,mr ,richards is right1 ,i suggest that the poets who are so depressed by law and order should study1 besides the theory of relativity1 ,quantum ,theory4 ,they will find there much that is1 at present1 agreeably miraculous4 ,but one need not fly to miracles to get rid of the bug-bear of 8unalterable law04 ,it is only necessary to understand the true status of the unalterable laws1 and this is just what relativity theory enables us to do4 #c ,science and ,poetry1 #aibf4 #d ,but possibly ,mr ,richards means that the scientific description does not include values4 ,see ,section #e of this essay4 #c ,the idea that there is a conflict between science and art1 which is at bottom the idea that there is a conflict between science and mysticism1 rests1 ,i have suggested1 upon an old-fashioned conception of the status of physics4 ,the first duty of a man who bases his conclusions on science is to make sure that his science is up-to-date4 ,the science that leads to the depressing conclusions ,i have just sketched is not up-to-date4 ,until a few years ago the physicist thought that the material universe he dealt with was a real1 objectively existing universe in the sense that1 in the absence of consciousness1 it would be very much the same as it appeared to be4 ,this universe was subject to laws1 and these laws might conceivably have been different4 ,there was no a priori reason1 for instance1 why the force of gravitation should not vary as the inverse cube of the distance4 ,there was no a priori reason why matter and energy should be conserved4 ,these were laws of governance of the material universe2 their discovery had required much effort and the rejection of alternatives4 ,man was in no sense responsible for them3 he happened to live in a universe governed by them4 ,these were the iron laws of the ,victorians and are the laws1 apparently1 that depress modern poets4 ,one of the great discoveries of relativity theory is that these laws need be no more depressing than the laws of ,euclidean geometry4 ,no artist has felt his aspirations baseless because he cannot draw a circle whose circumference is six times its radius4 ,he has no more right to despair because there is an inexorable law of gravitation4 ,this has been made clear by ,professor ,eddington1 whose mathematical development of relativity theory is of great philosophical importance1 and would1 in a more adequately educated community1 be given more newspaper headlines than ,tutankhamen4 ,the real universe1 according to relativity theory1 is a four-dimensional world of point-events4 ,of the nature of point-events we know nothing4 ,all that we require to know1 for the purposes of physics1 is that it takes four numbers to specify a point-event uniquely1 and that some kind of structurea minimum amount of structuremay be postulated of the world of point-events4 ,we then find1 purely by mathematical processes1 that certain characteristics of this world will have the quality of permanence4 ,the mind1 faced with this world of evanescent point-events1 selects those characteristics that are permanent as being of special interest4 ,this is merely because the mind happens to be that kind of thing4 ,as a consequence of this predilection of the mind there arises space and time1 matter1 and the laws of nature4 ,there arises1 in fact1 the 8objective universe04 ,the real world of point-events has many other characteristics to which the mind pays no attention4 ,a different principle of selection1 exercised on the same total world of point-events1 would result in an utterly different universe1 a universe that is1 for us1 quite unimaginable4 ,and the universe that the mind has selected and constructed from the world of point-events does not in the least depend on what the point-events are4 ,all that is necessary is that a certain minimum amount of structure should be attributed to the world of point-events4 ,it is from the relations between the point-events1 quite independent of their substance1 that the mind has created the material universe and its laws4 ,these laws1 it must be emphasized1 are necessary consequences of the mind's selective action4 ,they are necessary in the same sense that the sum of the three interior angles of a ,euclidean triangle must be two right angles4 ,of the underlying reality deduced by physics we can say almost nothing4 ,it may be what ,newton called the 8sensorium0 of ,god1 and the point-events may be his thoughts4 ,they do not succeed one another in time for1 at this stage of analysis1 space and time are 8merged in one04 ,this perfectly gratuitous hypothesis may appeal to some mystics1 for our thoughts1 considered as belonging to the world of point-events1 would be part of the thoughts of ,god4 ,it would be indeed true that in him we lived and moved and had our being4 ,we see1 then1 the limitations of physics4 ,all that depends on the structure of reality belongs to physics1 including other universes than ours4 ,all that depends upon the substance of reality for ever lies outside physics4 ,as to the actual universe we live in1 why we should regard it as actual is a problem for psychology4 ,the difference between the actual and the non-actual is a distinction conferred by our minds4 ,it is very probable that the whole movement of the universe in time is also contributed by our minds4 ,it seems to be true that events do not take placewe come across them4 ,why we do not know the future is again a question of psychology4 ,ignorance of the future1 like the existence of the material universe1 is a clue to the constitution of our minds4 ,this has a bearing on the question of 8purpose0 in the universe4 ,the conception of purpose seems to suppose a process in time1 and therefore may be a totally irrelevant idea when applied to reality4 ,the philosophical implications of relativity theory will doubtless take a long time to work out4 ,the four-dimensional universe of point-events is something that can be argued about but it is1 to use an old-fashioned phrase1 8inconceivable04 ,mankind1 excepting professional logicians1 never remains content with the inconceivable4 ,a purely logical conclusion is not enough2 it has to be grasped imaginatively1 by which ,i do not necessarily mean that it has to be pictured4 ,to become familiar with a theory does not merely mean that one is able1 as a form of mental wire-walking1 to slip nimbly back and forth over the logical connections of the structure4 ,it means taking it into oneself in some indefinable mannerbecoming 8intimate0 with it4 ,only when a theory is 8realized01 as we say1 do we feel that we truly understand it4 ,ideas1 points of view1 that we were able to see only in flashes1 become part of our normal intellectual equipment4 ,the process may well be called a growth of consciousness4 ,there are ideas which our consciousness1 when it first approaches them is1 as it were1 too flabby to grasp4 ,we first have to exercise our mental muscles4 ,every student of a line of thought such as mathematics1 which is rather outside our normal preoccupations1 becomes aware of an actual change in his mental powers4 ,notions so abstract that at first they seemed almost meaningless gradually become perfectly clear and permanent additions to one's mental resources4 ,students of musical composition find that their capacity for mentally hearing a number of parts rapidly increases4 ,in some cases it is almost as if a new faculty of the mind were born and developed4 ,the physics of recent years has made heavy demands upon our capacity for realization4 ,the electron theory1 with its analysis of matter into 8disembodied charges of electricity0 required1 for its understanding1 the breaking up of old habits of thought4 ,to young students the idea was1 at first1 extremely bafflingalmost nonsense4 ,to realize it one had to make more abstract one's idea of matter until the notion of 8substance0 was replaced by the notion of 8behaviour04 ,anything that behaved in the way characteristic of matter was matter4 ,the central idea of the restricted principle of relativity1 the idea of different time-systems1 was still more difficult to grasp4 ,in this case we had to become convinced that our ordinary idea of simultaneity1 an idea which seemed perfectly clear1 was really a bogus idea4 ,the attacks on the theory of relativity show1 for the most part1 merely that their authors are unable to abandon old habits of thought4 ,with the complete theory of relativity1 as we have it now1 the task of adjustment has become enormous4 ,there cannot be1 even now1 more than very few scientific men who naturally approach a problem from the point of view of relativity theory4 ,in most cases a conscious effort of mental preparation is required1 such as occurs when a novelist1 sitting down to continue his work1 deliberately thinks himself into the appropriate frame of mind4 ,yet doubtless the next generation or so will think in terms of relativity theory as naturally as we thought in terms of the ,newtonian system4 ,i would not hold it as impossible that the human mind may come to realize1 imaginatively as well as logically1 the four-dimensional space-time continuum4 ,but it seems that the mind of the physicist1 at any rate1 will have to do more than become familiar with relativity theory4 ,it will have to accommodate itself somehow to the quantum theory for1 although we can write down the laws which govern sub-atomic phenomena and make deductions from them1 these laws are1 at present1 unintelligible4 ,an electron behaves as if it had foreknowledge of what it was about to do and could make the mathematical calculations necessary to achieve its end4 ,we cannot admit this to be possible1 and we can only suppose that the difficulty arises from the way we think about things4 ,we must learn to think in a different way1 and what the consequences of that new way of thinking will be no one can say4 ,we know very little of the possibilities of the development of the human consciousness4 ,the proper attitude to-day in which the problem of man's place in nature should be approached is one of bewilderment and humility4 ,both the material universe and the mind of man are very mysterious things4 ,at the present time it is only an inadequate mind which is confident that it knows what is impossible4 ,there was never a time when hearty dogmatism and loud confidence were more out of place4 ,we must think as best we can1 of course4 ,the next step upward in the development of the human consciousness will not be achieved by either slovenly credulity or slovenly scepticism1 but only by a terrifying mental travail4 ,i see a human mind as some multiple plant1 here in full flower1 there still in the bud4 ,different minds have flowered in different ways4 ,beethoven's ,heiliger ,dankgesang eines ,genesenen an die ,gottheit points to the complete development in him of something which those of us who understand him have only in embryo4 ,in those who do not understand him it is non-existent4 ,and the great mystics ought at least to make us doubt whether it is we who are not deficient rather than they who are mad4 ,it is rash to dismiss our exceptional moods1 our strange flashes of what seems like insight1 as mere whimsies without significance4 ,they may be faint stirrings of the next thing that is destined to become fully alive4 ,all that we can say is that the mind lives in a universe largely of its own creation1 and that the universe1 together with the mind1 will change in ways we cannot foresee4 #d ,we have seen that the philosophy that regards man as a meaningless accident in an alien universe receives no support from modern physics4 ,the true ground of that philosophy is now1 as it always has been1 the apparently meaningless misery that forms part of life4 ,it is not by mistaking matter for an ultimate reality or by pondering on the fact that laws of nature exist that we can conclude that man is of no cosmic significance4 ,that conclusion can be reached logically only on the basis of arbitrary assumptions4 ,but the conclusion is not1 in fact1 reached in that way3 it is reached through feeling4 ,and it cannot be transcended by a logical process1 but only in virtue of a mystic experience4 ,the old materialistic outlook1 although it no longer has any scientific justification1 is still active in many branches of science4 ,it has made popular certain types of explanation and is the cause of the direction pursued by certain researches4 ,in particular it has led to a great deal of useless or misleading work being done in the attempt to reduce qualitative to quantitative differences4 ,a good deal of what passes for scientific work amongst eugenists and psychologists consists of attempts to match things which are qualitatively different4 ,this is the favourite procedure of that kind of psycho-analysis which reduces everything to sex4 ,discrimination is fatiguing2 also1 it makes appeal to sensibilities which many earnest 8scientific workers0 do not possess4 ,it is much easier to make measurements than to know exactly what you are measuring4 ,to give up the ideal of measurability would be equivalent1 to many people1 to abandoning 8science0 altogether4 8,science is measurement01 we are informed4 ,this ideal is borrowed from physics1 the science whose aim it is to give mathematical descriptions of phenomena4 ,but we may have branches of knowledge that may fairly be called science although they are not mathematical4 ,we may find it necessary to use concepts that cannot be mathematically defined4 ,it may not be mere lack of knowledge which prevents biology1 for instance1 from being a mathematical science4 ,it may be impossible in the nature of things ever to give the equation to a chicken4 ,but the bias towards measurability is very strong and has led to measurements being made1 particularly in psychology1 where we really have no clear idea at all as to what is being measured4 ,when1 for instance1 ,professor ,karl ,pearson compares fraternal resemblances in such things as stature and arm-length with fraternal resemblances in intelligence and conscientiousness1 what exactly is he doing8 ,a great deal of what is called experimental psychology impresses one as being nothing but the application of an inappropriate technique by exceptionally innocent and unworldly 8scientists04 ,the methods found so successful in physics are applied to everything under the sun4 ,it is pretty obvious that this is not due to some mystic1 ,pythagorean conviction that number is the principle of all things1 but merely to mental inertia4 ,many 8intelligence tests0 and many of the statistical results obtained by the eugenists impress the ordinary person as being laughably superficial4 ,in their eagerness to 8measure0 something our researcher seem to lose their ordinary common sense1 whereas their subject really requires the subtlety and sympathy of a very good novelist4 ,it is amazing the number of dull1 unimaginative people who find a congenial life work in prosecuting researches in pseudo-science4 ,the ordinary public1 unfortunately1 does not discriminate between one kind of science and another1 with the result that the contempt they rightly feel for some so-called men of science is apt to be extended to all scientific men4 ,thus ,mr ,g4 ,k4 ,chesterton1 having heard that some 8scientists0 explain the shape of a church spire as symbolical of phallic worship1 begins to doubt the whole ,royal ,society4 ,it must be remembered that in science real insight and imagination are as rare as in any other human activity4 ,in the clear-cut sciences1 such as physics and chemistry1 where the right way of attacking problems is known and where an elaborate technique has been built up1 there is plenty of room for valuable routine work4 ,all the difficult preliminary work of getting right conceptions and principles has been done4 ,the routine worker can measure the electric capacities of different condensers because the difficult notion of electric capacity has been made clear by his masters4 ,but the routine worker in psychology who measures 8intelligence0 is not doing anything definite at all4 ,his subject is not yet ripe for the application of such exact methods4 ,in this way the prestige of physics has exerted a harmful influence on the study of psychology4 ,it is true that some experimental psychologists are becoming aware of the fact that they do not always know what they are measuring4 ,there are controversies as to what a given set of measurements has measured1 and some measurements seem to be undertaken on the off-chance that a meaning will some day be found for them4 ,it is not suggested that all experimental psychology is of this kind1 but it is certainly true that many psychological papers1 complete with correlation coefficients and 8curves0 of all kinds1 wear an air of precision to which they have no real claim4 ,a more definitely materialistic bias is observable in the attempts to explain psychological happenings in terms of physiology4 ,the result is that learned and acute men1 caught in the jungle of neurology1 painfully fight their way out with some such epoch-making discovery as that one learns a subject more rapidly if one is interested in it4 ,this result1 which is supposed to be incompatible with the purely physiological theory of the mind1 owes all its difficulty to that in compatibility4 ,otherwise it is a perfectly obvious fact of experience4 ,if it were not for the prestige achieved by materialism in the ,victorian age it is probable that psychology would be very much further advanced than it is4 ,but the side-tracking influence of that philosophy has meant that psychologists have had painfully to discover the obvious4 ,but if materialism1 in small doses1 delays the recognition of the obvious1 it does1 when fully developed1 deny the obvious4 ,this is what the behaviourists do4 ,they deny that we think or that we can form images in our minds4 ,the only possible answer to this theory is a satire1 as when ,voltaire answered the theory that in this world everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds by writing ,candide4 ,but in this queer modern world behaviourism1 instead of being greeted with laughter1 is answered carefully and politely1 apparently in the spirit in which ,monsieur ,bergeret shook hands with the vers libriste poet1 8for fear of wronging beauty in disguise04 ,the position of the ordinary man in face of these theories is1 nevertheless1 a difficult one4 ,behaviourism may sound to him nonsense1 but so does non-,euclidean geometry4 ,his natural reaction would be to class both of them with the theory that the ,english are descended from the lost ten tribes of ,israel4 ,nevertheless1 non-,euclidean geometry is not nonsense4 ,in these circumstances it is probably fortunate that there are people patient enough to prepare careful and reasoned refutations of any whimsy that anybody cares to put forth4 ,the extraordinary predisposition of the learned towards concocting merely silly theories must always be borne in mind4 ,studious persons often have a very small range of experience of life2 they have nothing like so broadly based a sense of probability as the ordinary man of the world possesses1 which is why so many of them seem curiously innocent and gullible4 ,the beaming and genial professor expounding his theory often seems curiously like a child playing with toys4 ,the mixture of amusement and respect with which the world watches him is1 on the whole1 the correct reaction4 ,as long as he is dealing with the incomprehensible one may grant him authority4 ,nobody dreams of questioning astronomical pronouncements about forthcoming eclipses4 ,but when he is talking about the very stuff of our ordinary experience1 as in psychology1 we do wrong to accept the obviously absurd for fear that it cannot be as silly as it looks4 ,a great deal of what is called psycho-analysis1 for instance1 is merely silly4 ,only people singularly deficient in common-sense and completely lacking in a sense of humour could have invented anything so preposterous4 ,undoubtedly some pathological states are of sexual origin1 but the lengths to which the theory has been carried and the kind of interpretations that are given make the development of psycho-analysis one of the greatest psychological curiosities of our time4 ,whole-hearted belief in psycho-analysis certainly points to the existence of a complex4 ,as with any other complex1 it is defended by arguments to which none except those who are similarly afflicted can attach the slightest validity4 ,the complex is strongly materialistic1 not in the sense that everything is reduced to 8matter and motion01 but in the sense that the lowest human activities are made explanatory of all the rest4 ,one often finds1 associated with a belief in materialism1 a desire to deny any form of spiritual excellence4 ,the ostensible motive is simplification1 as when material substances are reduced to a small number of chemical elements2 but it is usually obvious1 from the forced explanations that are attempted1 that the real motive is something very different4 ,much1 of course1 must be attributed to insensitiveness1 as we see when we turn to psycho-analytic explanations of works of art4 ,the extraordinary force of the psycho-analysts' complex is well shown by the sort of arguments they find convincing4 ,thus they may profess to show that artistic tastes never exist without suppressed sexual desires4 ,their way of establishing this fact1 which is chiefly by asserting it1 is comparatively rational4 ,but they then proceed to the statement that a taste for art is merely a disguised form of sexual desire4 ,they might as well say that it is a disguised form of hunger1 since artists are quite as notorious for being hungry as for being erotic1 and artistic tastes are never found to exist in a man who takes no nourishment4 ,not only much modern psychology1 but some other modern sciences such as comparative religion1 are prone to a certain fallacy that may be called the fallacy of 8explanation by origins04 ,this kind of explanation has been made popular by the theory of evolution1 and the fallacy consists in supposing that to give the historical antecedents of a thing is to give an analysis of that thing4 ,thus1 some authorities suppose that by showing that religion has developed from primitive magic rites1 they have thereby proved that religion is nothing but a disguised form of magic4 ,one might as well say that an oak-tree is a disguised form of an acorn1 or that a man is a disguised form of an amoeba4 ,but this error is too glaring to be committed by more than a small percentage of our modern 8thinkers04 ,a much more insidious danger is that this type of explanation leads one to under-estimate the complexity of the thing to be explained4 ,there is a tendency to neglect those factors in the final product which cannot be traced in its historical antecedents4 ,this is one form of the widespread error of undue simplification4 ,no human mind can deal exhaustively with concrete facts4 ,every natural entity1 whether it be a flower or a nation1 contains far too many factors for thought to grasp it completely4 ,the art of human thinking is to make useful abstractions4 ,any man is a very complicated creature4 ,all the artists and scientists of the world could not describe him exhaustively4 ,but for the purposes of war every man under a certain military rank was regarded as a physical structure supporting weapons and a stomach on two legs4 ,this abstraction was useful for the purposes for which it was invented4 ,a somewhat different abstraction is required when a man is considered as a voter4 ,when a man is considered as a 8hand0 or a 8worker0 it is found that slightly more complicated abstractions are required4 ,in fact1 the great fault of economic theory has been that its 8economic man0 was too simple an abstraction4 ,the economist left out certain factors in his conception of man1 with the result that his plans1 when applied to real men1 do not work4 ,i am suggesting that the sciences which ape physics suffer1 amongst other things1 from inadequate abstractions4 ,this is not surprising1 for there is every reason to suppose that the extraordinary difficulties experienced by physics itself1 at the present day1 are due to the same cause4 ,an analysis of this position will show us the direction of the probable future development of science and help us to see in what consists the importance of the arts4 #e ,many people1 including some scientific men1 take science too seriously4 ,they think that science gives a far more comprehensive picture of reality than it really does4 ,there have been philosophers who have gone so far as to suppose that those factors of experience that science does not find it necessary to talk about do not really exist4 ,this is the basis of the belief that colours1 sounds1 and scents have no 8objective0 existence2 they exist only in the mind1 whereas such qualities as mass and extension are supposed to exist independently of the mind4 ,it is true that science does not find it necessary to refer to colours1 sounds1 and scents in giving its description of nature1 whereas it does find it necessary to refer to mass and extension4 ,but that does not prove that the former qualities are not as real as the latter1 are not as indubitably part of the universe4 ,the scientific concepts have by no means proved themselves adequate to account for the whole of experience4 ,nearly everything of real importance to man lies at present outside science4 ,the fact is that science was undertaken as an intellectual adventure3 it was an attempt to find out how far nature could be described in mathematical terms4 ,certain primary conceptionstime1 space1 mass1 force1 and so onall of which can be defined mathematically1 were adopted1 and it became a highly absorbing game to find out how much of what goes on around us could be described1 mathematically1 in terms of these conceptions4 ,the success of this effort has been so astonishing that some scientific men have forgotten to be astonished4 ,they have come to take it for granted that a complete mathematical description of the world should be possible4 ,this assumption is not a rational one3 it is a pure act of faith4 ,the great founders of the scheme made no such mistake3 they were quite aware of the precarious nature of their enterprise4 ,thus1 ,newton1 the greatest and most successful of them all1 says that1 if they find the mathematical method does not work1 they must try a different method4 ,the mathematical method1 which is the very essence of modern science1 has1 however1 worked splendidly4 ,from the time of its origination in the seventeenth century until the present day it has had no serious rival4 ,the ancient sthetic principle1 which led to the conclusion that the planets moved in circles because the circle is the only perfect figure1 is still used by theosophists1 but not by men of science4 ,similarly the old moralistic principle1 which explained the fact of water rising in a pump by saying that nature abhorred a vacuum1 possibly lingers on only in such superstitions as that sunlight puts the fire out4 ,in more modern times the only notorious rival of the ,newtonian method was the dialectic method of ,hegel1 who evolved the laws of the universe from his inner consciousness4 ,but the best-known result of this method1 that there could not be more planets than were known to exist1 happened to be published on the very day that a new planet was discovered4 ,the mathematical method1 then1 is at the present day without a rival4 ,but1 although we cannot at present imagine what could replace the mathematical method1 we must be careful not to exaggerate the significance of the results that have been achieved by it4 ,for these results depend not only on the method1 but also on the material the method has to work with4 ,and there is good reason to suppose1 in the present state of physics1 that the material with which science has worked hitherto is turning out to be not quite satisfactory4 ,this material is chiefly the ,newtonian set of abstractions4 ,newton postulated1 as the fundamental constituents out of which the perceived universe is built up1 ,space1 ,time1 and ,matter4 ,space and time he regarded as absolute and as quite independent of matter4 ,matter was an enduring substance that simply inhabited space and time4 ,the analysis of these conceptions has resulted in the ,einstein theory1 in which neither space1 time1 nor matter are fundamental4 ,the interesting thing about this analysis1 from our present point of view1 is that it shows clearly what arbitrary elements are present in the scientific description of the universe4 ,for we must remember that moral and sthetic elements were ruled out of the real universe simply because science did not find it necessary to mention them4 ,the foundation stones of the scientific edifice1 namely space1 time1 and matter1 were supposed to be the only realities4 ,everything else was a sort of illusion4 ,men who must have been theory-mad soberly maintained that little particles of matter wandering about purposelessly in space and time produced our minds1 our hopes1 and fears1 the scent of the rose1 the colours of the sunset1 the songs of the birds1 and our knowledge of the little particles themselves4 ,the sole realities were the little wandering particles and the space and time they wandered in4 ,the existence of everything else depended on the mind1 and was inconceivable without the mind4 ,it is interesting1 therefore1 that science has now reached a position where space1 time1 and matter also depend on the mind4 ,in giving a scientific description of the universe ,einstein does not find it necessary to begin with space1 time1 and matter4 ,these entities become 8derivative04 ,the universe becomes more spectral than ever if we are going to adopt the materialist principle that what depends on the mind does not really exist4 ,even the universe of wandering particles is comparatively cosy compared with this modern universe of undefinable 8point-events04 ,but if we do not adopt the materialist principle we may assert that moral and sthetic values are as much a part of the real universe as anything else1 and that the reason why science does not find it necessary to mention them is not because they are not there but because science is a game played according to certain rules1 and those rules have excluded these values from the outset4 ,the life-insurance actuary may1 for his purposes1 neglect many things about men1 and yet calculate1 quite correctly1 what percentage of them will die at forty4 ,but he has not proved that the qualities he has neglected do not exist simply because they do not come in to upset his calculations4 ,a politician finds that he has to base his calculations on quite different aspects of mankind from those found satisfactory by the actuary4 ,in the same way1 a mountain is a different thing to a poet from what it is to a man of science4 ,for the kind of understanding of the universe that the man of science is after1 the mountain is merely a heap of certain kinds of matter weighing so many millions of tons4 ,the poet1 who is after a different kind of vision1 finds it necessary to take into account quite other factors which enter into his total experience of the mountain4 ,the scientist may also experience emotions of awe and reverence in the presence of the mountain1 but for the purposes of his science these factors of his experience may be neglected4 ,he abstracts from the total concrete fact of his experience of the mountain4 ,the mountain1 as he describes it in the scientific paper he proceeds to write1 is a mere pale shadow of the real mountain2 he probably leaves it indistinguishable from any other mountain that happens to weigh the same1 just as to the life-insurance actuary all men of forty are exactly alike4 ,if we believe that the factors in experience that the scientific man neglects are quite as real as those he takes into account1 it becomes a matter for wonder that science is possible4 ,how is it that science forms a closed systemthat nothing from the worlds it neglects ever comes in to disturb it8 ,it is one of the great services of relativity theory to philosophy that it provides an answer to this question4 ,the answer is that the entities discussed by physics are defined in terms of one another4 ,the three hundred years of building up exact science really amounts1 in the last analysis1 to doing what the dictionary compiler did when he defined a violin as a small violoncello and a violoncello as a large violin4 ,of course1 if this statement were literally true1 science would give us no information about the universe at all4 ,nevertheless1 the statement is true about the actual procedure of science1 and it is in virtue of this procedure that science forms a closed system4 ,but what is left out of this description is the scientist himself4 ,the mysterious process which is not taken into account in this description of the scientific method is the process by which the consciousness of the scientist makes contact with the entities he is talking about4 ,in deducting the world from 8point-events01 for instance1 we begin by talking about something we have no direct cognisance of1 namely point-events4 ,from point-events we deduce 8potentials0again a mere word4 ,but from potentials we deduce 8matter01 and here we are talking of something of which we have direct knowledge4 ,similarly1 the circular definition of violin and violoncello tells us nothing as it stands4 ,but to a man who can identify one of these entities1 to a man who has ever seen a violin1 it gives genuine information4 ,we need not be surprised1 therefore1 that nothing from the outside ever seems to disturb the equanimity that reigns within the closed system of physics4 ,the abstractions with which it begins are all it ever has to deal with4 ,there are no subsequent fresh contacts with reality4 ,if the region covered by relativity theory embraced the whole of physics it would seem that1 so far as physical science is concerned1 we knew all that there is to be known4 ,but it is notorious that1 of recent years1 an entirely new set of phenomena has been discovered in physical science4 ,these phenomena arise when we consider1 not matter in bulk but matter in its smallest particles4 ,these phenomena are1 at present1 strictly incomprehensible4 ,the celebrated quantum theory provides us with rules for dealing with some of them1 but does not make them intelligible4 ,it seems that science has here reached its limits4 ,professor ,eddington has even hinted that these phenomena may indicate that the universe is finally irrational1 that is1 that the attempt to describe nature mathematically will have to be given up4 ,this is a possibility that ,newton foresaw4 ,but it seems more likely that our present state of bewilderment has a different cause4 ,that cause1 we shall probably find1 is the insufficiency of the abstractions hitherto used in science4 ,we have to go back to the concrete facts of experience and build up a richer1 fuller set of abstractions4 ,physics is now paying the penalty of inadequate abstraction4 ,in particular1 it must revise its notions of space1 time1 and substance4 ,this revision is quite independent of the ,einstein theory1 and is made necessary1 not by that theory but by the quantum theory4 ,a first attempt at this revision has been made by that great mathematical philosopher1 ,professor ,whitehead4#e ,we need not deal with his investigation1 which is at present in a highly technical state4 ,the space and time of the new theory are interconnected and do not consist of independent volumes and instants4 ,every volume of space has reference to the whole of space1 and every moment of time refers both to the past and the future4 ,hence both memory and expectation are given a rational basis4 ,on the old view1 as ,hume pointed out1 there is no reason whatever to suppose that the order of nature should continue4 ,why do we expect that the force of gravity will be in existence to-morrow8 ,there was no reason at all for this expectation or for any other4 ,that is to say1 the whole of science itself was based on blind faith4 ,the new foundations of science make science itself a rational activity4 ,as for the notion of 8substance01 ,professor ,whitehead proposes to replace it by the notion of 8organism04 ,we may imagine an electron1 for instance1 as a repeated pattern of events4 ,one of the great difficulties of the quantum phenomena is that an electron seems to pass from one place to another without passing through the intervening space4 ,on the basis of the new abstractions this difficulty can be overcome4 ,we have to imagine an electron as requiring a certain time to manifest itselfjust as a tune does4 #e ,science and the ,modern ,world4 ,from our present point of view1 however1 the chief interest attaching to these new foundations for science is the place occupied in them by the intuitions of the poets4 ,mr ,richards1 literary critic1 tells us that the poets must learn from science2 ,professor ,whitehead1 mathematician and physicist1 tells us that science must learn from the poets4 ,instead of the poet having to realize that his intuitions are illusory and belong to a childish1 dmod view of the world1 it is the scientific man who must realize that his abstractions are too thin and narrow to be any longer useful1 and that the poet makes closer contact with reality4 ,when ,wordsworth says3 8,ye ,presences of ,nature in the sky ,and on the earth6 ,ye ,visions of the hills6 ,and ,souls of lonely places6 can ,i think ,a vulgar hope was yours when ye employed ,such ministry1 when ye through many a year ,haunting me thus among my boyish sports1 ,on caves and trees1 upon the woods and hills1 ,impressed upon all forms the characters ,of danger or desire2 and thus did make ,the surface of the universal earth ,with triumph and delight1 with hope and fear ,work like a sea84440 he is not1 according to ,professor ,whitehead1 expressing fantasies that the strong-minded realist can afford to neglect3 he is describing the actual concrete facts of experience1 facts which1 says ,professor ,whitehead1 8are distorted in the scientific analysis04 ,it is the artist not the scientist who deals most adequately with reality4 ,it is the man of science1 taking his pale abstractions for the only realities1 who dwells in dream-land4 ,so far as we can see at present1 however1 science cannot abandon its method4 ,it cannot deal with the whole concrete fact3 it must continue to make abstractions4 ,but the present impasse in scientific theory is an indication that it must go back to the beginning and include more factors of the concrete fact in its abstractions4 ,it seems likely that1 in doing so1 it will have to presuppose a philosophy very different from the materialism hitherto current amongst scientific men4 ,the world will have to be regarded as an evolutionary process1 where 8patterns of value0 emerge4 ,it will have to be regarded as an interconnected whole1 and the separation of mind from matter1 and mind from mind1 will have to be replaced by a conception which regards these distinctions1 in their present form1 as unreal4 ,one very desirable result of this transformation will be that the arts will be taken seriously4 ,the old outlook did not regard values as inherent in reality4 ,they were merely expressive of the accidental human constitution1 but had no cosmic significance4 ,art existed to provide a unique thrill1 called the 8sthetic emotion04 ,on the new outlook the function of the arts is to communicate knowledge and1 moreover1 the most valuable kind of knowledge4 ,art1 much more than science1 expresses the concrete facts of experience in their actuality4 ,music1 in particular1 finds its highest function in revealing to us the possibilities of the spirit of man himself4 ,the music of such a man as ,beethoven is a revelation of existence from the vantage point of a higher consciousness4 ,it is1 we may hope1 prophetic of the future development of the race4 ,not only art1 but morals1 acquire vastly greater importance on the new outlook4 ,morals are no longer a purely private concern1 expressive of a particular human constitution in an alien1 strictly non-moral universe4 ,men are no longer justified in believing that their only duty is to preserve their self-respect and to make the most of their opportunities4 ,science1 in view of our increased knowledge of its aims and powers1 can no longer be presented to us as a tyrant4 ,science assumes certain fundamental principles and entities1 and there is an arbitrary element in these assumptions4 ,what science does not assume does not thereby not exist4 ,it gives1 and it appears that it must forever give1 a partial description of the universe4 ,the fact that the elements of reality it leaves out do not come in to disturb it is no presumption against the existence of these elements4 ,for science forms a closed system simply because it employs the device of cyclic definition4 ,the teachings of science1 so far as the spiritual problems of men are concerned1 need no longer be regarded as stultifying3 they are merely irrelevant4 99 99 99 99 99 ,transcriber's ,notes3 ,text in italics is enclosed by underscores 7italics74 ,punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected4 ,archaic and variable spelling has been preserved4