Part 2

It is one of the great services of relativity theory to philosophy that it provides an answer to this question. The answer is that the entities discussed by physics are defined in terms of one another. The three hundred years of building up exact science really amounts, in the last analysis, to doing what the dictionary compiler did when he defined a violin as a small violoncello and a violoncello as a large violin. Of course, if this statement were literally true, science would give us no information about the universe at all. Nevertheless, the statement is true about the actual procedure of science, and it is in virtue of this procedure that science forms a closed system. But what is left out of this description is the scientist himself. The mysterious process which is not taken into account in this description of the scientific method is the process by which the consciousness of the scientist makes contact with the entities he is talking about. In deducting the world from “point-events”, for instance, we begin by talking about something we have no direct cognisance of, namely point-events. From point-events we deduce “potentials”――again a mere word. But from potentials we deduce “matter”, and here we are talking of something of which we have direct knowledge. Similarly, the circular definition of violin and violoncello tells us nothing as it stands. But to a man who can identify one of these entities, to a man who has ever seen a violin, it gives genuine information.

We need not be surprised, therefore, that nothing from the outside ever seems to disturb the equanimity that reigns within the closed system of physics. The abstractions with which it begins are all it ever has to deal with. There are no subsequent fresh contacts with reality. If the region covered by relativity theory embraced the whole of physics it would seem that, so far as physical science is concerned, we knew all that there is to be known. But it is notorious that, of recent years, an entirely new set of phenomena has been discovered in physical science. These phenomena arise when we consider, not matter in bulk but matter in its smallest particles. These phenomena are, at present, strictly incomprehensible. The celebrated quantum theory provides us with rules for dealing with some of them, but does not make them intelligible. It seems that science has here reached its limits. Professor Eddington has even hinted that these phenomena may indicate that the universe is finally irrational, that is, that the attempt to describe nature mathematically will have to be given up. This is a possibility that Newton foresaw. But it seems more likely that our present state of bewilderment has a different cause. That cause, we shall probably find, is the insufficiency of the abstractions hitherto used in science. We have to go back to the concrete facts of experience and build up a richer, fuller set of abstractions. Physics is now paying the penalty of inadequate abstraction. In particular, it must revise its notions of space, time, and substance. This revision is quite independent of the Einstein theory, and is made necessary, not by that theory but by the quantum theory. A first attempt at this revision has been made by that great mathematical philosopher, Professor Whitehead. We need not deal with his investigation, which is at present in a highly technical state. The space and time of the new theory are interconnected and do not consist of independent volumes and instants. Every volume of space has reference to the whole of space, and every moment of time refers both to the past and the future. Hence both memory and expectation are given a rational basis. On the old view, as Hume pointed out, there is no reason whatever to suppose that the order of nature should continue. Why do we expect that the force of gravity will be in existence to-morrow? There was no reason at all for this expectation or for any other. That is to say, the whole of science itself was based on blind faith. The new foundations of science make science itself a rational activity. As for the notion of “substance”, Professor Whitehead proposes to replace it by the notion of “organism”. We may imagine an electron, for instance, as a repeated pattern of events. One of the great difficulties of the quantum phenomena is that an electron seems to pass from one place to another without passing through the intervening space. On the basis of the new abstractions this difficulty can be overcome. We have to imagine an electron as requiring a certain time to manifest itself――just as a tune does.

Science and the Modern World.

From our present point of view, however, the chief interest attaching to these new foundations for science is the place occupied in them by the intuitions of the poets. Mr Richards, literary critic, tells us that the poets must learn from science; Professor Whitehead, mathematician and physicist, tells us that science must learn from the poets. Instead of the poet having to realize that his intuitions are illusory and belong to a childish, démodé view of the world, it is the scientific man who must realize that his abstractions are too thin and narrow to be any longer useful, and that the poet makes closer contact with reality. When Wordsworth says:

“Ye Presences of Nature in the sky And on the earth! Ye Visions of the hills! And Souls of lonely places! can I think A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed Such ministry, when ye through many a year Haunting me thus among my boyish sports, On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills, Impressed upon all forms the characters Of danger or desire; and thus did make The surface of the universal earth With triumph and delight, with hope and fear Work like a sea?...”

he is not, according to Professor Whitehead, expressing fantasies that the strong-minded realist can afford to neglect: he is describing the actual concrete facts of experience, facts which, says Professor Whitehead, “are distorted in the scientific analysis”. It is the artist not the scientist who deals most adequately with reality. It is the man of science, taking his pale abstractions for the only realities, who dwells in dream-land.

So far as we can see at present, however, science cannot abandon its method. It cannot deal with the whole concrete fact: it must continue to make abstractions. But the present impasse in scientific theory is an indication that it must go back to the beginning and include more factors of the concrete fact in its abstractions. It seems likely that, in doing so, it will have to presuppose a philosophy very different from the materialism hitherto current amongst scientific men. The world will have to be regarded as an evolutionary process, where “patterns of value” emerge. It will have to be regarded as an interconnected whole, and the separation of mind from matter, and mind from mind, will have to be replaced by a conception which regards these distinctions, in their present form, as unreal. One very desirable result of this transformation will be that the arts will be taken seriously. The old outlook did not regard values as inherent in reality. They were merely expressive of the accidental human constitution, but had no cosmic significance. Art existed to provide a unique thrill, called the “æsthetic emotion”. On the new outlook the function of the arts is to communicate knowledge and, moreover, the most valuable kind of knowledge. Art, much more than science, expresses the concrete facts of experience in their actuality. Music, in particular, finds its highest function in revealing to us the possibilities of the spirit of man himself. The music of such a man as Beethoven is a revelation of existence from the vantage point of a higher consciousness. It is, we may hope, prophetic of the future development of the race. Not only art, but morals, acquire vastly greater importance on the new outlook. Morals are no longer a purely private concern, expressive of a particular human constitution in an alien, strictly non-moral universe. Men are no longer justified in believing that their only duty is to preserve their self-respect and to make the most of their opportunities.

Science, in view of our increased knowledge of its aims and powers, can no longer be presented to us as a tyrant. Science assumes certain fundamental principles and entities, and there is an arbitrary element in these assumptions. What science does not assume does not thereby not exist. It gives, and it appears that it must forever give, a partial description of the universe. The fact that the elements of reality it leaves out do not come in to disturb it is no presumption against the existence of these elements. For science forms a closed system simply because it employs the device of cyclic definition. The teachings of science, so far as the spiritual problems of men are concerned, need no longer be regarded as stultifying: they are merely irrelevant.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (italics).

――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.