Part 7 (1/2)
If we move for a time within a fixed circle of phenomena which recur with unvarying uniformity, our thoughts gradually adapt themselves to our environment; our ideas reflect unconsciously our surroundings. The stone we hold in our hand, when dropped, not only falls to the ground in reality; it also falls in our thoughts. Iron-filings dart towards a magnet in imagination as well as in fact, and, when thrown into a fire, they grew hot in conception as well.
The impulse to complete mentally a phenomenon that has been only partially observed, has not its origin in the phenomenon itself; of this fact, we are fully sensible. And we well know that it does not lie within the sphere of our volition. It seems to confront us rather as a power and a law imposed from without and controlling both thought and facts.
The fact that we are able by the help of this law to prophesy and forecast, merely proves a sameness or uniformity of environment sufficient to effect a mental adaptation of this kind. A necessity of fulfilment, however, is not contained in this compulsory principle which controls our thoughts; nor is it in any way determined by the possibility of prediction. We are always obliged, in fact, to await the completion of what has been predicted. Errors and departures are constantly discernible, and are slight only in provinces of great rigid constancy, as in astronomy.
In cases where our thoughts follow the connexion of events with ease, and in instances where we positively forefeel the course of a phenomenon, it is natural to fancy that the latter is determined by and must conform to our thoughts. But the belief in that mysterious agency called causality, which holds thought and event in unison, is violently shaken when a person first enters a province of inquiry in which he has previously had no experience. Take for instance the strange interaction of electric currents and magnets, or the reciprocal action of currents, which seem to defy all the resources of mechanical science. Let him be confronted with such phenomena and he will immediately feel himself forsaken by his power of prediction; he will bring nothing with him into this strange field of events but the hope of soon being able to adapt his ideas to the new conditions there presented.
A person constructs from a bone the remaining anatomy of an animal; or from the visible part of a half-concealed wing of a b.u.t.terfly he infers and reconstructs the part concealed. He does so with a feeling of highest confidence in the accuracy of his results; and in these processes we find nothing preternatural or transcendent. But when physicists adapt their thoughts to conform to the dynamical course of events in time, we invariably surround their investigations with a metaphysical halo; yet these latter adaptations bear quite the same character as the former, and our only reason for investing them with a metaphysical garb, perhaps, is their high practical value.[76]
Let us consider for a moment what takes place when the field of observation to which our ideas have been adapted and now conform, becomes enlarged. We had, let us say, always seen heavy bodies sink when their support was taken away; we had also seen, perhaps, that the sinking of heavier bodies forced lighter bodies upwards. But now we see a lever in action, and we are suddenly struck with the fact that a lighter body is lifting another of much greater weight. Our customary train of thought demands its rights; the new and unwonted event likewise demands its rights. From this conflict between thought and fact the problem arises; out of this partial contrariety springs the question, ”Why?” With the new adaptation to the enlarged field of observation, the problem disappears, or, in other words, is solved. In the instance cited, we must adopt the habit of always considering the mechanical work performed.
The child just awakening into consciousness of the world, knows no problem. The bright flower, the ringing bell, are all new to it; yet it is surprised at nothing. The out and out Philistine, whose only thoughts lie in the beaten path of his every-day pursuits, likewise has no problems. Everything goes its wonted course, and if perchance a thing go wrong at times, it is at most a mere object of curiosity and not worth serious consideration. In fact, the question ”Why?” loses all warrant in relations where we are familiar with every aspect of events. But the capable and talented young man has his head full of problems; he has acquired, to a greater or less degree, certain habitudes of thought, and at the same time he is constantly observing what is new and unwonted, and in his case there is no end to the questions, ”Why?”
Thus, the factor which most promotes scientific thought is the gradual widening of the field of experience. We scarcely notice events we are accustomed to; the latter do not really develop their intellectual significance until placed in contrast with something to which we are unaccustomed. Things that at home are pa.s.sed by unnoticed, delight us when abroad, though they may appear in only slightly different forms. The sun s.h.i.+nes with heightened radiance, the flowers bloom in brighter colors, our fellow-men accost us with lighter and happier looks. And, returning home, we find even the old familiar scenes more inspiring and suggestive than before.
Every motive that prompts and stimulates us to modify and transform our thoughts, proceeds from what is new, uncommon, and not understood. Novelty excites wonder in persons whose fixed habits of thought are shaken and disarranged by what they see. But the element of wonder never lies in the phenomenon or event observed; its place is in the person observing. People of more vigorous mental type aim at once at an adaptation of thought that will conform to what they have observed. Thus does science eventually become the natural foe of the wonderful. The sources of the marvellous are unveiled, and surprise gives way to calm interpretation.
Let us consider such a mental transformative process in detail. The circ.u.mstance that heavy bodies fall to the earth appears perfectly natural and regular. But when a person observes that wood floats upon water, and that flames and smoke rise in the air, then the contrary of the first phenomenon is presented. An olden theory endeavors to explain these facts by imputing to substances the power of volition, as that attribute which is most familiar to man. It a.s.serted that every substance seeks its proper place, heavy bodies tending downwards and light ones upwards. It soon turned out, however, that even smoke had weight, that it, too, sought its place below, and that it was forced upwards only because of the downward tendency of the air, as wood is forced to the surface of water because the water exerts the greater downward pressure.
Again, we see a body thrown into the air. It ascends. How is it that it does not seek its proper place? Why does the velocity of its ”violent” motion decrease as it rises, while that of its ”natural” fall increases as it descends. If we mark closely the relation between these two facts, the problem will solve itself. We shall see, as Galileo did, that the decrease of velocity in rising and the increase of velocity in falling are one and the same phenomenon, viz., an increase of velocity towards the earth. Accordingly, it is not a place that is a.s.signed to the body, but an increase of velocity towards the earth.
By this idea the movements of heavy bodies are rendered perfectly familiar. Newton, now, firmly grasping this new way of thinking, sees the moon and the planets moving in their paths upon principles similar to those which determine the motion of a projectile thrown into the air. Yet the movements of the planets were marked by peculiarities which compelled him once more to modify slightly his customary mode of thought. The heavenly bodies, or rather the parts composing them, do not move with constant accelerations towards each other, but ”attract each other,” directly as the ma.s.s and inversely as the square of the distance.
This latter notion, which includes the one applying to terrestrial bodies as a special case, is, as we see, quite different from the conception from which we started. How limited in scope was the original idea and to what a mult.i.tude of phenomena is not the present one applicable! Yet there is a trace, after all, of the ”search for place” in the expression ”attraction.” And it would be folly, indeed, for us to avoid, with punctilious dread, this conception of ”attraction” as bearing marks of its pedigree. It is the historical base of the Newtonian conception and it still continues to direct our thoughts in the paths so long familiar to us. Thus, the happiest ideas do not fall from heaven, but spring from notions already existing.
Similarly, a ray of light was first regarded as a continuous and h.o.m.ogeneous straight line. It then became the path of projection for minute missiles; then an aggregate of the paths of countless different kinds of missiles. It became periodic; it acquired various sides; and ultimately it even lost its motion in a straight line.
The electric current was conceived originally as the flow of a hypothetical fluid. To this conception was soon added the notion of a chemical current, the notion of an electric, magnetic, and anisotropic optical field, intimately connected with the path of the current. And the richer a conception becomes in following and keeping pace with facts, the better adapted it is to antic.i.p.ate them.
Adaptive processes of this kind have no a.s.signable beginning, inasmuch as every problem that incites to new adaptation, presupposes a fixed habitude of thought. Moreover, they have no visible end; in so far as experience never ceases. Science, accordingly, stands midway in the evolutionary process; and science may advantageously direct and promote this process, but it can never take its place. That science is inconceivable the principles of which would enable a person with no experience to construct the world of experience, without a knowledge of it. One might just as well expect to become a great musician, solely by the aid of theory, and without musical experience; or to become a painter by following the directions of a text-book.
In glancing over the history of an idea with which we have become perfectly familiar, we are no longer able to appreciate the full significance of its growth. The deep and vital changes that have been effected in the course of its evolution, are recognisable only from the astounding narrowness of view with which great contemporary scientists have occasionally opposed each other. Huygens's wave-theory of light was incomprehensible to Newton, and Newton's idea of universal gravity was unintelligible to Huygens. But a century afterwards both notions were reconcilable, even in ordinary minds.
On the other hand, the original creations of pioneer intellects, unconsciously formed, do not a.s.sume a foreign garb; their form is their own. In them, childlike simplicity is joined to the maturity of manhood, and they are not to be compared with processes of thought in the average mind. The latter are carried on as are the acts of persons in the state of mesmerism, where actions involuntarily follow the images which the words of other persons suggest to their minds.
The ideas that have become most familiar through long experience, are the very ones that intrude themselves into the conception of every new fact observed. In every instance, thus, they become involved in a struggle for self-preservation, and it is just they that are seized by the inevitable process of transformation.
Upon this process rests substantially the method of explaining by hypothesis new and uncomprehended phenomena. Thus, instead of forming entirely new notions to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies and the phenomena of the tides, we imagine the material particles composing the bodies of the universe to possess weight or gravity with respect to one another. Similarly, we imagine electrified bodies to be freighted with fluids that attract and repel, or we conceive the s.p.a.ce between them to be in a state of elastic tension. In so doing, we subst.i.tute for new ideas distinct and more familiar notions of old experience--notions which to a great extent run unimpeded in their courses, although they too must suffer partial transformation.
The animal cannot construct new members to perform every new function that circ.u.mstances and fate demand of it. On the contrary it is obliged to make use of those it already possesses. When a vertebrate animal chances into an environment where it must learn to fly or swim, an additional pair of extremities is not grown for the purpose. On the contrary, the animal must adapt and transform a pair that it already has.
The construction of hypotheses, therefore, is not the product of artificial scientific methods. This process is unconsciously carried on in the very infancy of science. Even later, hypotheses do not become detrimental and dangerous to progress except when more reliance is placed on them than on the facts themselves; when the contents of the former are more highly valued than the latter, and when, rigidly adhering to hypothetical notions, we overestimate the ideas we possess as compared with those we have to acquire.
The extension of our sphere of experience always involves a transformation of our ideas. It matters not whether the face of nature becomes actually altered, presenting new and strange phenomena, or whether these phenomena are brought to light by an intentional or accidental turn of observation. In fact, all the varied methods of scientific inquiry and of purposive mental adaptation enumerated by John Stuart Mill, those of observation as well as those of experiment, are ultimately recognisable as forms of one fundamental method, the method of change, or variation. It is through change of circ.u.mstances that the natural philosopher learns. This process, however, is by no means confined to the investigator of nature. The historian, the philosopher, the jurist, the mathematician, the artist, the Asthetician,[77] all illuminate and unfold their ideas by producing from the rich treasures of memory similar, but different, cases; thus, they observe and experiment in their thoughts. Even if all sense-experience should suddenly cease, the events of the days past would meet in different att.i.tudes in the mind and the process of adaptation would still continue--a process which, in contradistinction to the adaptation of thoughts to facts in practical spheres, would be strictly theoretical, being an adaptation of thoughts to thoughts.
The method of change or variation brings before us like cases of phenomena, having partly the same and partly different elements. It is only by comparing different cases of refracted light at changing angles of incidence that the common factor, the constancy of the refractive index, is disclosed. And only by comparing the refractions of light of different colors, does the difference, the inequality of the indices of refraction, arrest the attention. Comparison based upon change leads the mind simultaneously to the highest abstractions and to the finest distinctions.
Undoubtedly, the animal also is able to distinguish between the similar and dissimilar of two cases. Its consciousness is aroused by a noise or a rustling, and its motor centre is put in readiness. The sight of the creature causing the disturbance, will, according to its size, provoke flight or prompt pursuit; and in the latter case, the more exact distinctions will determine the mode of attack. But man alone attains to the faculty of voluntary and conscious comparison. Man alone can, by his power of abstraction, rise, in one moment, to the comprehension of principles like the conservation of ma.s.s or the conservation of energy, and in the next observe and mark the arrangement of the iron lines in the spectrum. In thus dealing with the objects of his conceptual life, his ideas unfold and expand, like his nervous system, into a widely ramified and organically articulated tree, on which he may follow every limb to its farthermost branches, and, when occasion demands, return to the trunk from which he started.
The English philosopher Whewell has remarked that two things are requisite to the formation of science: facts and ideas. Ideas alone lead to empty speculation; mere facts can yield no organic knowledge. We see that all depends upon the capacity of adapting existing notions to fresh facts.
Over-readiness to yield to every new fact prevents fixed habits of thought from arising. Excessively rigid habits of thought impede freedom of observation. In the struggle, in the compromise between judgment and prejudgment (prejudice), if we may use the term, our understanding of things broadens.
Habitual judgment, applied to a new case without antecedent tests, we call prejudgment or prejudice. Who does not know its terrible power! But we think less often of the importance and utility of prejudice. Physically, no one could exist, if he had to guide and regulate the circulation, respiration, and digestion of his body by conscious and purposive acts. So, too, no one could exist intellectually if he had to form judgments on every pa.s.sing experience, instead of allowing himself to be controlled by the judgments he has already formed. Prejudice is a sort of reflex motion in the province of intelligence.
On prejudices, that is, on habitual judgments not tested in every case to which they are applied, reposes a goodly portion of the thought and work of the natural scientist. On prejudices reposes most of the conduct of society. With the sudden disappearance of prejudice society would hopelessly dissolve. That prince displayed a deep insight into the power of intellectual habit, who quelled the loud menaces and demands of his body-guard for arrears of pay and compelled them to turn about and march, by simply p.r.o.nouncing the regular word of command; he well knew that they would be unable to resist that.
Not until the discrepancy between habitual judgments and facts becomes great is the investigator implicated in appreciable illusion. Then tragic complications and catastrophes occur in the practical life of individuals and nations--crises where man, placing custom above life, instead of pressing it into the service of life, becomes the victim of his error. The very power which in intellectual life advances, fosters, and sustains us, may in other circ.u.mstances delude and destroy us.
Ideas are not all of life. They are only momentary efflorescences of light, designed to illuminate the paths of the will. But as delicate reagents on our organic evolution our ideas are of paramount importance. No theory can gainsay the vital transformation which we feel taking place within us through their agency. Nor is it necessary that we should have a proof of this process. We are immediately a.s.sured of it.
The transformation of ideas thus appears as a part of the general evolution of life, as a part of its adaptation to a constantly widening sphere of action. A granite boulder on a mountain-side tends towards the earth below. It must abide in its resting-place for thousands of years before its support gives way. The shrub that grows at its base is farther advanced; it accommodates itself to summer and winter. The fox which, overcoming the force of gravity, creeps to the summit where he has scented his prey, is freer in his movements than either. The arm of man reaches further still; and scarcely anything of note happens in Africa or Asia that does not leave an imprint upon his life. What an immense portion of the life of other men is reflected in ourselves; their joys, their affections, their happiness and misery! And this too, when we survey only our immediate surroundings, and confine our attention to modern literature. How much more do we experience when we travel through ancient Egypt with Herodotus, when we stroll through the streets of Pompeii, when we carry ourselves back to the gloomy period of the crusades or to the golden age of Italian art, now making the acquaintance of a physician of MoliAre, and now that of a Diderot or of a D'Alembert. What a great part of the life of others, of their character and their purpose, do we not absorb through poetry and music! And although they only gently touch the chords of our emotions, like the memory of youth softly breathing upon the spirit of an aged man, we have nevertheless lived them over again in part. How great and comprehensive does self become in this conception; and how insignificant the person! Egoistical systems both of optimism and pessimism perish with their narrow standard of the import of intellectual life. We feel that the real pearls of life lie in the ever changing contents of consciousness, and that the person is merely an indifferent symbolical thread on which they are strung.[78]
We are prepared, thus, to regard ourselves and every one of our ideas as a product and a subject of universal evolution; and in this way we shall advance st.u.r.dily and unimpeded along the paths which the future will throw open to us.[79]
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 69: Inaugural Address, delivered on a.s.suming the Rectorate of the University of Prague, October 18, 1883.
The idea presented in this essay is neither new nor remote. I have touched upon it myself on several occasions (first in 1867), but have never made it the subject of a formal disquisition. Doubtless, others, too, have treated it; it lies, so to speak, in the air. However, as many of my ill.u.s.trations were well received, although known only in an imperfect form from the lecture itself and the newspapers, I have, contrary to my original intention, decided to publish it. It is not my intention to trespa.s.s here upon the domain of biology. My statements are to be taken merely as the expression of the fact that no one can escape the influence of a great and far-reaching idea.]
[Footnote 70: At first sight an apparent contradiction arises from the admission of both heredity and adaptation; and it is undoubtedly true that a strong disposition to heredity precludes great capability of adaptation. But imagine the organism to be a plastic ma.s.s which retains the form transmitted to it by former influences until new influences modify it; the one property of plasticity will then represent capability of adaptation as well as power of heredity. a.n.a.logous to this is the case of a bar of magnetised steel of high coercive force: the steel retains its magnetic properties until a new force displaces them. Take also a body in motion: the body retains the velocity acquired in (inherited from) the interval of time just preceding, except it be changed in the next moment by an accelerating force. In the case of the body in motion the change of velocity (AbAnderung) was looked upon as a matter of course, while the discovery of the principle of inertia (or persistence) created surprise; in Darwin's case, on the contrary, heredity (or persistence) was taken for granted, while the principle of variation (AbAnderung) appeared novel.
Fully adequate views are, of course, to be reached only by a study of the original facts emphasised by Darwin, and not by these a.n.a.logies. The example referring to motion, if I am not mistaken, I first heard, in conversation, from my friend J. Popper, Esq., of Vienna.
Many inquirers look upon the stability of the species as something settled, and oppose to it the Darwinian theory. But the stability of the species is itself a ”theory.” The essential modifications which Darwin's views also are undergoing will be seen from the works of Wallace [and Weismann], but more especially from a book of W. H. Rolph, Biologische Probleme, Leipsic, 1882. Unfortunately, this last talented investigator is no longer numbered among the living.]
[Footnote 71: Written in 1883.]
[Footnote 72: See Pfaundler, Pogg. Ann., Jubelband, p. 182.]
[Footnote 73: See the beautiful discussions of this point in Hering's Memory as a General Function of Organised Matter (1870), Chicago, The Open Court Publis.h.i.+ng Co., 1887. Compare also Dubois, Ueber die Uebung, Berlin, 1881.]
[Footnote 74: Spencer, The Principles of Psychology. London, 1872.]
[Footnote 75: See the article The Velocity of Light, page 63.]
[Footnote 76: I am well aware that the endeavor to confine oneself in natural research to facts is often censured as an exaggerated fear of metaphysical spooks. But I would observe, that, judged by the mischief which they have wrought, the metaphysical, of all spooks, are the least fabulous. It is not to be denied that many forms of thought were not originally acquired by the individual, but were antecedently formed, or rather prepared for, in the development of the species, in some such way as Spencer, Haeckel, Hering, and others have supposed, and as I myself have hinted on various occasions.]
[Footnote 77: Compare, for example, Schiller, Zerstreute Betrachtungen Aber verschiedene Asthetische GegenstAnde.]