Chapter IV: Introduction (3)

Yet here, before discussing further the relation of dualism to science, it is well to observe that the positive history of science justifies the account of its rise which has now been given. The age of science among the Greeks was coincident with the closing conflict between Greek civilization and the general life [p.065] of the Mediterranean, and the age of modern science began, not to attempt a long story, with the discovery of America. All "looking before leaping" is transitional or revolutionary, and while, of course, there had been transitions and degrees of scientific inquiry before, the science of the Greeks belongs to that very critical transition from Greece to Rome; and modern science, to the transition, certainly not less critical, from Christendom to--who can say to what? But not only does history show science to arise when there is a stream to cross; also it shows the life of the time, in the first place, to be sharply disintegrated, its different factors being separately and abstractly expressed through as many different social groups, and, in the second place, in each of the groups to be given to double living, to the storm and stress of being one thing and seeming another. Always an age, conspicuously and characteristically scientific, has been an age of clearly developed classes and of a general duplicity in living.

Thus, to give a striking, although possibly too philosophical an illustration of the duplicity, Democritus, the great materialist and atomist, and Plato, the great idealist, were contemporaries and equally were creatures of their day and generation, and their century was the century of great achievements in Greek science. Moreover, as regards the coincident organization of society, we know at least of Plato that he was keenly conscious of the divisions of society into distinct classes. And in very much the same way materialism and idealism, not to mention hedonism and rigorism, or naturalism and supernaturalism, [p.066] have been inseparately associated with the rise and the successes of modern science. These philosophies, it must be remembered, are always more than so many conflicting "isms." They are, too, more than the special conceits, in theory or in practice, of so many separate social classes or of the great leaders of these classes. In their very differences they are the definite, the "public" expression of a conflict, or division, that inwardly affects every individual member, whatever his class or profession, which the society contains. In the day and generation of Democritus and Plato were there not well-defined parties, manifest in all the different and separately organized phases of life--moral, industrial, political or religious, namely, the parties of the conservatives and the radicals? And were there not also, as typical individual characters, each of them revealing to everybody something present within his own life, the only conventional loyalist and the more truly loyal reformer, as well as the idle or careless transgressor and the coldly calculating traitor? A life so divided and so variously impersonated was certainly teeming with duplicity.

Nor have we yet finished with the evidence from history. An age of science has always been not merely an age with a stream to cross, nor yet merely an age of classes and double living, but also an age of a thoroughly conscious utilitarianism. Whether materialistically or idealistically, all things have been treated and also looked upon as means to some end, not ends in themselves. For the disrupted society all activity has been more or less consciously calculating and instrumental. As we know, the disruption means [p.067] actual, when not also intentional, division of labour, and surely there never has been division of labour without eventual development of a distinct sense of the various special instruments and activities as utilities rather than things of intrinsic value. For a time, it is true, the several classes and their activities may maintain the semblance of conservatism and independence; but their inevitable duplicity is bound sooner or later to give a consciously conventional or utilitarian character to the conservatism, and just this makes the activity of the people instrumental or only mediately instead of immediately worthy. If, as some are sure to contend, the division of labour always tends to end, and often does end, in the formation of castes, and in consequence the instrumental character of the activities is forgotten, it needs only to be said in reply that an invitation is then given to some outside power to step in and to make use of, instead of just treasuring or hoarding, the developed instruments or utilities. Caste in the organization of society not only induces absolutism at home, but also, and in this way is fully revealed its real but suppressed utilitarianism, invites conquest from abroad. The days of Greek science were, almost notoriously, days of conventionalism and utilitarianism: witness the Sophists and their teaching, and the life which they waited upon for pay; while the surviving conservatism, by which, as cannot be questioned, the life of the time was blind to its own real mission or purpose, made possible and even historically necessary, first, the Macedonian, and then the Roman conquest of Greece. What the Greeks, being too conservative, though [p.068] utilitarian, failed to make full use of, another people, less hampered by tradition, finally appropriated. And as for the days of modern science, these, so far as unfolded to our view, have not been unlike in kind: witness the Machiavellism, with which they began, and the spirit of commercialism, which has characterized them throughout.

One thing more, too, from the facts of history may have our attention, although possibly this addition is quite unnecessary--the fact, namely, of scepticism coupled always with a hopeful curiosity. A disrupted society, dividing the labour of human life, is as sceptical as it is conventional, and as given to experiment and exploration, which are never without their sense of mystery, and even to conquest, never without its risks, as it is utilitarian. Was it curiosity or mere Hellenic conceit, the sense of adventure or the mere dogmatism of a Greek, that took Alexander abroad with his armies, or that earlier turned the attention of Athens to the possibilities of the West? And which, curiosity or religious and political propagandism, a pagan greed or a Christian piety, inspired the Western and Southern voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? Which gave rise even to the Crusades? It would be interesting, if our present purposes only warranted the undertaking, to trace the forerunning conditions of a period of scientific endeavour. We could then show both how scientific curiosity has developed as but one expression of a general interest in experimental endeavour, in adventure and in conquests of all sorts, and especially how this interest, with its mingling of doubt and [p.069] confident seeking, has been preceded by a period of art. Art, appeal as it always is from the human as expressed in the established ways of some given social organization to the natural, shows a people sensitive to a mystery, a real but unseen end, in its developed activities, but not yet willing to let the experimental and instrumental character of those activities have free expression. It appeals to the natural, which is of course the sphere of all adventure, but, still cherishing the human, it never gets, so to speak, out of sight of home. Science, the successor of art, shows home, that is, the human and the subjective, left far behind. But to follow out the line of thought here suggested would take us too far afield. Let it suffice, then, that we see these two things: how historically and socially the investigations of science, whatever their relations to an antecedent art, such as that of the Greeks or of Christendom in the Renaissance, are but an incident within a general life of appeal to nature--that is, of exploration and conquest--and then how the scepticism, involved in the inquiries of science, is intrinsic to a life that, for reasons now clear to us, has become both conventional and utilitarian, both formal--or unreal in itself--and consciously only instrumental. The first of these brings to mind what was referred to in a previous chapter, that science is man in his doubt seeking the companionship of nature; and the second will aid us greatly in understanding the attitude and method of science, to which, having the evidence of history, we have next to turn.

We have found the rise of science to imply a general abstraction of the various factors in human [p.070] life, and to be itself, in particular, the abstraction of the consciousness of nature, nature being the totality of the manifest conditions of life. This abstraction has been developed and intensified by the formation of distinct social classes; and, in the special case of the consciousness of nature, by the formation of a class of scientists, so called, who cultivate their science for its own sake. We have found the rise of science to imply also a general duplicity, evident within the field of science in what is known as dualism. Duplicity is a natural accompaniment of all abstraction, and it has, as we saw at least in part, a certain protective and corrective function, which both the logic of experience and the social and historical conditions of its expression and development warranted us in ascribing to it. And, finally, we have found that in actual life abstraction and duplicity make activity conventional and utilitarian, that is to say, consciously instrumental or--let me now say--experimental. In just these conditions, then, the general abstraction and duplicity, the conscious formalism and regard for utility, and the sense of experimentation, we have the determinant, formative influences of science's attitude and method, for any given set of conditions always makes the method with which the conditions themselves are met. Socrates, with his method of cross-questioning so fatal to all ideas that should give knowledge any visible form or resting-place, was but the spirit of his time, the spirit of radical inquiry become incarnate and assertive in public places. He was but a visible, public exponent of the critical examination of life which the self-consciousness of his time made necessary. [p.071] Indeed, no organic form, no living creature, ever reflected the character of its environment more fully, or more successfully effected an adaptive life than the method, with its searching questions, and its subtle, logical gymnastic, of that honestly and radically inquisitive Sophist. And the standpoint and the procedure of science, in respect to the relation to their environment, are closely comparable with the method of Socrates.

Thus science seeks a complete abstraction of the looking consciousness, and then with a timely duplicity it looks to a wholly external, natural world. So in the field of its peculiar abstraction does science take the character and colour of its surroundings. But, further, it presumes upon the peculiar forms and conditions of its subjective, looking consciousness, the activities of the mind, being mediative or instrumental to the presentation of the external objective world, and it uses also the activities of life at large, both the bread-and-butter activities and the mechanical inventions, both the political and the industrial organizations, as supplementary aids to its observations; for just science, the looking consciousness, is the end, and this end is presumed to justify every available means. So, again, does science take the cue from its environment, expressing in its own way and to its own purposes the general experimentalism; and this the more significantly when we remember that, besides being experimental, treating the mind as an instrument and life's activities at large as only aids more or less directly pertinent to the mind's work, it is agnostic. Its peculiar agnosticism not only reflects [p.072] its duplicity, as was before suggested, but in addition shows how very abstract its knowledge is, and--I know no better phrase--how timelily adventurous. A time of science is a time when all things final are beyond; yet also, when all things present, however mysteriously, are really leading yonder.

Further, science always divides the field of its operations, and so, besides greatly compounding its abstractness, reflects in its own way, or, as it were, projects on its own plane, what I will call the specialism of the contemporary social organization. There is division of labour in this, but there is also a difficulty, which, among other difficulties, is hereafter to be considered.

And there is, finally, one more characterization of science which is suggested by the conditions of its rise, but by something in those conditions not yet brought into clear view. An age of science is an age of a rising, although perhaps formally suppressed and disguised individualism, and quite in sympathy, the method of science is "inductive," science, though interested in classification, always having regard for the natural rights of particular things, of single individuals, reasoning from the particular to the general, as the phrase runs, not in the reverse order. Individualism has been a much misunderstood thing, be it a social movement or a logical condition of inductive thinking. The individual as person or as objective datum has been greatly abused. But at least for the present, waiving any discussion of the true character of the individual or any protest that the individual and the definite or particular must not be confused, I would only assert, but I venture to assert [p.073] strongly, first, that behind the conventionalism and utilitarianism of the life of a society divided into distinct classes, behind the abstraction and the inevitable duplicity, behind the sense of experiment and adventure, the individual person is the real power, and secondly, that in induction science has only translated this real individualism of its time into an attitude or method for the conduct of its looking consciousness. In this way, as in those other ways, has science been educated to its peculiar manner.

We have thus seen how science arises, and how its rise gives it a certain character. But already suspicion of limitations in the view of science, and so of a case for doubt with regard to it, has come to us. Abstraction and duplicity both suggest limitations, though these may not be unmixed. What the specific difficulties are, however, and how far they really justify our doubting, must be reserved for the ensuing chapter.

[p.074]

V.

THE VIEW OF SCIENCE: ITS PECULIAR LIMITATIONS.

Limitations or opportunities? Error or truth? In the familiar illustration the tracks which limit the locomotive to a certain course are essential to its successful movement, and something of the same kind may be true of science. A man's vices and virtues are never really far apart, and, again, the same may be true of science. But for the moment we are to approach science from the standpoint of its limitations; we are to see how its own natural ideals, as suggested by our characterization of the scientific view, are evidence of its inadequacy. So doing we shall take a most important step towards a thorough-going confession of doubt.

Among scientific men it is a commonplace that for accuracy and genuineness or purity, that is to say for complete abstraction, science must be (1) independent of "life," all the subjective interests, whether personal or social, the interests of politics, industry, morality, or religion, being science's most unsettling influences; (2) specialistic, the "Jack of all trades" in science being anything but _persona grata_ among scientific men; and (3) agnostic or "positivistic," all conceits [p.075] about what is beyond positive experience, and even all dogma about what seems really present to experience, being most arrant heresy; and every one of these ideals, besides being derived from the habits or instincts, commonly unrecognized and unappreciated, of the ordinary consciousness, is wholly in accord with the conclusions of the preceding chapter. The attitude of science, as there disclosed, involved a looking to an external world--the objectivism; a division of the field--the specialism; and an experimental, adventurous mind--the agnosticism or positivism. It involved other things, too, but these three are now selected, so to speak, as three determining points of science's circumference. Consideration of them, to whatever results it may lead, should meet all the demands of the present task. As for the results, these will show fundamental difficulties, very like to those of ordinary experience, to lurk in each one of the three ideals. The scientific consciousness is abstract and just for being in consequence objectivistic, specialistic, and agnostic it is artificial and unreal, though perhaps only relatively or not unmixedly unreal, and especially it is honeycombed with paradoxes and contradictions, with the translated but not transcended contradictions of ordinary life.

To the examination, therefore, of these difficulties, or limitations, we must now turn, taking the three ideals in order.