Human Traits and their Social Significance Part 33

Besides the satisfactions of system and clarity which the sciences give, they afford man power and security. "Knowledge is power," said Francis Bacon, meaning thereby that to know the connection between causes and effects was to be able to regulate conditions so as to be able to produce desirable effects and eliminate undesirable ones. Even the most disinterested inquiry may eventually produce practical results of a highly important character. "Science is," as Bertrand Russell says, "to the ordinary reader of newspapers, represented by a varying selection of sensational triumphs, such as wireless telegraphy and aeroplanes, radio-activity, etc." But these practical triumphs in the control of natural resources are often casual incidents of patiently constructed systems of knowledge which were built up without the slightest reference to their fruits in human welfare. Wireless telegraphy, for example, was made possible by the disinterested and abstract inquiry of three men, Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz.

In alternating layers of experiment and theory these three men built up the modern theory of electromagnetism, and demonstrated the ident.i.ty of light with electromagnetic waves. The system which they discovered is one of profound intellectual interest, bringing together and unifying an endless variety of apparently detached phenomena, and displaying a c.u.mulative mental power which cannot but afford delight to every generous spirit. The mechanical details which remained to be adjusted in order to utilize their discoveries for a practical system of telegraphy demanded, no doubt, very considerable ingenuity, but had not that broad sweep and that universality which could give them intrinsic interest as an object of disinterested contemplation.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Mysticism and Logic_, p. 34 ("Science and Culture").]

SCIENCE AND A WORLD VIEW. One of the values of disinterested science that is of considerable psychological importance is the change in att.i.tude it brings about in man's realization of his place in the universe. Lucretius long ago thought to free men's minds from terror and superst.i.tion by showing them how regular, ordered, and inevitable was the nature of things. The superst.i.tious savage walks in dread among natural phenomena. He lives in a world which he imagines to be governed by capricious and incalculable forces. To a certain extent he can, as we have seen, control these. But he is ill at ease. He is surrounded by vast ambiguous forces, and moves in a trembling ignorance of what will happen next.

To those educated to the scientific point of view, there is a solidity and a.s.surance about the frame of things. Beneath the variability and flux, which they continually perceive, is the changeless law which they have learned to comprehend.

Although they discover that the processes of Nature move on indifferent to the welfare of man, they know, nevertheless, that they are dependable and certain, that they are fixed conditions of life which, to a certain extent, can be controlled, and the incidental goods and ills of which are definitely calculable.

Herac.l.i.tus, the ancient Greek philosopher, noted the eternal flux, yet perceived the steady order beneath, so that he could eventually a.s.sert that all things changed save the law of change. The magnificent regularity of natural processes has been repeatedly remarked by students of science.

THE aeSTHETIC VALUE OF SCIENCE. As pointed out in the chapter on Art, scientific discovery is more than a mere tabulation of facts. It is also a work of the imagination, and gives to the worker in the scientific field precisely the same sense of satisfaction as that experienced by the creative artist.

Of Kelvin his biographer writes:

Like Faraday and the other great masters in science, he was accustomed to let his thoughts become so filled with the facts on which his attention was concentrated that the relations subsisting between the various phenomena gradually dawned upon him, and he _saw_ them, as if by some process of instinctive vision denied to others.

... His imagination was vivid; in his intense enthusiasm, he seemed to be driven rather than to drive himself. The man was lost in his subject, becoming as truly inspired as is the artist in the act of creation.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sylva.n.u.s P. Thompson; _The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs_, pp. 1125 ff.]

In the working-out of a principle, the systematizing of many facts under a sweeping generalization, the scientist finds a creator's joy. He is giving form and significance to the disordered and chaotic materials of experience. The scientific imagination differs from the artistic imagination simply in that it is controlled with reference to facts. The first flash is subjected to criticism, examination, revision, and testing. But the grand generalizations of science originate in just such an unpredictable original vision. The discovery of the fitting formula which clarifies a ma.s.s of facts. .h.i.therto chaotic and contradictory is very closely akin to the process by which a poet discovers an appropriate epithet or a musician an apposite chord.

But in its products as well as in its processes, scientific investigations have a high aesthetic value. There is symmetry, order, and splendor in the relations which science reveals.

The same formal beauty that appeals to us in a Greek statue or a Beethoven symphony is to be found in the universe, but on a far more magnificent scale. There is, in the first place, the sense of rhythm and regularity:

There comes [to the scientific investigator] a sense of pervading order. Probably this began at the very dawn of human reason--when man first discovered the year with its magnificent object-lesson of regularly recurrent sequences, and it has been growing ever since. Doubtless the early forms that this perception of order took referred to somewhat obvious uniformities; but is there any essential difference between realizing the orderliness of moons and tides, of seasons and migrations, and discovering Bodes's law of the relations of the planets, or Mendeleeff's "Periodic Law" of the relations of the atomic weights of the chemical elements?[1]

[Footnote 1: Thomson: _Introduction to Science_, p. 174.]

Ever since Newton's day the harmony of the spheres has been a favorite poetic metaphor. The s.p.a.ciousness of the solar system has captivated the imagination, as have the time cycles revealed by the paths of comets and meteors. The universe seems indeed, as revealed by science, to present that quality of aesthetic satisfaction which is always derived from unity in multiplicity. The stars are as innumerable as they are ordered. And it was Lucretius, the poet of naturalism, who was wakened to wonder and admiration at the ceaseless productivity, inventiveness, and fertility of Nature. We find in the revelations of science again the same examples of delicacy and fineness of structure that we admire so much in the fine arts. The brain of an ant, as Darwin said, is perhaps the most marvelous speck of matter in the universe. Again "the physicists tell us that the behaviour of hydrogen gas makes it necessary to suppose that an atom of it must have a const.i.tution as complex as a constellation, with about eight hundred separate corpuscles."[2]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 176.]

THE DANGER OF "PURE SCIENCE." The fascinations of disinterested inquiry are so great that they may lead to a kind of scientific intemperance. The abstracted scientific interest may become so absorbed in the working-out of small details that it becomes over-specialized, narrow, and pedantic. The pure theorist has always been regarded with suspicion by the practical man. His concern over details of flora or fauna, over the precise minutiae of ancient hieroglyphics, seems absurdly trivial in comparison with the central pa.s.sions and central purposes of mankind. There are workers in every department of knowledge who become wrapt up in their specialties, forgetting the forest for the trees. There are men so absorbed in probing the crevices of their own little niche of knowledge that they forget the bearings of their researches.

Especially in time of stress, of war or social unrest, men have felt a certain callousness about the interests of the abstrusely remote scholar. We shall have occasion to note presently that it is in this coldness and emanc.i.p.ation from the pressing demands of the moment that science has produced its most p.r.o.nounced eventual benefits for mankind. But an uncontrolled pa.s.sion for facts and relations may degenerate into a mere play and luxury that may have its fascination for the expert himself, but affords neither sweetness nor light to any one else. One has but to go over the lists of doctors' dissertations published by German universities during the late nineteenth century to find examples of inquiry that seem to afford not the slightest justification in the way of eventual good to mankind.[1]

[Footnote 1: It is only fair to say that literary studies have been marked by more barren and fruitless investigations (purely philological inquiry, for example) than have the physical sciences.]

PRACTICAL OR APPLIED SCIENCE. Thus far we have been considering science chiefly as an activity which satisfies some men as an activity in itself, by the aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual values they derive from it. But a fact at once paradoxical and significant in the history of human progress is that this most impersonal and disinterested of man's activities has been profoundly influential in its practical fruits.

The practical application of the sciences rests on the utilization of the exact formulations of pure science. Through these formulations we can control phenomena by artificially setting up relations of which science has learned the consequences, thus attaining the consequences we desire, and avoiding those we do not.

The _direct_ influence of pure science on practical life is enormous.

The observations of Newton on the relations between a falling stone and the moon, of Galvani on the convulsive movements of frogs' legs in contact with iron and copper, of Darwin on the adaptation of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, of tree-frogs, and of seeds to their surroundings, of Kirchhoff on certain lines which occur in the spectrum of sunlight, of other investigators on the life-history of bacteria--these and kindred observations have not only revolutionized our conception of the universe, but they have revolutionized or are revolutionizing, our practical life, our means of transit, our social conduct, our treatment of disease.[1]

[Footnote 1: Karl Pearson: _The Grammar of Science_, pp. 35-36.]

Francis Bacon was one of the first to appreciate explicitly the possibilities of the control of nature in the interests of human welfare. He saw the vast possibilities which a careful and comprehensive study of the workings of nature had in the enlargement of human comfort, security, and power. In _The New Atlantis_ he envisages an ideal commonwealth, whose unique and singular inst.i.tution is a House of Solomon, a kind of Carnegie Foundation devoted to inquiry, the fruits of which might be, as they were, exploited in the interests of human happiness: "The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes and the secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible."[2]

[Footnote 2: _The New Atlantis_.]

Science sometimes appears so remote and alien to the immediate concrete objects which meet and interest us in daily experience that we tend to forget that historically it was out of concrete needs and practical interests that science arose. Geometry, seemingly a clear case of abstract and theoretical science, arose out of the requirements of practical surveying and mensuration among the Egyptians. In the same way botany grew out of herb gathering and gardening.

The application of the exact knowledge gained by the pure sciences, may, if properly directed, immeasurably increase the sum of human welfare. One has but to review briefly the history of invention to appreciate this truth with vividness and detail. The great variety of the "applied sciences"

shows the extent and multiplicity of the fruits of theoretical inquiry. Astronomy plays an important part in navigation; but it also earns its living by helping the surveyor and the mapmaker and by supplying the world with accurate time. Industrial chemistry offers, perhaps, the most striking examples.

There is, for example, the fixation of nitrogen, which makes possible the artificial production of ammonia and potash; the whole group of dye industries made possible through the chemical production of coal tar; the industrial utilization of cellulose in the paper, twine, and leather industries; the promise of eventual production on a large scale of synthetic rubber; the electric furnace, which, with its fourteen-thousand-degree range of heat, makes possible untold increase in the effectiveness of all the chemical industries.

Industrial chemistry is only one instance. The application of theoretical inquiry in physics has made possible the telegraph, the telephone, wireless telegraphy, electric motors, and flying machines. Mineralogy and oceanography have opened up new stores of natural resources. Biological research has had diverse applications. Bacteriological inquiry has been fruitfully applied in surgery, hygiene, agriculture, and the artificial preservation of food. The principles of Mendelian inheritance have been used in the practical improvement of domestic animals and cultivated plants. The list might be indefinitely extended. The sciences arose as attempts, more or less successful, to solve man's practical problems. They became historically cut off, as they may in the case of the pure scientist still be cut off, from practical considerations. But no matter how remote and abstract they become, they yield again practical fruits.

Applied science, if it becomes too narrowly interested in practical results, limits its own resources. Purely theoretical inquiry may be of the most immense ultimate advantage. In a sense the more abstract and remote science becomes, the more eventual promise it contains. By getting away from the confusing and irrelevant details of particular situations, science is enabled to frame generalizations applicable to a wide array of phenomena differing in detail, but having in common significant characteristics. Men can learn fruitfully to control their experience precisely because they can emanc.i.p.ate themselves from the immediate demands of practical life, from the suggestions that arise in the course of instinctive and habitual action. "A certain power of _abstraction_, of deliberate turning away from the habitual responses to a situation, was required before men could be emanc.i.p.ated to follow up suggestions that in the end are fruitful."[1]

[Footnote 1: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 156.]

Too complete absorption in immediate problems may operate to deprive action of that sweeping and penetrating vision which a freer inquiry affords. The temporarily important may be the less important in the long run. A practical adjustment of detail may produce immediate benefits in the way of improved industrial processes and more rapid and economical production, but some seemingly obscure discovery in the most abstruse reaches of scientific theory may eventually be of untold practical significance.

Only the extremely ignorant can question the utility of, let us say, the prolonged application of the Greek intellect to the laws of conic sections. Whether we think of bridges or projectiles, of the curves of ships, or of the rules of navigation, we must think of conic sections.

The rules of navigation, for instance, are in part based on astronomy.

Kepler's Laws are foundation stones of that science, but Kepler discovered that Mars moves in an ellipse round the sun in one of the foci by a deduction from conic sections.... Yet the historical fact is that these conic sections were studied as an abstract science for eighteen centuries before they came to be of their highest use.[2]

[Footnote 2: Thomson: _Introduction to Science_, pp. 239-40.]

Pasteur, whose researches are of such immediate consequence in human health, began his studies in the crystalline forms of tartrates. The tremendous commercial uses which have been made of benzene had their origin "in a single idea, advanced in a masterly treatise by Auguste Kekule in the year 1865."[1]

[Footnote 1: Quoted by Thomson from an address on "Technical Chemistry" by C. E. Munroe.]

Practical life has been continually enriched by theoretical inquiry. Scientific descriptions increase in value as they become absolutely impersonal, absolutely precise, and especially as they become condensed general formulas, which will be applicable to an infinite variety of particular situations.

And such descriptions are necessarily abstract and theoretical.

a.n.a.lYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC PROCEDURE. Scientific method is merely common sense made more thoroughgoing and systematic.

Reflection of a more or less effective kind takes place in ordinary experience wherever instinctive or habitual action is not adequate to meet a situation, whenever the individual has a problem to solve, an adjustment to make. Thinking, of some kind, goes on continually. Scientific thinking merely means careful, safeguarded, systematic thinking. It is thinking alert and critical of its own methods. As contrasted with ordinary common-sense thinking, it is distinguished by "caution, carefulness, thoroughness, definiteness, exactness, orderliness, and methodic arrangement." We think, in any case, because we have to, being creatures born with a set of instincts not adequate to meet the conditions of our environment.

We can think carelessly and ineffectively, or carefully and successfully.

Scientific method, or orderly, critical, and systematic thinking, is not applicable to one subject-matter exclusively.

Examples are commonly drawn from the physical or chemical or biological laboratory, but the elements of scientific method may be ill.u.s.trated in the procedure of a business man meeting a practical problem, a lawyer sifting evidence, a statesman framing a new piece of legislation. In all these cases the difference between a genuinely scientific procedure and mere casual and random common sense is the same.

Science is nothing but _trained and organized common sense_, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club. The primary power is the same in each case, and perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of the two.

The _real_ advantage lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant.

But, after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the clubman refined and developed.

So, the vast results obtained by science are won by ... no mental processes, other than those which are practiced by everyone of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.... Nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady finding a stain of a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand thereon, differ, in any way, in kind, from that by which Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet.

The man of science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous exactness the methods which we all, habitually and at every moment, use carelessly; and the man of business must as much avail himself of the scientific method--must as truly be a man of science--as the veriest bookworm of us all.[1]

[Footnote 1: Huxley: _Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews_, pp. 77, 78 (in "The Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences").]

The scientific procedure becomes, as we shall see, highly complicated, involving elaborate processes of observation, cla.s.sification, generalization, deduction or development of ideas, and testing. But it remains thinking just the same, and originates in some problem or perplexity, just as thinking does in ordinary life.

SCIENCE AND COMMON SENSE. It is profitable to note in some detail the ways in which scientific method, in spirit and technique, differs from common-sense thinking. It is more insistent in the first place on including the whole range of relevant data, of bringing to light all the facts that bear on a given problem. In common-sense thinking we make, as we say, snap judgments; we jump at conclusions. Anything plausible is accepted as evidence; anything heard or seen is accepted as a fact. The scientific examiner insists on examining and subjecting to scrutiny the facts at hand, on searching for further facts, and on distinguishing the facts genuinely significant in a given situation from these that happen to be glaring or conspicuous. This is merely another way of saying that both accuracy and completeness of observation are demanded, accuracy in the examination of the facts present, and completeness in the array of facts bearing on the question at hand.

Scientific thinking is thus primarily inquiring and skeptical.

It queries the usual; it tries, as we say, to penetrate beneath the surface. Common sense, for example, gives suction as the explanation of water rising in a pump. But where, as at a great height above sea level, this mysterious power of suction does not operate, or when it is found that it does not raise water above thirty-two feet, common sense is at a loss. Scientific thinking tries to a.n.a.lyze the gross fact, and by accurately and completely observing all the facts bearing on the phenomenon endeavors to find out "what _special_ conditions are present when the effect occurs" and absent when it does not occur.