Part 2

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First Printing, April, 1924 Second Printing, May, 1924 Third Printing, August, 1924 Fourth Printing, October, 1924 Fifth Printing, December, 1924 Sixth Printing, December, 1924 Seventh Printing, April, 1925 Eighth Printing, June, 1925 Ninth Printing, June, 1925

Printed in the United States of America

INTRODUCTION

I have slightly expanded certain parts of this paper since reading it. It has therefore probably lost any unity which it may once have possessed. It will be criticized for its undue and unpleasant emphasis on certain topics. This is necessary if people are to be induced to think about them, and it is the whole business of a university teacher to induce people to think.

DAEDALUS

SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE

As I sit down to write these pages I can see before me two scenes from my experience of the late war. The first is a glimpse of a forgotten battle of 1915. It has a curious suggestion of a rather bad cinema film. Through a blur of dust and fumes there appear, quite suddenly, great black and yellow masses of smoke which seem to be tearing up the surface of the earth and disintegrating the works of man with an almost visible hatred. These form the chief parts of the picture, but somewhere in the middle distance one can see a few irrelevant looking human figures, and soon there are fewer. It is hard to believe that these are the protagonists in the battle. One would rather choose those huge substantive oily black masses which are so much more conspicuous, and suppose that the men are in reality their servants, and playing an inglorious, subordinate, and fatal part in the combat. It is possible, after all, that this view is correct.

Had I been privileged to watch a battle three years later, the general aspect would have been very similar, but there would have been fewer men and more shell-bursts. There would probably, however, have been one very significant addition. The men would have been running, with mad terror in their eyes, from gigantic steel slugs, which were deliberately, relentlessly, and successfully pursuing them.

The other picture is of three Europeans in India looking at a great new star in the milky way. These were apparently all of the guests at a large dance who were interested in such matters. Amongst those who were at all competent to form views as to the origin of this cosmoclastic explosion, the most popular theory attributed it to a collision between two stars, or a star and a nebula. There seem, however, to be at least two possible alternatives to this hypothesis. Perhaps it was the last judgment of some inhabited world, perhaps a too successful experiment in induced radio-activity on the part of some of the dwellers there. And perhaps also these two hypotheses are identical, and what we were watching that evening was the detonation of a world on which too many men came out to look at the stars when they should have been dancing.

These two scenes suggest, very briefly, a part of the case against science. Has mankind released from the womb of matter a Demogorgon which is already beginning to turn against him, and may at any moment hurl him into the bottomless void? Or is Samuel Butler’s even more horrible vision correct, in which man becomes a mere parasite of machinery, an appendage to the reproductive system of huge and complicated engines which will successively usurp his activities, and end by ousting him from the mastery of this planet? Is the machine-minder engaged on repetition-work the goal and ideal to which humanity is tending? Perhaps a survey of the present trend of science may throw some light on these questions.

But first we may consider for a moment, the question of whether there is any hope of stopping the progress of scientific research. It is after all a very recent form of human activity, and a sufficiently universal protest of mankind would be able to arrest it even now. In the middle ages public opinion made it so dangerous as to be practically impossible, and I am inclined to suspect that Mr. Chesterton, for example, would not be averse to a repetition of this state of things. The late M. Joseph Reinach, an able and not wholly illiberal thinker, publicly advocated it.

I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear. Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table. And competitive nationalism, even if war is wholly or largely prevented, will hardly forego the national advantages accruing from scientific research.

If we look at the other most probable alternative the prospect is little more hopeful. In this country the labour party alone among political organizations includes the fostering of research in its official programme. Indeed as far as biological research is concerned labour may prove a better master than capitalism, and there can be little doubt that it would be equally friendly to physical and chemical research if these came to lead immediately to shortened hours rather than to unemployment. In particular there is perhaps reason to think that that form of sentimentalism which hampers medical research in this country by legislation would be less likely to flourish in a robust and selfish labour party of the Australian type than in parties whose members enjoy the leisure which seems necessary to the development of such emotional luxuries.

It is of course possible that civilisation may collapse throughout the world as it has done in parts of Russia, and science with it, but such an event would in all probability, only postpone the problem for a few thousand years. And even in Russia we must not forget that first-rate scientific research is still being carried on.

The possibility has been suggested--I do not know how seriously--that the progress of science may cease through lack of new problems for investigation. Mr. Chesterton in The Napoleon of Notting Hill, a book written fifteen years or so ago, prophesied that hansom-cabs would still be in existence a hundred years hence owing to a cessation of invention. Within six years there was a hansom-cab in a museum, and now that romantic but tardy vehicle is a memory like the trireme, the velocipede, and the 1907 Voisin biplane. I do not suggest that Mr. Chesterton be dragged--a heavier Hector--behind the last hansom-cab, but I do contend that, in so far as he claims to be a prophet rather than the voice of one crying in the wilderness, he may be regarded as negligible for the purpose of our discussion. I shall try shortly to show how far from complete are any branches of science at the present time.

But first a word on Mr. H. G. Wells might not be out of place. The very mention of the future suggests him. There are two points which I wish to make about Mr. Wells. In the first place, considered as a serious prophet, as opposed to a fantastic romancer, he is singularly modest. In 1902, for example, in a book called “Anticipations,” he gave it as his personal opinion that by 1950 there would be heavier than air flying machines capable of practical use in war. That, said he, was his own view, though he was well aware that it would excite considerable ridicule. I propose in this paper to make no prophecies rasher than the above.

The second and more important point is that he is a generation behind the time. When his scientific ideas were formed, flying and radiotelegraphy, for example, were scientific problems, and the centre of scientific interest still lay in physics and chemistry. Now these are commercial problems, and I believe that the centre of scientific interest lies in biology. A generation hence it may be elsewhere, and the views expressed in this paper will appear as modest, conservative, and unimaginative as do many of those of Mr. Wells to-day.

I will only touch very briefly on the future of physics, as the subject is inevitably technical. At present physical theory is in a state of profound suspense. This is primarily due to Einstein--the greatest Jew since Jesus. I have no doubt that Einstein’s name will still be remembered and revered when Lloyd George, Foch, and William Hohenzollern share with Charlie Chaplin that ineluctable oblivion which awaits the uncreative mind. I trust that I may be excused if I trespass from the strict subject of my theme to add my quota to the rather numerous misstatements of Einstein’s views which have appeared during the last few years.

Ever since the time of Berkeley it has been customary for the majority of metaphysicians to proclaim the ideality of Time, of Space, or of both. But they soon made it clear that in spite of this, time would continue to wait for no man, and space to separate lovers. The only practical consequence that they generally drew was that their own ethical and political views were somehow inherent in the structure of the universe. The experimental proof or disproof of such deductions is difficult, and--if the late war may be regarded as an experimental disproof of certain of Hegel’s political tenets--costly and unsatisfactory.

Einstein, so far from deducing a new decalogue, has contented himself with deducing the consequences to space and time themselves of their ideality. These are mostly too small to be measurable, but some, such as the deflection of light by the sun’s gravitational field, are susceptible of verification, and have been verified. The majority of scientific men are now being constrained by the evidence of these experiments to adopt a very extreme form of Kantian idealism. The Kantian Ding-an-sich is an eternal four-dimensional manifold, which we perceive as space and time, but what we regard as space and what as time is more or less fortuitous.

It is perhaps interesting to speculate on the practical consequences of Einstein’s discovery. I do not doubt that he will be believed. A prophet who can give signs in the heavens is always believed. No one ever seriously questioned Newton’s theory after the return of Halley’s comet. Einstein has told us that space, time, and matter are shadows of the fifth dimension, and the heavens have declared his glory. In consequence Kantian idealism will become the basal working hypothesis of the physicist and finally of all educated men, just as materialism did after Newton’s day. We may not call ourselves materialists, but we do interpret the activities of the moon, the Thames, influenza, and aeroplanes in terms of matter. Our ancestors did not, nor, in all probability, will our descendants. The materialism (whether conscious or subconscious does not very much matter) of the last few generations has led to various results of practical importance, such as sanitation, Marxian socialism, and the right of an accused person to give evidence on his or her own behalf. The reign of Kantian idealism as the basal working hypothesis, first of physics, and then of every-day life, will in all probability last for some centuries. At the end of that time a similar step in advance will be taken. Einstein showed that experience cannot be interpreted in terms of space and time. This was a well-known fact, but so long as space and time did not break down in their own special sphere, that of explaining the facts of motion, physicists continued to believe in them, or at any rate, what was much more important, to think in terms of them for practical purposes.

A time will however come (as I believe) when physiology will invade and destroy mathematical physics, as the latter have destroyed geometry. The basic metaphysical working hypothesis of science and practical life will then, I think, be something like Bergsonian activism. I do not for one moment suggest that this or any other metaphysical system has any claims whatever to finality.

Meanwhile we are in for a few centuries during which many practical activities will probably be conducted on a basis, not of materialism, but of Kantian idealism. How will this affect our manners, morals and politics? Frankly I do not know, though I think the effect will be as great as that of Newton’s work, which created most of the intellectual forces of the 18th century. The Condorcets, Benthams, and Marxs of the future will I think be as ruthlessly critical of the metaphysics and ethics of their times as were their predecessors, but not quite so sure of their own; they will lack a certain heaviness of touch which we may note in Utilitarianism and Socialism. They will recognise that perhaps in ethics as in physics, there are so to speak fourth and fifth dimensions that show themselves by effects which, like the perturbations of the planet Mercury, are hard to detect even in one generation, but yet perhaps in the course of ages are quite as important as the three-dimensional phenomena.

If the quantum hypothesis is generally adopted even more radical alterations in our thinking will be necessary. But I feel it premature even to suggest their direction in the present unsatisfactory state of quantum mechanics. It may be that as Poincare (the other Poincare) suggested we shall be forced to conceive of all change as occurring in a series of clicks, and all space as consisting of discrete points. However this may be it is safe to say that a better knowledge of the properties of radiation will permit us to produce it in a more satisfactory manner than is at present possible. Almost all our present sources of light are hot bodies, 95% of whose radiation is invisible. To light a lamp as a source of light is about as wasteful of energy as to burn down one’s house to roast one’s pork. It is a fairly safe prophecy that in 50 years light will cost about a fiftieth of its present price, and there will be no more night in our cities. The alternation of day and night is a check on the freedom of human activity which must go the way of other spatial and temporal checks. In the long run I think that all that applied physics can do for us is to abolish these checks. It enables us to possess more, travel more, and communicate more. I shall not attempt to predict in detail the future developments of transport and communication. They are only limited by the velocity of light. We are working towards a condition when any two persons on earth will be able to be completely present to one another in not more than 1-24 of a second. We shall never reach it, but that is the limit which we shall approach indefinitely.

Developments in this direction are tending to bring mankind more and more together, to render life more and more complex, artificial, and rich in possibilities--to increase indefinitely man’s powers for good and evil.

But there are two prerequisites for all progress of this kind, namely continuous supplies of human and mechanical power. As industries become more and more closely interwoven, so that a dislocation of any one will paralyse a dozen others (and that is the position towards which we are rapidly moving), the ideal of the leaders of industry, under no matter what economic system, will be directed less and less to the indefinite increase of production in the intervals between such dislocations, and more and more to stable and regular production, even at the cost of reduction of profits and output while the industry is proceeding normally. It is quite possible that capitalism itself may demand that the control of certain key industries be handed over completely to the workers in those industries, simply in order to reduce the number of sporadic strikes in them. And as industrial progress continues an ever larger number--perhaps the majority--of industries will become key industries. The solution may be entirely different--we may well see a return to feudalism. But the probability is that the problem will be solved. This view may seem optimistic, but it is more likely than the alternative thesis which may be briefly stated as follows: “No human society will ever succeed in producing a stable organization in which the majority of the population is employed otherwise than in agriculture, animal-rearing, hunting or fishing.” It took some thousands of years to produce the stable agricultural society which forms the basis of European life and whose morals we are too apt to regard as eternal truths. It should take a shorter time to evolve a stable industrial society. The people that do so will inherit the earth. In sum, I believe that the progress of science will ultimately make industrial injustice as self-destructive as it is now making international injustice.

As for the supplies of mechanical power, it is axiomatic that the exhaustion of our coal and oil-fields is a matter of centuries only. As it has often been assumed that their exhaustion would lead to the collapse of industrial civilization, I may perhaps be pardoned if I give some of the reasons which lead me to doubt this proposition.