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ASPECTS OF SCIENCE

_By_ J. W. N. SULLIVAN

LONDON RICHARD COBDEN-SANDERSON 17 THAVIES INN

PREFACE

The papers which make up this volume have been selected because, although they deal with different aspects of various scientific ideas, yet they do illustrate, more or less, one point of view. That point of view may be described, perhaps as æsthetic, but rather better as humanistic. Scientific ideas have a history; they arose to satisfy certain human needs; to see them in their context is to see them as part of the general intellectual and emotional life of man. What they exist to do they do better than does anything else, and the needs they satisfy are not peculiar to scientific specialists. These papers try to show one or two of the many reasons why, for people who are not specialists as well as for those who are, science may be interesting.

J. W. N. SULLIVAN.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE INTEREST OF SCIENCE 9

A PHYSICIST ON PHYSICS 23

SCIENCE AND CULTURE 36

JAMES CLERK MAXWELL 41

ASSUMPTIONS 49

ON LEARNING SCIENCE 72

THE ENTENTE CORDIALE 77

POPULAR SCIENCE 82

PATIENT PLODDERS 89

THE AMATEUR ASTRONOMER 95

SCIENTIFIC CITIZENS 100

THE SCEPTIC AND THE SPIRITS 105

THE SCIENTIFIC MIND 112

THE SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION 116

THEORIES AND PERSONALITIES 122

THE IDEAL SCIENTIFIC MAN 128

PARALLEL STRAIGHT LINES 133

THE NEW SCIENTIFIC HORIZON 139

THE HOPE OF SCIENCE 145

THE RETURN OF MYSTERY 151

MATHEMATICS AND MUSIC 159

HUMAN TESTIMONY 177

THE INTEREST OF SCIENCE

The conception of science as a body of thought embracing the whole of our rational convictions about reality has hardly yet been generally reached. Man is still so far from being a rational animal that the application of rational methods of inquiry to all branches of his experience is still instinctively resisted--as if reason were an alien and hostile intruder. Beliefs which are held with passion, being the expression of instinctive preferences, are felt not to belong to the “sphere” of science. On all questions where his passions are strongly engaged, man prizes certitude and fears knowledge. Dispassionate inquiry is welcomed only when the result is indifferent. Nearly every great scientific generalisation has incurred the _odium theologicum_--which is not the exclusive possession of theologians--from the Copernican hypothesis to the theory of herd instinct. That science, although continually wounding men, should nevertheless have progressed, is evidence that it serves impulses deeply rooted in man’s nature. The great scientific innovator, like the great altruist, is treated with ignominy by the society whose deepest instincts he lives to serve.

Science, the child of irrational impulse, has inherited something of the parental character. Its history reveals it as purblind and fumbling, with no clear vision of its aim, no premonition of its imperial state. Unlike philosophy, it did not aspire to universal dominion. It was content to investigate the particular instance, and did not reject a certain incoherence in explanation rather than accept a generalisation which did not spring from its own ground. It refused foreign assistance, but kept its independence. That scientific men did not always understand that science must, from its nature, be autonomous, is evident from the history of every particular science. Even as late as Descartes it was considered quite natural to deduce phenomena from metaphysical principles; and an admixture of mythical elements is not entirely absent from some branches of science, even at the present day. Science has not yet reached full consciousness of its proper ground and aims.

The values served by science, in terms of which its claim to consideration is to be judged, have become more numerous as science has developed. The earliest scientific researches were concerned wholly with the particular event, with, at most, the vaguest inkling of large perspectives. The savage who discovers that the branch lying partly in the stream is not really bent, is prompted by the same localised and detached curiosity which led to most of the early scientific discoveries. Interest in the oddity of an event is undoubtedly the root of scientific observations. The more closely the events concern us, the more pregnant they may be with possible pleasure or pain, the greater the degree of abstraction necessary to see them in their relations. Human beings remain miracles to us long after we have learned to predict the motion of a planet. Psychology is the latest of the sciences, not so much because of the intrinsic difficulty of its subject-matter as because our interest in the subject-matter is so vehement that it is almost impossible to be indifferent to the results. An intelligent fish would probably have found most of the painfully won results of human psychology fairly obvious.

From the accumulation of facts and the attempt to see them in relation springs the scientific theory. With the construction of theories science enters on a new phase in its development, and serves a different set of human values. Its facts, the products of local curiosities, now take on an order, and serve the desire for comprehension. The apparently dissimilar becomes related; law supervenes on chaos. The desire for knowledge becomes transformed into the desire for _significant_ knowledge--significant primarily for contemplation, and secondarily for practice. It is the scientific theory alone that gives to science its true being and makes it worthy of a deep concern. The desire for comprehension is deeply rooted in human nature. Religious myths and philosophical systems arose in obedience to this impulse. Science also exists to satisfy this craving, and the terms on which it does so are altogether to its advantage. The fact that it is an extension of common knowledge, and infers nothing that cannot be verified, differentiates it from myth, and is the secret of the grave and serious satisfaction it affords. Those accustomed to this homely, invigorating atmosphere find the rarer air of much traditional philosophy quite insupportable. A certain indifference to other methods of describing reality becomes more evident as the years advance and the domain of science becomes more and more extended. Peaceful penetration takes the place of open warfare, and in face of rival systems men of science feel less inclined to disprove what they feel more at liberty to ignore.

Science still falls far short of affording complete comprehension or of providing so finished a picture of reality that we feel no need of other speculations. The different sciences do not yet conspire to form one single coherent body of truth. The interstices between them are still sufficiently large to admit foreign interpretations. But the impulse to comprehension, which created science, will be justified by it: we may have so much faith. Even that moiety of mankind who care for little beyond pure immediacy will find that science alone can give them much of what they desire. Scientific theories possess a value even to those who are strangers to the pleasures of contemplation, for science has powerful reactions in the world of practice. To those who have lost their birthright it can offer a mess of pottage.

Besides serving curiosity, comprehension and practice, science offers richly satisfying objects to the æsthetic impulse. The language of æsthetics is not far to seek in the writings of men of science, and were it not that the word arouses such a proprietary fury, we should agree, reviewing their motives and the kind of their satisfactions, to call them artists. The matter of the highest art, like that of true science, is reality, and the measure in which science falls short as art is the measure in which it is incomplete as science. All good philosophy, art or science partakes of the nature of the other two. When these three are regarded as one, each will have reached its apotheosis.

It is unfortunately true that as a science advances it grows more complex. Not only does its language depart more and more from ordinary speech by the accumulation of technical terms, but the terms in current use at any time are defined in terms of others which are defined in terms of others--something after the manner of the description of the house that Jack built. The most obvious case of this Chinese box kind of language is, of course, that of mathematics. A mathematical theorem occupying one line of type might very well occupy a volume if written out in ordinary prose in which no terms were used which were not common property. For this reason modern mathematical discoveries, except in very special instances, cannot be made intelligible except to mathematicians. To learn the language of a highly developed science like mathematics takes about as long as to learn Chinese, but the task of translation into English is very much harder. For this reason mathematicians cannot hope for intelligent popular recognition; they must be content to be regarded either as vaguely impressive figures or else as mild lunatics busied with incomprehensible and probably trifling abstractions. Compared with writers, musicians or painters, they are, for social purposes, mental outlaws. It is apparent, however, that mathematics was not always so remote. It was possible for Voltaire to take an interest which was, at any rate, enthusiastic, in the work of Newton. This was doubtless due, in some degree, to the obviously dramatic quality of Newton’s discoveries, but it was also due to the fact that his discoveries could be expressed in comparatively simple language. Again, physics and chemistry at that time, and for some years later, were not only intelligible to men without special training, but such men could actually make valuable discoveries in these sciences. As these sciences progressed their language became more and more forbidding and their fundamental notions more and more abstract. Men without special training, but with scientific curiosity, turned their attention to the biological sciences. They collected birds’ eggs and butterflies; they bought microscopes and wrote little papers on the sea-shells they discovered in a morning’s walk. But biology has now developed a technical language, and the days of the untrained observer are almost over. The one science which is still, to some extent, accessible to these amiable people is psychology. It is growing more technical, it is true, but the majority of the books dealing with psychology may still be read almost as easily as a treatise on the history of the Balkans. And the “psychological” novelist can still regard himself as being, from one point of view, a scientific man. Psycho-analysis is, as yet, a favourite subject of discussion in advanced drawing-rooms where discussions of the principle of relativity are comparatively rare.

The divorce between science and the general intellectual world is unfortunate, but inevitable. It is unfortunate both for the scientific man and for the general _intelligentsia_. The scientific man, mentally companionless except for the little circle of his immediate co-workers, becomes less complete as a human being; he fails as a humanist. He too often accepts his outlawed position and turns his special interests into his exclusive interests, as if, through some inverted generosity, he refused to take where he could not give. He may grow to ignore the other intellectual activities of his time, as Darwin, to his distress, found he had grown to ignore poetry, or he may actually become intolerant of such activities and so add contempt to the ignorance with which his preoccupations are regarded by the outside world. For the outside world, also, this divorce is unfortunate. For science, in its own way, satisfies just the same impulses as do other intellectual interests, and some of them it satisfies more completely and in a richer way. A great waste of mental energy and much inconclusive discussion would be avoided were certain scientific results more generally known, and, more particularly, were the advantages of the scientific method more widely recognised and the method itself more extensively practised. An air of superiority is often noticed in the references of scientific men to certain current discussions. It is a fault of manner, but one difficult to avoid. “Inside” information usually has this effect on the possessor, and when it is information that cannot be shared the attitude is apt to become chronic. Both sides, then, are the poorer for their lack of intercourse. But this state of affairs seems to be inevitable. The claims of the Latin and Greek literatures to attention, whether they are justified or not, have led to the study of these languages being imposed on perhaps the majority of the people in this country who are predominantly interested in intellectual affairs. It is a training which consumes several years: is a training in the sciences to be added? This is manifestly impossible. Even if our whole educational system were radically altered, only those sciences, such as biology and psychology, which may be understood with comparatively little training, could ever become objects of common knowledge. But sciences where, in addition to a severe and prolonged discipline, special aptitude is necessary, must always be the property of the few. As, every year, all the sciences grow more complex, so the difficulty of obtaining an adequate knowledge of them increases. A dead language may be learnt once for all, but the language of a science must be learnt afresh every few years. The popular article of Huxley’s day, the link between the man of science and the general public, is now the link between the more and less advanced students of the same science. A so-called “popular” account of Relativity Theory, for instance, is like an annotated edition of Pindar; a very fair knowledge of the language is assumed beforehand. It might be thought that the process of reduction, as it were, could be continued, until finally an account was prepared where no technical terms were used. But such an account would be, at best, like a translation of Greek poetry; the essential quality would be gone. Such translations have, of course, their uses, but the attraction of science for the scientific man, like the attraction of a poem for the poet, is not to be communicated in this way. In art the separation of matter and form is not really possible, and the same is true of the sciences.

III

In their apologias, which have now become so common, men of science never weary of pointing out that it is the method of science which is really worthy of adoption by philosophers and that the results of science are merely provisional. The philosopher who bases his system upon the results reached at any given time by any given science has ensured the ultimate downfall of his system. He is sometimes told that the adoption of scientific methods, on the other hand, will enable him to make sure progress. At first sight there seems to be a contradiction here, for if the scientific method is infallible why are the results reached by it provisional? To judge from the history of science, the scientific method is excellent as a means of obtaining plausible conclusions which are always wrong, but hardly as a means of reaching the truth. The contradiction is only apparent, however, for it will be found that there is a part of every discarded hypothesis which is incorporated in the new theory. The discarded hypothesis proves to have been too general; the scientific man made a mistake of the same kind as the philosopher who uses the hypothesis as the basis of a general system. It is now known, for instance, that Newton’s theory of gravitation is very probably not exactly true; in most cases, however, it remains very nearly true, and there are large regions of dynamical astronomy which are unaffected by the alteration. The Newtonian laws of motion, again, are not sufficient to describe the motion of bodies moving with very large velocities, but they are very nearly true for all ordinary velocities. That the theories which have taken the place of those abandoned are exactly true is very improbable; they are, however, nearer the truth. We may say, therefore, that while the scientific method may, quite possibly, never enable us to reach the exact truth, successive applications of it enable us to approximate nearer and nearer to the exact truth. In this lies its chief difference from the methods usually adopted in philosophy, which aim at obtaining, at one blow, theories which shall never need revision. It is for this reason that philosophy does not progress.

In what, then, does the scientific method consist? It would be difficult to give a precise definition; it has, however, two main characteristics, the choice of facts and the treatment of facts. It does not seem to be generally recognised that scientific men do choose their facts; there are many people who suppose that all facts are of equal interest to scientific men, and that information respecting the number of nightingales heard in Hertfordshire during a certain month, for instance, is a contribution to scientific knowledge. It should be obvious, however, that a mere random collection of facts is very unlikely to aid either practice or theory. The aim of science is not to form catalogues, but to form theories describing phenomena, and to this end some facts are pertinent and a very great number are not. All men, faced with a problem of any kind, choose such facts for examination as they consider relevant. Sherlock Holmes often bewildered Watson by pondering over facts that Watson considered irrelevant, but Watson’s surprise was a proof that even he had a standard of relevance. The history of any science shows that the facts first chosen were those most likely to be repeated. Such facts obviously lead to statements which have a greater or less degree of generality. That an unsupported stone falls to the ground is a fact of this kind. The facts chosen by the man of science are those that permit generalisation. For this reason they usually differ entirely from the facts of interest to historians. After selecting, in accordance with this principle, the facts which are to be examined, the next step consists in establishing relations between sets of these facts. The precise expression of these relations is called a law of nature, to use a somewhat old-fashioned terminology. If now all the relations between certain sets of facts can be expressed in one general statement, that general statement is called a scientific theory. The ultimate aim of the scientific method is to create scientific theories. The scientific theory, however, usually introduces an element which has not been or cannot be directly observed, and also, as we have seen, usually proves to have been too hasty a generalisation. Its function is to co-ordinate known phenomena and to predict hitherto unobserved phenomena. The extent to which it does this is the measure of its success as a scientific theory, and, since the primary object of the scientific theory is to express the harmonies which are found to exist in nature, we see at once that these theories must have an æsthetic value. The measure of the success of a scientific theory is, in fact, a measure of its æsthetic value, since it is a measure of the extent to which it has introduced harmony in what was before chaos.

It is in its æsthetic value that the justification of the scientific theory is to be found, and with it the justification of the scientific method. Since facts without laws would be of no interest, and laws without theories would have, at most, a practical utility, we see that the motives which guide the scientific man are, from the beginning, manifestations of the æsthetic impulse. The reason why certain facts and not others interest the scientific man, the reason why he makes a choice, is because truth without beauty is as uninteresting to him as to any other artist. In the words of Poincaré: “Le savant n’étudie pas la nature parce que cela est utile; il l’étudie parce qu’il y prend plaisir, et il y prend plaisir parce qu’elle est belle. Si la nature n’était pas belle, elle ne vaudrait pas la peine d’être connue, la vie ne vaudrait pas la peine d’être vécue.”

A PHYSICIST ON PHYSICS

The well-meant and industrious efforts of professional metaphysicians to explain to men of science in what sense science is true, in what sense it has meaning and in what its value really consists, practically all suffer from the defect that men of science do not recognise the subject of investigation as being science at all. It is almost true to say that the professional philosopher is only convincing when he is talking about the Absolute, for that is a subject with which nobody else is concerned; but when he devotes his attention to subjects with which other people are familiar, it often becomes possible to put the book down before finishing it. Thus treatises on æsthetics are usually convincing to everybody but poets, painters and musicians, and philosophical writings on science are probably in great demand amongst classical scholars. Nevertheless, since philosophising on these subjects is an agreeable mental exercise, we find that some artists are now engaged in developing an æsthetic for themselves, and some men of science are engaged in trying to find out what science is. In each case the work consists chiefly in making explicit processes which are instinctive. This fact is of the greatest importance, for, if the instinctive equipment be lacking, the results will inevitably be unsatisfactory. There are treatises on æsthetics, for instance, whose chief effect on the poet is to make him doubt whether the author could tell a good poem from a bad one; this is an absolutely fatal objection. If poets cannot recognise what they call poetry as being the subject of the discussion, then, as a discussion of poetry, that discussion is worthless. Practitioners, whether artists or men of science, seldom have the inclination to uncover and dissect what is to them an instinctive and delightful process; but it is quite easy for them to see (or, rather, to feel) that a suggested explanation is unsatisfactory, although they may find it wholly impossible to give reasons for their dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, when this dissatisfaction is due to an inability to recognise the subject-matter, the explanation must be condemned. It is perfectly possible, for instance, that psycho-analysis, by introducing a mother-complex, an inferiority-complex, and two or three more, might “explain” the Ode to a Nightingale. But if this explanation left out everything which made poets regard that composition as a poem, it would not be a satisfactory explanation.