Religion and Science Part 9

This variety of knowledge is more original and fundamental than any which the processes of the intellect, vitiated as these are by certain inherent perversions, can give us. Intellect cannot correct itself; we must call in the aid of some other faculty if we would understand reality.

Bergson finds this faculty in what he calls "instinct." According to him, consciousness has developed in two divergent directions--instinct and intellect; and the difference between these is not one of intensity or degree, but of _kind_.[58]

They are two divergent developments of the same original consciousness, of which common origin they both retain traces, for they are not entirely dissimilar, nor is either of them ever found in a pure state.

Intellect is characteristic of man. Instinct is most highly developed among certain insects, notably the _hymenopterae_ (i.e., bees and ants).[59]

BLINDNESS OF INTELLECT.--And the difficulty of the philosophical problem for man arises from the anomalies of his own const.i.tution (as interpreted by Bergson in the light of his theory of instinct and intellect). As he puts it:

"There are things that Intelligence (or intellect) alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them." (_Creative Evolution_, p. 159).

"If the consciousness which slumbers in instinct were to wake up ... if we knew how to question it, and if it knew how to reply, it would deliver to our keeping the most intimate secrets of life."

Thus Bergson regards it as impossible that intellect should ever supply us with the complete truth about reality; there are things, e.g. life itself--which altogether elude its grasp.

INTUITION.--The situation, however, is not entirely hopeless. Man possesses some measure of instinct, which, when it has "become disinterested, self-conscious, and capable of reflecting upon its object," Bergson calls intuition. By means of this faculty, man is able, darkly perhaps but not ineffectually, to grope his way towards an understanding of reality.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.--Just as the criticisms of Cusa.n.u.s and others freed thought from an incubus which seemed likely to prevent its further development, so the movement initiated by Mach and culminating (for the present) in Bergson, has done much to discredit "a certain new scholasticism that has grown up during the latter half of the nineteenth century around the physics of Galileo, as the old scholasticism grew up around Aristotle."[60]

Mechanical determinism was characteristic of much nineteenth-century thought in Europe, not only amongst materialists, but also, in certain cases, amongst idealists as well. Against this aspect of contemporary philosophy, the work of James and Bergson has been a revolt.

"Indeterminism," i.e. a belief in the reality of freedom and spontaneity, is an essential part of their system. Their indeterminism is indeed the necessary and logical accompaniment of their anti-intellectualism. For determinism is "a fabrication of the _intellect_," a device which makes reality more manageable, more amenable to logic, more easily systematised. Freedom, like life and motion, eludes the categories of the intellect.

THE MECHANICAL VIEW a.s.sAILED.--Such are the lines upon which the new criticism of the mechanical view (the most radical criticism it has had to meet since Kant) proceeds. That view, and the idea of predetermined human action which it involves, is an inevitable product of an intellect naturally incapable of understanding freedom and spontaneity. These, as they destroy its scheme of thought, it casts out as an illusion.

"Incorrigibly presumptuous," it insists on interpreting freedom by means of those notions which suit inert matter alone, and therefore always perceives it as necessity. So that all life, far from being subjected to mechanical necessity, as had seemed the inevitable conclusion of naturalistic philosophy, was spontaneity (so to speak) materialised and embodied:

"All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity ... is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge, able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death."[61]

We have indeed travelled a long way from the austere abstractions of Mr.

Herbert Spencer. The new evolutionism is very different from the old. It subst.i.tutes for "mechanism" another conception--that of "dynamism,"

according to which the process of evolution is something undetermined and impredictable--"creative," in fact. The world of organic life is embodied "creative activity," and what this "creative activity" is, we ourselves experience every time we act freely.

PLURALISM.--The philosophy of Bergson is a reaction against the mechanical evolutionism (i.e. naturalism) of the nineteenth century.

Closely allied with it is another movement of thought, known as _pluralism_. This, too, is a reaction, not so much against naturalism, as against certain forms of idealism.

Idealism, it will be remembered, seeks to interpret reality in terms of mind or spirit. And it does this in certain cases--notably in the case of F. H. Bradley--by regarding all _phenomena_ as forms or aspects of the one absolute mind or spirit.

This has seemed to many thinkers a philosophy too abstract and too remote from the world of experience. Hence the question arose whether it might not be possible to interpret nature in terms of mind without being compelled to take refuge in the abstractions of "absolutism." And pluralism is an attempt to solve the problem.

LEIBNIZ REVIVED.--Leibniz' system of "monads," the nature of which will hardly have been forgotten, has been the model to which philosophers have looked in constructing their new system. And the "Monadology" may be taken as the type to which all modern attempts to construct a "pluralistic" philosophy more or less conform.

The essence of "pluralism"--whether Leibnizian or other--lies in the proposition that there exists an indefinite variety of beings, some higher, some lower than ourselves. The pluralist agrees with the idealist in declaring that the essence of reality is _spirit_, but differs from him in declining to allow independent spirits to be absorbed by an "all-devouring Absolute."

PLURALISM AND THEISM.--William James himself, in a work _A Pluralistic Universe_ (1909) outlined a philosophy of spirit radically opposed to "Absolute Idealism," which he subjects to a good deal of criticism.

Another important work, written from a similar point of view, is Professor James Ward's _Pluralism and Theism_ (1911).[62]

With regard to modern pluralism, the notable features are two. In the first place, it is a philosophy of _personality_, which it regards as the most fundamental form of reality; and also, that it is _theistic_ in a sense peculiar to itself. It believes in a G.o.d who may be termed the supreme monad, i.e. the head of a system of monads; but whose power may be said, in certain respects, to be limited. And indeed some such position seems to be the _logical_ conclusion that follows from the premises with which pluralists start, and also (we may add) from the facts of experience.[63]

Pluralists unite in affirming that their G.o.d is (what they deny the idealistic Absolute to be) the G.o.d of the religious consciousness. James elaborates this thesis with his usual resourcefulness and skill. The controversy, however, is one into which it does not seem necessary for us to enter. Pluralism and idealism are or may be both definitely spiritual philosophies, and perhaps they appeal to different types of mind. We, at any rate, shall not undertake to judge between them. Both alike are preferable to dogmatic naturalism.

CHAPTER XII

SOME RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCIENCE

SCIENTIFIC METHOD.--In the last chapter, attention was drawn to some important attempts to supply science with a sound philosophy of method, i.e. to give a critical account of those processes, logical and otherwise, which issue in what is called "scientific knowledge."

The general results of these attempts was to re-enforce the validity of sound scientific method _within its own sphere_. But, at the same time, it was felt likely to prove an unreliable guide elsewhere.

THE NEW PHYSICS.--Meanwhile, while the logic of science was being scrutinised by philosophers, scientific research was itself going steadily forward, and fresh discoveries of a highly important nature were coming to light. In the sphere of physical science, more especially, revolutions of Copernican proportions quietly took place.

The whole subject of physics is of a highly technical nature, quite unsuitable for discussion here, and, indeed, entirely beyond the range of the present writer.

To indicate the nature of the discoveries which were made, however, involves few technicalities: though the method by which these were demonstrated and established must remain obscure to all but mathematical specialists.

COLLAPSE OF THE ATOMIC THEORY.--Dalton's theory of atoms was described in a previous chapter. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance attached by materialists, ever since Lucretius, to the conception of indivisible and indestructible atoms. It was regarded as integral to materialism, and never was the prestige of this theory higher than during the nineteenth century, which "will go down in scientific history as the era of the atomic theory of matter."

Towards the close of the century, the theory collapsed. Atoms were found to be neither indivisible nor indestructible; and the process of the breaking up of the atom has actually been observed.

As is very generally known, it is in the case of a particular element, _radium_, that this phenomenon occurs. That substance, wherever it occurs, is undergoing a continual process of disintegration; radium atoms are continually breaking up into more elementary bodies.

Were it not for the fact that radium itself is the product of the disintegration of another element, it would be impossible to account for its survival. It continually evaporates (the life of radium is only 2500 years) but it is as continually renewed by the infinitely slower disintegration of uranium.

ELECTRONS.--The particles into which the radium atom disintegrates are known as _electrons_. And according to the new theory of matter, not only radium atoms, but the atoms of all the other elements (hitherto regarded as irreducible) are composed of electrons, differently grouped.

The radium atom is infinitely more unstable than the atoms of the other elements; but it is possible to conceive of the disintegration of these also. They are all alike composed of the same elementary particles--different compounds of the same primitive substance.

MATTER A FORM OF ELECTRICITY.--And the most remarkable part of the new theory is that these primitive particles of which material atoms are composed, are themselves the units which const.i.tute what we call "electricity." Thus matter and electricity are now expressed in common terms--they are regarded as different manifestations of the same substance. And of the two conceptions--matter and electricity--it is the latter that is the more simple and fundamental. As a high authority puts it:

"Whereas through the greater part of the nineteenth century, 'matter'

was the concept which was looked upon as fundamental in physical science, and of which there was a curious accidental property called electricity, it now appears that electricity must be more fundamental than matter, in the sense that our more elementary matter must now be conceived as a manifestation of extremely complex electrical phenomena."[64]

As to whether the electrons themselves, in their turn, are irreducible units, there may be room for doubt. According to Professor J. Larmor the electron is "a nucleus of intrinsic strain in the ether."[65] If this view be sound, matter may be regarded as a manifestation of the ether; "a persistent strain-form flitting through an universal sea of ether."

As to the nature of the ether, that is a subject of speculation among physicists. It is variously described as an "elastic fluid," and as "a fairly close packed conglomerate of minute grains in continual oscillation."[66] It may indeed be said that modern physical theories have succeeded in reducing matter, which seems comparatively knowable, to a substance of which little is known and, therefore, of which much can be postulated; it can be called sub-natural, or super-natural, according to taste.

We may, perhaps, satisfy ourselves with the words of Professor Tait: "We do not know, and are probably incapable of discovering, _what_ matter is"; and "The discovery of the ultimate nature of matter is probably beyond the range of human intelligence."[67]

And yet we can agree with Mr. Arthur Balfour when he says[68] "we know too much about matter to be materialists." That, in itself, a generation ago would have been regarded as a large admission from the standpoint of physical science.

RESULTS OF THE NEW PHYSICS.--The reduction of knowable and tangible matter to intangible electricity or unknowable ether may not seem to be much of an advance from the point of view of those who are interested in establishing a spiritual theory of the universe. But electricity is a species of energy which can be expressed in terms of will--which is the only kind of energy that we are acquainted with at first hand. "What is objectively energy is subjectively will; or, in other words, manifested energy is the visibility of will."[69] And so far as the "unknowable"

ether is concerned, it gives less scope to those powers of dogmatism, the exercise of which characterised scientists of the old materialistic school; and it is the habit of oracular p.r.o.nouncements which does the harm, by rendering any intellectual or spiritual progress impossible. In any case, whatever be the subst.i.tute which is to replace the old theory, we may congratulate ourselves, with Professor J. S. Haldane, that "we have parted once for all with the notion of a real and self-existent Material universe; and we must remember where we now are."[70]

THE NEW BIOLOGY.--But if the results of the new physics have been disturbing to those who had hoped that materialism was a finally established theory, the results of recent biological research have been equally embarra.s.sing to them. The anti-mechanistic trend of recent biological theory is only too evident. The organism is regarded no longer by the majority of biologists as fully explicable in terms of mechanics and chemistry. To quote Professor Haldane again, "The main outstanding fact is that the mechanistic account of the universe breaks down completely in connection with the phenomena of life.... In the case of life, the facts are inconsistent with the physical and chemical account of phenomena."[71]

The organism can no longer be regarded as even an extremely complex kind of machine; that word will not cover the facts, and biologists are compelled to look elsewhere for a less misleading terminology. To describe the organism as a machine, is to give to that word a very comprehensive connotation. For the organism is a machine different in kind from any that has been constructed by man; it is "a self-stoking, self-repairing, self-preservative, self-adjusting, self-increasing, self-producing engine."[72]

THE RESEARCHES OF DRIESCH.--Just as modern physics is concerned with the infinitely small--the ultra-microscopic, in fact--so modern biologists are concentrating attention upon microscopic organisms, where life is seen at its lowest terms, and where (if anywhere) they may expect to discover what are the _differentia_ of life, i.e. what are the qualities that distinguish living organic from inorganic matter. Perhaps the most notable of the researches conducted in this sphere, of recent years, have been those of Professor Driesch, who expounded his results in the _Gifford Lectures_ for 1907-1908 (_The Science and Philosophy of the Organism_).