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Broadcast Talks published in book form by
Messrs. George Allen & Unwin Ltd
Points of View
A Series of Broadcast Addresses
By G. LOWES DICKINSON, DEAN INGE, H. G. WELLS, J. B. S.
HALDANE, SIR OLIVER LODGE, SIR WALFORD DA VIES
Edited, with an Introduction, by G. LOWES DICKINSON
"There is no doubt that both among those who heard the
addresses delivered and those who did not, many will be
glad of this opportunity to study them at leisure in
permanent form." Observer
More Points of View
A Second Series of Broadcast Addresses
By the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON,
SIR JAMES JEANS, DAME ETHEL SMYTH, SIR JOSIAH
STAMP, SIR HENRY NEWBOLT, HILAIRE BELLOC
"It is good to have these valuable statements safely im-
prisoned between two covers." Listener
The Modern State
By LEONARD WOOLF, LORD EUSTACE PERCY, MRS. SIDNEY
WEBB, PROFESSOR W. G. S. ADAMS, SIR ARTHUR S ALTER
These talks were broadcast in the "Changing World" sym-
posium, 1931-32.
Electricity in Our Bodies
BY BRYAN H. C. MATTHEWS
"Very interesting and instructive. . . . There is a lot of most
fascinating information." Aberdeen Press and Journal
SCIENCE
IN
THE CHANGING WORLD
SCIENCE
IN
THE CHANGING WORLD
by
THOMAS ^
H. LEVY
JULIAN HUXLEY
JOHN R. BAKER
BERTRAND RUSSELL
ALDOUS HUXLEY
HUGH I'A. FAUSSET
HILAIRE BELLOC
J. B. S. HALDANE
OLIVER LODGE
Edited by
MARY ADAMS
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
MUSEUM STREET
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
UNWIN BROTHERS LTD., WOKING
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
THIS book is based on a series of broadcast
talks on science 3 which formed part of a com-
prehensive symposium on The Changing World.
In that symposium an attempt was made to
reflect the crisis through which the world is
passing and to make an analysis of those forces
of transformation in science, art, economics,
and social life which have been in operation
since the beginning of the century. All the
speakers were preoccupied with the same
general theme and, within each particular
field of inquiry, set themselves to answer the
same questions, thus achieving for the first
time in the history of broadcasting a unity
of theme and a continuity of treatment over
a considerable period of time.
The dominance of science over the day-to-
day lives of our contemporaries gives a special
interest and significance to the analysis of the
changes which have been brought about by
progress in scientific thought. The practical
applications of science order our civilization.
Science generally enters the lives of ordinary
individuals as a mechanical device or a social
convenience a motor-car, a wireless set, or a
12 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
telephone. The impression is widespread that
science is the history of sudden and startling
inventions rather than a method of pursuing
truth. It is the aim of Professor Levy's con-
tribution in Part I to disclose the fundamental
nature of science : that it is a process of sys-
tematic trial and error, of frustration and
discovery, a laborious construction of instru-
ments, theories, and methods of investigation.
Professor Levy defines the scope of scientific
inquiry, and stresses the importance of the
scientific outlook for the investigation of the
motives of human behaviour.
Man's investigation of himself is a significant
development of twentieth-century science, and
the biologist has a definite contribution to
make to any discussion of human nature.
Researches into our ancestry, our growth, and
our conduct have practical applications to
everyday affairs, casting light on urgent social
problems, compelling tolerance, and occa-
sionally indicating profitable adjustments. The
science of human heredity is beginning to
affect the social conscience and to provoke
speculations about the biological future of the
race. Some of the facts necessary for an appre-
ciation of biological questions are provided in
Part II by Dr. John Baker, while Professor
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 13
Julian Huxley discusses their meaning in
relation to the environment in which man
exists.
Finally, in Part III, the civilization which
constitutes our environment comes under
scrutiny. Men with views as widely divergent
as those of Mr. Hilaire Belloc and Professor
J. B. S. Haldane examine critically the philo-
sophical, aesthetic, and social implications of
scientific progress. It cannot be denied that
science has brought material freedom, wealth,
and leisure, and liberation from famine and
disease. But has science produced these things
at the cost of spiritual atrophy and personal
servility? Does a machine-made civilization
stifle artistic expression, or does it merely trans-
fer its sphere of activity? Under the machine,
are all the elements of man's personality able
to find harmonious expression? Is it possible to
view the ever-moving frontiers of science with
equanimity? Is the advance of science inevit-
able, or does scientific progress contain within
itself the seeds of decay? There is a widespread
sense of disharmony between the old and the
new from which spring endless perplexities and
conflicts. Will the fabric of society stand the
strain of such swift change? Man's weaknesses
have been exposed, and doubts are freely
i 4 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
expressed about his inherent capacity to con-
trol scientific "progress."
Man is out of place in nature, and some of
those who are contributing to the symposium
feel that unless some kind of re-orientation
occurs he cannot survive. On the other hand,
other contributors believe that the remedy for
our sickness is not less science but more, that a
more scientific understanding of human nature
will restore coherency to life, and that the
ancient forces of religion, aesthetics, and
humanism, will find their place in the modern
age. But in that event we must accept the
inevitability of science and apply ourselves to
the task of understanding the civilization in
which it works: there is hope for the future
only if we strive to condition it by philosophic
forethought and scientific planning.
Many listeners said they wished to have the
talks in book form, and their publication may
be welcomed by those who took part in wire-
less listening groups, reminding them of the
companionship and discussion which the talks
themselves occasioned.
It has been thought desirable to preserve
the simplicity of style and the atmosphere of
informality which characterize broadcasting,
so some of the talks are published without
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 15
modification. Alterations in others have become
necessary, and the editor is responsible for
certain rearrangements in their presentation.
The talks were arranged under the auspices
of the Central Council for Broadcast Adult
Education, and this opportunity is taken of
acknowledging the courtesy of the British
Broadcasting Corporation in giving permission
for their publication.
MARY ADAMS
LINCOLN'S INN
December 1932
CONTENTS
PACK
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION n
CONTRIBUTORS ig
INTRODUCTION by Thomas Holland 21
PART I
WHAT IS SCIENCE?
By H. LEVY
1. THE PARADOX OF SCIENCE 33
2. SCIENCE IN REVOLT 47
3. SCIENCE IN ACTION 59
4. Is THE UNIVERSE MYSTERIOUS? 71
5. SCIENCE DISRUPTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE? 86
6. EVERYONE A SCIENTIST 97
PART II
WHAT IS MAN?
1. MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING by Julian Huxley 109
2. OUR PLACE IN NATURE by John R. Baker 131
3. MISSING LINKS by John R. Baker 141
4. THE EVOLUTION OF MIND by John R. Baker 152
5. THE~ CONTROL OF DEVELOPMENT by John R. Baker 173
6. MAN AND REALITY by Julian Huxley 186
B
i 8 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
PART III
WHAT IS CIVILIZATION?
PAGE
1. THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY by Bertrand Russell 201
2. ECONOMISTS, SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANISTS by Aldous
Huxley 209
3. SCIENCE AND THE SELF by Hugh I'A. Fausset 224
4. MAN AND THE MACHINE by Hilaire Belloc 240
5. THE BIOLOGIST AND SOCIETY by J. B. S. Haldane 253
6. THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE by Oliver Lodge 268
INDEX 281
CONTRIBUTORS
JOHN R. BAKER
University Demonstrator in Zoology, Oxford. Author of
Sex in Man and Animals, etc.
HILAIRE BELLOC
Author of Joan of Arc, The Path to Rome, History of England,
Essays of a Catholic Layman in England, etc.
HUGH I'ANSON FAUSSET
Critic, and author of The Proving of Psyche, The Modern
Dilemma, etc.
J. B. S. HALDANE, F.R.S.
Professor of Biology in the University of London. Late
Reader in Biochemistry, Cambridge University; Head of
Genetical Department, John Innes Horticultural Institu-
tion ; Fullerian Professor of Physiology, Royal Institution.
Author of numerous scientific papers on human chemical
physiology, genetics, natural selection, and other subjects.
SIR THOMAS HOLLAND, F.R.S.
Principal and Vice-Chancellor of University of Edin-
burgh. President of the British Association, 1929; Rector,
Imperial College of Science and Technology, 1922-29.
Author of publications on Petrology, Geology, and
Anthropology.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Author of Antic Hay, Point Counter Point, Proper Studies,
Brave New World, etc.
JULIAN HUXLEY
Honorary Lecturer, King's College, London. Author of
Essays of a Biologist, Essays in Popular Science, The Science of
Life (with H. G. and G. P. Wells), as well as numerous
scientific papers.
20 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
H. LEVY
Professor of Mathematics, Imperial College of Science.
Author of Aeronautics in Theory and Experiment and other
technical and scientific works as well as The Universe of
Science.
SIR OLIVER LODGE, F.R.S.
Rumford Medallist; Romanes Lecturer, 1903; Past Presi-
dent of the British Association. Author of Science and
Human Progress and many other books on philosophy and
science.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S.
Author of Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, The
Analysis of Mind, Sceptical Essays, Marriage and Morals, The
Scientific Outlook, Education and the Social Order, etc.
THOMAS HOLLAND
INTRODUCTION
THERE is nothing mysterious or strange about
the methods adopted by the worker in Science.
In his attempt to find out the nature, and
therefrom the history, of the universe, he
employs the methods adopted by the ordinary
historian. His methods are indeed simpler,
for, whilst he is often embarrassed by gaps in
the records, he is sure that they have not been
tampered with artificially ; he knows that every
observation has some significance, each is
worth recording faithfully as so much positive
knowledge.
It seems easy to say that the work of the
scientific student consists of the systematic
record of facts, their grouping into classes of
like kind, the drawing of deductions from
established propositions, and their verification
by further experiments and observations. But
throughout all these apparently simple stages
the scientific worker suffers like other people
from a natural temptation to form theories,
22 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
to extend his conclusions back beyond the
region of actual observation, and to forecast
the future.
During the evolution of the animal world
some species found it convenient to utilize
trees for their habitat, and so to use the in-
strument of sight over wider ranges, giving
increased opportunities and greater safety.
Such devices were often attempted by earlier
species without permanently advantageous
results. But in a late period of the Earth's
history, certain shrew-like animals, with well-
developed brains, were in a condition to turn
this change of habit to better account, and
their descendants benefited by the develop-
ment of a special brain mechanism for the
purpose of correlating the impressions received
by sight, as well as through the other various
sense channels.
In time descendants arose in which this so-
called neopallium grew, until in size it exceeded
the remaining total of the central nervous
system. It is this neopallium especially that
distinguishes us from all other animals: it is
this which has given us advantages over the
living world in material things : it is that which
INTRODUCTION 23
has brought us all the troubles of an imper-
fectly controlled imagination.
Before it was brought under discipline by
scientific methods, the activities of man's
neopallium peopled the sun, the other heavenly
bodies and many special manifestations of
Nature with spirits, mainly evil in disposition
spirits that had to be appeased by sacrifices ;
the first-born of the family, the first-born of
live-stock, the first-fruits of agriculture, and in
a later, more anaemic age, by alms-giving.
Among some animal communities practices
that are instinctively regarded as anti-social are
punished by death; it was left to man, under
the domination of an undisciplined neopallium,
so to treat unorthodoxy in belief as a capital
offence. It is only 331 years since Giordano
Bruno was burnt at the stake for preaching
that this Earth is not the centre of the uni-
verse. This form of punishment is now out-
of-date, but milder penalties are still imposed
to show that the preconceptions of the neo-
pallium dominate the clear evidence of those
senses that guide more simple-minded animals.
It is only six years since a Tennessee school-
master was prosecuted by the State authori-
24 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
ties for teaching evolution as the history of the
biological world. And yet, what was at one
time a plausible hypothesis, and later adopted
as a working theory, is now by a consistent
mass of evidence as much a fact in the history
of the World as the cross-channel trip of
William the Conqueror.
Reactions of this sort may still be numerous
among individuals, but are fortunately rare
now among civilized governments; so rare
indeed that many people find it difficult to
believe that the Tennessee incident is fairly
indicative of a widespread mental disposition.
But it is illustrative of the fight that constantly
goes on between what we imagine and what
we actually see or otherwise know from tested
facts. The primary aim of Science is to obtain
such reliable facts, but no one can restrain the
constant temptation to offer an interpretation,
to form a theory. Indeed, it is from theories
so formed that clues are obtained for further
experiments and wider observations. Charles
Darwin in biological research and Michael
Faraday in the physical sciences were out-
standing examples of workers whose remark-
able success seemed to arise from a dominant
INTRODUCTION 25
tendency to subordinate theory to observa-
tion and experiment; and yet both were con-
stantly guided by working theories, both of
them realizing always that whilst the theory
is the product of one's own imagination, the
facts of Nature are of divine origin.
It is useful to recall Faraday's own words :
The world little knows how many thoughts
and theories which have passed through the
mind of a scientific investigator have been
crushed in silence and secrecy by his own
severe criticism and adverse examinations ; that
in the most successful instances, not a tenth of
the suggestions, the hopes, the wishes, the pre-
liminary conclusions have been realized.
And so the history of Science is marked
by occasional modifications of theories, not,
however, as often, or by changes as revolu-
tionary, as the public are often led to suppose.
A short time ago a leading journal published
this partial truth: " Science to-day does not
hold quite the authoritative position it did,
mainly because its fallibility has been exposed
by itself. What science says to-day it unsays
to-morrow. "
The reference is to some of the extensions of
26 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
theory due to recent discoveries in physics;
but the facts which it is the primary business
of Science to unearth remain the permanent
heritage of the human race. So far as I know,
experimental and observational Science has
never had to take a backward step. Even in
theory modifications are generally not rever-
sals, but improvements in the direction of
refinement and precision. Take the instance
of the new physics which is so frequently
quoted as revolutionary. During the latter
half of the nineteenth century we were happy
with the ideas that radiant energy, like light
and heat, is conveyed as waves of an unknown
medium called the ether; that whilst matter
might be changed in physical form it could
not be destroyed ; that it is composed of ele-
ments with distinct and fixed properties.
All scientific men suspected something
beyond these ideas, and they remained true
for all conditions under which they were
tested before 1895. On them we based the
manifold material applications of Science, and
as such they have never failed. They are still
reliable guides in the application of Science.
Nevertheless they do not express the whole
INTRODUCTION 27
truth. Our nineteenth-century atoms are still
atoms in spite of their inappropriate name;
but we find that with new methods they can
be dissected as we previously dissected com-
pounds; and we now know too that some of
the elements break up into others. Just as
Faraday showed that one form of energy can
be transformed to another, we now find that,
under special conditions, mass can be trans-
formed to energy and energy can reproduce
the properties of mass. We have yet to find some
unifying law to explain the newly acquired
groups of facts. The old laws are still safe guides
within all previously known conditions.
Along the journey in the search for more
truth we occasionally take a wrong turning;
so the animals and plants did in their progress
towards more complex types, but, as with
them, the end result is real progress. In ques-
tions physical we are obviously just entering
previously unknown territory ; our expectations
and our curiosity are stirred to-day more
perhaps than they have ever been in the World's
history.
In the biological world, too, one sees the
approach of solutions so clearly that one feels
28 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
envious of the younger generation that will
take part in the exploratory work. Here we
have an Earth that was once certainly unfit
for the maintenance of what we call life, an
Earth that some day will again be unfit for
habitation by living beings. What started life
and what constantly pressing hidden influence
caused innumerable generations by a process
of trial and error to reach the product of a
being with a mind capable of exploring other
worlds?
When one realizes how limited are the con-
ditions that maintain life, one wonders whether,
after all, the "accident 53 is not unique and
that man after all has some mathematical
justification for his traditional conceit and
self-complacency. Life is possible only in
aqueous systems and is maintained by perish-
able combinations of a few elements; the
limiting conditions are dangerously narrow;
yet the possible permutations and combina-
tions run to figures comparable to those with
which astronomers dumbfound their hearers
when they talk of star-distances in light-years.
These unstable compounds have been con-
tinually reforming themselves out of simpler
INTRODUCTION 29
combinations that exhibit none of their special
properties; they have been doing this without
interruption from generation to generation for
more than 900 million years, building up new
forms that have branched off from the main
stream ultimately, one after the other, to
become extinct; but still the main stream per-
sisted until, following what seems like miracu-
lous escapes from an incalculable number of
"accidents," the human mind is produced as
a final product. Could all these "accidents"
in any other world have possibly resulted in
exactly the same kind of product? The Earth
as a stellar body is less conspicuous than a
sand-grain on the sea-shore, but Man, its
highest product, may yet be unique in the
Universe.
But I must forsake these speculations, even as
questions, or I shall be in danger of straying
beyond what Professor Levy will define and
illustrate as the legitimate garden of the
student of science.
PART I
WHAT IS SCIENCE?
H. LEVY
H. LEVY
i. THE PARADOX OF SCIENCE
THE last century has seen such a development of
scientific knowledge that the time is past when
any one person can hope to have a detailed under-
standing of the whole field of science. Around the
fireside we may be wiseacres, understanding every-
thing from stainless steel to smoky chimneys, but
there is no scientific man who would dare to claim
expert knowledge about many different problems.
Take that little packed cylinder of tobacco you may
be smoking at the moment I do not know a
single scientist who would claim to know all about
tobacco-growing, about the manufacture and com-
position of cigarette paper, and whether smoking
is harmful or not. Yet these are only three of
the many highly technical questions one might
discuss.
Again, in spite of much popular misunderstanding,
science is not a definite clearly defined body of
knowledge. It is never possible to say that this or
that is the last word on any scientific subject. On
the contrary, science is continually expanding; it
is in a continual state of change. Yesterday matter
was thought to be the fundamental stuff of which our
universe was made, this morning it was atoms, this
afternoon it was electrons, this evening it is something
34 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
much less definite a wave radiation. What will it
be to-morrow?
Here is a piece of paper : it has shape and size,
a certain chemical make-up, a definite weight. I
might be able to describe all these aspects of the
paper with great apparent accuracy, and yet I
cannot tell you why it is that when I try to lift the
paper by one corner the rest of the paper is lifted
with it. How is it that all these exceedingly small
particles molecules, atoms, electrons which science
offers as the basic stuff of matter, hold together in
the shape of this paper, so that it moves as a whole
when I pull one corner? It is amusing to realize that
no scientist who values his reputation would assert
that he really knows the answer. An adequate
reply to this apparently straightforward question
might make all our previous descriptions of its
weight, shape, and chemical composition look
quite different. You see, scientists are trying all the
time to upset their own equilibrium. They are con-
tinually digging away at their foundations. What
anchor-hold on such shifting sands, you may well
ask, can science give?
The fact is, of course, that science prides itself
on this capacity for change. It is prepared to take
every scrap of verified evidence into consideration,
whether or not it accords with the personal likes or
dislikes of the investigators themselves. It is the
solid basis of assured knowledge continually and
relentlessly accumulating by this process which
THE PARADOX OF SCIENCE 35
provides the anchor-hold of science. That this
anchor must be constantly tested is clear, and so the
evidence upon which scientific fact rests must be
continually examined and overhauled. It is impos-
sible, therefore, to state what science is, at any one
time, without describing also the process by which
science acquires its facts. We have to realize, more-
over, that these facts are collected and interpreted
by man. Now man possesses certain limitations
which we must not underrate, for they affect his
interpretations very profoundly. Man's picture of
the world is not like a photograph. True, he
handles, at close quarters, the impersonal objects
of his world the "earth, air, fire and water,"
animals and plants, atoms and electrons but his
observation and understanding of these things
depend also on his senses; his interpretation is
influenced by his inheritance and by his environ-
ment.
When at birth he is plunged into this changing
world, he enters into two main heritages. In the
first place he has acquired a bodily structure,
apparently complete, with bony frame, muscles, and
sense organs, a bodily organization which evolved
through countless generations from early forms of
life. The range and power of his sense organs set
limits to what he can see and hear and smell and
feel. Scientific instruments telescopes, microscopes,
weighing machines, telephones, and so on have
only comparatively recently extended his powers of
3 6 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
perception. He cannot see the bones of his body ;
he can only feel the position of some of them. An
X-ray apparatus, however, can help his eyes and
his fingers to do these things. In the same way he is
unaware, unaided, of the beautiful colours in the
inside of his body. The soft tread of a fly, and the
murmur of dust being deposited all around him,
is not distinguishable by his ear, but a microphone
could enlarge these sounds to the patter of hail.
Such a magnification makes one realize how limited
are our direct powers of perception.
In the second place man inherits a social environ-
ment. Most of us are born into a home, have school
companions, friends, and acquaintances; we are
members of a church or a trade union or a parish.
We find ready-made institutions, books which have
been read and laws which have been obeyed for
hundreds of years a mass of established tradition
and belief. All these influences surround us from
birth with rules of conduct, social taboos and pro-
hibitions, shaping the greater part of our behaviour
and colouring our thoughts until we die. Our
attitude towards our parents or our children, to
individuals in other social classes, towards religion,
politics, and so on, is more or less determined by this
social environment. We have customs and beliefs
which are scarcely more than historical relics of our
savage origin. We have taboos about food, about
thunder. We are still very close to primitive man
in outlook, temperament, and social background a
THE PARADOX OF SCIENCE 37
fact which becomes evident in times of danger and
of great excitement. It is easier to see the cave-
man in others than in ourselves. Only about ten
thousand generations, after all, separate us from
our savage ancestors. As I sit here in Central
London I can imagine my parents and grandparents
and all my ancestors standing in succession one
behind the other stretching southwards to the sea.
Only my grandfather, my father, and myself are
aware of the existence of this procession, and we
do not know its full significance. But looking back
along the line we can see that long before the
procession has reached the outskirts of Greater
London our ancestors have become naked wander-
ing savages. Throughout Surrey and Sussex they
become increasingly ape-like, and by the time the
sea is reached they can hardly be distinguished
from the tailless apes. Civilization is almost
within earshot. Our ancestors were agriculturists
and metal workers on the threshold of this building,
and in the passage outside they are reading books
and presently suggesting that the way to find out
about the world is to make experiments with it.
So here you see man's historical background a
background which we must never forget when we
are discussing the meaning of our science, our
religions, and our philosophies. At each successive
stage in history man is apt to regard his explanation
of the world as final and complete, ignorant of the
fact that his explanation is little more than a reflec-
38 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
tion of the ideas and beliefs of his own particular
scene in this historic pageant.
When I set out to tell you what science is, or
indeed when anyone sets out to tell you really and
truly what anything is, as if the explanation were
the last word on the subject, you will, I hope,
find yourself doubting its finality. All explana-
tions must be examined in their evolutionary
setting. I stress this point because our newly found
ability to look at ourselves and our ideas in this
way is, to my mind, one of the most significant
changes that have been brought about by the science
of the last century. That change is one of the
greatest contributions of science to education.
Whether educationists have, in their field, exploited
this fact to the fullest possible extent is another
matter.
There is another reason why my task of defining
science is difficult. The traditional picture of the
scientist as a bespectacled individual, so immersed
in his researches in his laboratory that he is uncon-
scious of the havoc his work is producing in the
outside world, is not entirely a caricature. It is,
in fact, often true. The scientist is usually so absorbed
in his tiny specialized field that he rarely has
time or opportunity to think about the social effect of
his labours or to look in perspective at the movement
of which he is a unit. Science is a very absorbing
pursuit, and it may be that the mental concentration
which it requires provides an escape from the trials
THE PARADOX OF SCIENCE 39
of everyday life. Nevertheless the time has gone
when the scientist could legitimately separate him-
self from the rest of his fellow-men in the belief that
his scientific interests were his own and that they
affected no one. It is true that Faraday's early
studies of electricity were primarily of laboratory
interest. Later on industrialists saw in the practical
application of his work a possible source of fresh
profits. But this generation, living in a world of
electrical devices and of industrial disorganization,
is being taught by bitter experience that it is
disastrous to keep science and its industrial appli-
cations in water-tight compartments. The scientist
and his work cannot be separated from the rest
of his changing universe. Science has social roots
and social consequences.
We are all of us continually making this false
separation even with the most everyday things.
For example, you have a pencil or a cigarette in
your hand, and you easily think of it as a thing by
itself, a separately existing object. But is it? It is a
cigarette in your hand. Your hand is attached to
your body, your body sits in a chair, the chair is on
the floor, the floor is in a building, the building
in on the earth, the earth is part of an assembly of
planets careering round the sun, and the sun and
our solar system are only part of other systems.
The point is, that we easily separate off for ex-
amination tiny separate fractions the solar system,
the earth, the building, the floor, the body, the
40 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
hand, the cigarette. But notice that we only do
this for simplicity's sake, to make our exami-
nation more easy. The separation is nevertheless
quite artificial. We cut our cigarette out of the
universe as if it were a separately existing entity.
But there is no such thing as a cigarette in itself.
No one has ever seen one, it is a figment of the
imagination, a pure abstraction. In the same way
it is not easy to make ourselves remember that this
cigarette we have so boldly plucked from the rest
of the universe is now different from what it was a
moment ago, and from what it will be in a moment
to come. There is a continuous process of change
going on, so that to say our cigarette preserves its
identity through time and space is also a pure
abstraction. Of course it is easy to appreciate this
point when a burning cigarette is changing rapidly
before our eyes, but the same considerations apply
to everything else we so easily call an object a
piece of iron, a stone, the planet on which we live.
The world you and I perceive is a world of perpetual
change of which we are an integral part.
I stress this point because I want to show you
that our common-sense way of looking at the world,
regarding it as composed of a number of separate
objects, may not tell us the whole story. Many of the
growing-pains of science have arisen from this fact.
Once an object has been separated off and given a
name we seem to expect the object to persist un-
changed because the name persists.
THE PARADOX OF SCIENCE 41
What does it matter in practice? one may ask.
Very little for most purposes. We do, in fact, live
the greater part of our lives as if the objects we
handle were permanent and separate things. For-
tunate it is for science that we do so, for much of
its framework is in practice built round this con-
ception of permanence. In the newer physics,
however, these ideas matter a great deal. Only a
few years ago the indestructibility of matter and the
indestructibility of energy were accepted almost as
religious beliefs in science, so accurately did matter
and energy maintain their separateness in practice.
Then came the newer knowledge given us by the
study of electricity, and these hard and fast ideas of
permanence had to be abandoned when radium and
similar substances were found to discharge tiny
electrified particles. In the face of an extended
experience the old abstractions of permanent
separate matter and permanent separate energy
broke down. Matter in certain circumstances dis-
solved into energy.
These are not mere manufactured difficulties.
The perplexities stand out as soon as one attempts
to lay down a basis for accurate knowledge, and if
one ignores them one builds on a basis of falsehood.
The answer to the question "What is Science?" is
then no mere definition or form of words. It will be
found by studying the scientist at work. Outside
the realm of pure mathematics there is little that
can be described by mere definition. We can tell
42 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
what anything is only by examining the process
which exposes it, and by studying it in relation to
the wider processes of which it is a part. We do not
define things into existence.
I propose then to set out the position we have
reached so far :
(1) We must regard any knowledge we acquire
about the world in the setting of man's
historical evolution.
(2) Both we ourselves and the world of which we
are a part are in a continual state of change.
It is untrue to say that there is nothing new
under the sun. In a sense there is something
different under the sun every moment.
(3) These world changes penetrate to us through
our sense organs. Not only are these limited
in power and range but they also have an
evolutionary history. Tools and scientific
instruments are inventions for extending
their powers.
(4) Science studies the changing world by the
method of abstraction. The scientist
separates off from the rest of the universe
any object he wishes to study. The method
of abstraction sounds difficult, but it is, in
fact, the method of ordinary discussion.
May I explain what I mean by the method of
abstraction? If you are considering how high a
ball will rise when you throw it into the air you
THE PARADOX OF SCIENCE 43
are not concerned with the colour or chemical
nature of the ball or when and where the ball was
made. You are concerned only with its shape, size,
and weight, and with wind resistance. Any other
sphere with the same shape, size, and weight
would do equally well. We have ignored what, for
immediate purposes, is irrelevant and have ab-
stracted those things which are significant for the
purpose in hand. From this process there emerges
a common principle at work, on which one relies
in explanation.
An abstraction therefore, although it sounds
complicated, is really a simplification. By means of
abstraction irrelevancies are stripped away and
fundamental likenesses between different objects are
thereby disclosed.
An explanation consists in describing complex events in
terms of simplified abstractions.
"Well," I can hear some of you grimly remarking,
"now we know." "Why is it," you ask, "that scien-
tists use so many unfamiliar words that their talk
sounds like a foreign language? Why cannot they
bring themselves down to the level of the ordinary
man?"
It is not pure perversity : there is a defence. A hen
crosses the road and I ask, "Why does that hen
cross the road?" A satisfactory answer is, apparently,
"Because she wants to get to the other side." I inquire
how you know what the hen wants. You cannot tell
me that your evidence of what the hen wants to do
44 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
is derived from the fact that she actually does cross
the road, for that would be begging the question.
How do you know what the hen wants? You may
dislike this persistence, for I suspect you have been
transferring to the hen your own private feelings
about roads and walking. When I begin to explain,
however, how it is that the hen crosses the road,
and I use in my explanation words like "external
stimuli," "conditioned reflexes," "motor reaction,"
"visual reception," you begin to abuse me because
I am talking a foreign language. The fact is that
the whole question of language is a very vital part
of the process of explanation and the means of
arriving at scientific truth.
The scientist has to distinguish between two kinds
of statement. In the first place there are statements
about the so-called external world (it is not external
for we are pieces of it). For example, this room is
20 feet square. This paper is white. That note is
E flat. These are statements that can be verified.
I can communicate them to you with assurance
because I know that you can verify them if you take
enough trouble. The verification may be extremely
difficult and most of us have to rely upon indivi-
duals with special knowledge and elaborate appara-
tus to verify them for us. For example, you will not
be able easily to verify the statement that the speed
of light is 186,000 miles per second. You have to
rely for the truth of that statement upon the fact
that this figure has been arrived at independently
THE PARADOX OF SCIENCE 45
by scientists working in many different laboratories.
It is with these public affairs that science operates,
and only those things which can be verified publicly
are included in the term scientific knowledge.
We may, nevertheless, receive pleasure from a
public discussion on a private matter on literature
or on art. These are statements about private
feelings. "The wind bloweth where it listeth" is
poetry not meteorology. A phrase like "Nature
abhors a vacuum" is not a scientific explanation of
the reason why a tube with one end closed, from
which air has been expelled, immediately fills with
water if the open end be immersed in that liquid ;
and yet the phrase "Nature abhors a vacuum"
may be found in text-books even to-day. Science
knows nothing about this ill-defined dislike of a
vacuum on the part of Nature. Dislike is an expression
of personal feeling. Of course, popular language
is honeycombed with these expressions, and the
language of a scientist appears dull and complicated
to a layman because the scientist has to exclude
these poetic, colourful, but, for scientific purposes,
meaningless descriptions. His explanations must be
publicly verifiable.
To devote so much space to these considerations
may appear excessive. It is this scientific method of
public investigation, however, which has been
mainly responsible for the vast changes in civilized
life which have become apparent during the last
hundred years. It has made ours a different world
46 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
from that of our great-grandparents. Yet it can
hardly be said to be in common practice outside
scientific laboratories. Man, in fact, has not yet
caught up with his own method of investigation.
He is one of the changing objects in this changing
world, and he changes slowly. His schools and his
laws, and those social institutions which settle so
much of his belief and behaviour, still drag slowly
behind. He still has vain imaginings, fears, and
personal egoisms which colour his discussion and
argument.
One need not be learned in scientific matters in
order to acquire the point of view I have here out-
lined. You will find, I suggest, that if you avoid
private explanations in discussion, restricting your-
self and your friends to public matters that can be
verified, truth will acquire a new and cleaner
complexion. Motives will be verified not by personal
assurances, but by an examination of actual be-
haviour. Discussions that might have finished in
personal bickerings and estrangements may resolve
themselves into collective attempts to obtain and
examine evidence.
2. SCIENCE IN REVOLT
I HAVE tried to make it clear that the scientist
approaches the matter-of-fact world in a manner
not really very different from that of the man in
the street. The scientist in his capacity as scientist,
however, is prepared to talk only about certain
things, and to offer as satisfactory only certain kinds
of explanation. I have tried to show, too, just how
the scientist, and for that matter the layman also,
sets about the difficult task of examining the world
into which he was born. I have also stressed the
fact that the explanatory language of science does
not include any reference to private feelings, but
only to public matters; and that so-called public
objects were really abstractions of a changing
universe parts chipped out of the world for the
purpose of examination.
I want you to look a little more closely at the
scientific man and at his historical background.
For science, as we have seen, cannot be properly
understood except in relation to its background,
and the material that this background presents to
the scientist for study,v, Progress may give the
appearance of steady growth, but when one looks
back, at times it appears to have been made by
jumps.
Take Language. Have you ever stopped to con-
sider what an extraordinary invention that was
48 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
a means for expressing feelings, indicating external
objects, and explaining an argument. It is not diffi-
cult to imagine how the ape-man learned to associate
a particular danger with a particular call. Individuals
with throats and lungs and nervous systems built
according to the same plan might be expected to
give much the same cry in an emergency. It would
be a public word for a private feeling. But what
genius hit upon the idea of making a particular
sound stand for an external object? This sound means
a stone, that stands for a cloud, and so on. We can,
of course, imagine ways in which this might arise.
For example, as soon as the hand had developed
the power of gripping, so that things could be used,
the sound expressing the emotion aroused by the
use of the thing might well become the name of the
object. One of our ancestors picks up a fallen branch
and swish . . . swish . . . goes his stick. I am not, of
course, suggesting that a word like vacuum-sweeper
originated in that way ! But however it happened,
it was a revolutionary step in history.
For science it was important in two ways. It meant
in the first place that it was going to be much easier
to concentrate attention on the object in future.
Give a dog no name at all and it is as good as non-
existent. Give an object a name and it seems to
acquire a separate existence. We can then play with
it, use it, and experiment with it. It becomes an
object of study. But it meant also that an object
was being represented by a sound. It was the begin-
SCIENCE IN REVOLT 49
ning of speech currency. Individuals could exchange
sounds instead of the objects they represented. It
was possible for one ape-man to consign another
elsewhere without actually going to the trouble of
taking him to the place. It was a form of economy in
action. It was a type of symbolism, the substitution
of a vocal sound for a concrete object. You will
see directly that the next step in this amazing
advance was a form of economy in thought that led
directly to mathematics.
This was the invention of a picture or a special
mark to represent an object, the sound for the object,
or the idea of the object. In musical notation the
mark stands merely for the sound. In pictorial art
the mark stands for the object although the private
feelings of the artist may be also represented. In
writing or printing the marks stand for the object
and its sound. Roar, for example, not only means a
noise, but sounds one. When the object is past
yesterday, for example the word stands for the
idea of yesterday. And when the mark came to be
merely a symbol for the idea of the object, for the
abstraction, in fact, we have the beginnings of
mathematical symbolism. The idea is quite simple,
and worth mastering. Take the idea of number, for
instance. I seem to remember a picture by Heath
Robinson a cave-man sitting on the ground, .gazing
perplexedly at three shells he had placed side by
side. It was called, if I remember correctly, "The
Birth of the Idea of Three." At one side of the
50 SCIENCE, IN THE CHANGING WORLD
picture stood his cave-wife holding new-born trip-
lets. The birth of the idea of three ! What I want
to bring out is that at some stage in the early
history of man, number as an idea, apart from the
objects numbered, dawned upon man. It was an
abstraction forced upon him by his experience
three stones, three clubs, three trees. ... It enabled
man to see beyond the individual object and to deal
with objects as classes. It was the first step in the
history of mathematics; the second step in the
history of science. It became possible to put down
a mark a stroke, to represent one anything, and a
different mark a thing like a curled-up snake, for
six. Later, very much later, came the extremely
sophisticated idea of including nothing or zero among
the numbers.
Mankind was now equipped with three essential
ideas :
(1) The power of recognizing a separate object
or an aspect of an object. This is the power
of abstraction ;
(2) The idea of using a mark or symbol to repre-
sent that abstraction ;
(3) The idea of making a number or a sign stand
for measure or quantity.
We can see how man has used these three ideas in
his scientific analysis of the world around him. He
has simplified the complicated things of life, and he
has dealt with aspects of them numerically. You
SCIENCE IN REVOLT 51
are yourself, for example, a whole medley of ab-
stractions which can be isolated and measured.
Consider your speech. Your throat is a source
of sounds, and for a complete understanding
sounds must be studied sounds isolated from you
as a person. The scientist, therefore, sets up a con-
venient sound-producing agency something he can
change and experiment with, unhampered by a
living being. Your body is a source of heat and
therefore the scientist will have to study how heat
is radiated or conducted away from a surface. It
is better for him to experiment with a whole
series of surfaces, unhampered by a particular living
being. You consume food a number of com-
plicated chemical processes take place inside your
body. The scientist finds it necessary to study
these chemical changes in detail under conditions
where measurements can more easily be made
outside the body, in specially constructed glass
tubes.
You see what has happened. When the scientist
comes across complicated things he breaks them
up into a number of aspects or abstractions which
can be separately measured and studied, and after-
wards considered together in an attempt to explain
the working of the whole. Science is a revolt against
the apparent wholeness of things. It tears to pieces,
and puts together again. Let me suggest the fol-
lowing experiment to you. Decide on some object,
mention all the aspects of it that suggest themselves
52 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
to you, and see whether they appear to you to be
measurable. Do not restrict yourself merely to those
that appeal to the eye, but also to all your other
sense organs. Try the game with different kinds of
objects a chair, a dog, the fire. Consider such
characteristics as size, colour, sound, taste, bright-
ness, hunger, fear, happiness. Ask yourself what you
would need in order to measure and estimate these
things. Ask yourself how you would measure them. If
you cannot find out how some of these character-
istics can be measured it may be due to the fact
that they are not public but private aspects of the
object, and that they are not measurable at all. For
measuring is a public matter.
What I am really asking you to do is to look at the
world objectively. Here let me confess to a rather
cynical but amusing game I often play. To be suc-
cessful at it you must practise it. Next time someone
gives you a long, involved explanation of his actions,
or of what he thinks or believes or asserts, or whai
his motive was on such and such an occasion, try to
look at him objectively as a member of the ape
family making noises, pay the minimum of atten-
tion consistent with politeness to what he actually
says, and the maximum of attention to the reason
why he is telling you all this. You will be surprised
how unconvincing his explanation sounds. The game
is an attempt to take a public view of behaviour,
to treat man as an object in the universe, to study
him without being befogged by his private descrip-
SCIENCE IN REVOLT 53
tions of his own conduct. It is the game of looking
at man scientifically.
We see then that science even from its very
beginning has always issued a challenge: things
are not what they seem. In this way science is
always apparently at loggerheads with common
sense. For common sense always accepts the
traditional, while science is always just fresh from
new experience, and from taking things to pieces.
It is for this reason that so many of the advances
of science even those which are most theoretical
can be traced directly to the material needs of man.
For man must live, and his scientific theories must
be the theories of practice or he will not survive.
Sooner or later he will fall foul of hard fact. Progress
comes from the continual clash between theory and
practice between the abstraction he makes and the
reality he encounters.
In this way the traditional belief that the Earth
was the centre of the universe was overthrown to-
wards the close of the Middle Ages. Trade on both
land and sea was rapidly expanding ; Columbus was
making his great experimental voyage to America
and the need was arising for accurate knowledge of
tides, of magnetic deviation, of latitude and longi-
tude. The skies came under closer scrutiny, and
the accepted scheme of the heavens, as embodied
in the theology of the times, was threatened
with examination. The Church threw her whole
weight against the new ideas once it was realized
54 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
that her authority was threatened. I need not repeat
the well-known stories of the trial of Galileo and
the sufferings of Kepler. They are worth reading
and are told in most histories of science. These
men fought the battle against established tradition
which has gone on throughout the ages.
The scientist, whatever may be his individual
character, belongs to a class that openly avows a
revolutionary policy, a class which challenges the
accepted, the complacent, the uncritical and the
doctrinaire. Science will accept nothing that rests
merely on authority. In matters of belief about the
physical universe science is an ever-present challenge
to authority; and the scientist turns to the world
about him to justify his challenge. The discovery
of truth is not in itself a disturbing event. What is
upsetting is the possibility that if the new truth is
admitted and the knowledge acted upon, drastic
changes may have to be made in the comfort and
well-being of certain groups of individuals. When
it became clear, after a direct appeal to the world
of actuality, that men were no longer prepared to
believe that the Earth was the centre of the universe,
the authority of religious orthodoxy was directly
challenged, and a revolutionary utterance had to
be stifled at birth. Three hundred years later estab-
lished authority was still sufficiently strong to put
up a strenuous fight against Darwin's theory of
man's close affinity with all the other beasts of the
field.
SCIENCE IN REVOLT 55
The fight has always gone on, nor is the reason
difficult to discover. Society has developed two
kinds of institution. There are scientific institutions
which exist for the discovery of natural knowledge
research laboratories and learned societies. There
is no authority vested in their hands other than the
right to pursue their investigations in so far as funds
permit. Beyond this they need do nothing, and
society expects nothing of them. Then there are
those institutions, such as the Church and the Law,
whose function it is not to extend, but to preserve
existing knowledge. Since the object of all scientific
institutions is to make discoveries which must affect
belief, social institutions, hindered by vested interests
which have grown up around them, must always
lag behind the newer knowledge and offer resistance
to its acceptance. The history of science provides
the evidence that this statement is no theory. Science
by its very nature challenges the idea of fixity of
belief, and in virtue of that very fact is always in
revolt. But in the last resort the force of actual
demonstration has always triumphed against the
forces of ignorance, however well entrenched they
may have been.
It is hardly necessary to remind you that science
is not without error. Scientists are themselves part
of that great procession that stretches from ape
through Adam to Einstein, and scientific standards
now considered essential were unknown in the
past. Moreover, it is not difficult to find illustra-
56 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
tions of the way in which modern standards are
ignored. One hears of discussions on The Evolution
of the Universe at scientific gatherings, in which
lack of precise information is compensated for by
a profusion of speculation, and in which an
objective observer would be surprised to hear that
the evidence for life on other planets was "personal
feeling" and the future of the universe was con-
ditioned by "personal beliefs" about survival after
death.
The history of science reveals four outstanding
challenges to accepted belief. In each, science has
given visual proofs that beliefs held without evidence,
and accepted merely on authority, have been false.
First there was the movement that deposed the
Earth from its accepted position at the centre of
the universe. That was the first great blow at man's
egoism. Second, there was the great generalization
associated with the name of Darwin, a theory
which gave a great shock to all those who believed
in special creation. Nowadays we are accustomed
to evolutionary ideas and accept our position among
the mammals as a matter of course. It is not easy to
remember that the story of Adam and Eve and the
Serpent was widely thought to be an historical
account of the creation and fall of man. Much
of the fabric of orthodox religious belief was
woven around the story. A feeling of uneasiness
began to make itself felt among honest-minded
religious people when it became apparent that the
SCIENCE IN REVOLT 57
fossil record pointed to a different interpretation.
Some, of course, refused to consider the evidence
of fossils Hugh Miller, the Scots geologist, is said
to have insisted that the fossils had been placed
specially in position by God to test men and their
allegiance to Him. One cannot help sympathizing
with those who, having no conception of the evolu-
tionary nature of knowledge and truth, and taking
their stand on the literal truth of Genesis, found
their whole position undermined. It was not sur-
prising that they turned their faces resolutely from
the newer ideas.
The stubborn ignorance of established institutions
can perhaps best be realized from the well-known
passage at arms at the British Association in 1860
between Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley, the great
protagonist of Evolution. Bishop Wilberforce, facing
Huxley with a smiling insolence, begged to know
was it through his grandfather or his grandmother
that he claimed descent from a monkey? Huxley
turned to his neighbour and said, "The Lord hath
delivered him into my hands," and rising to his feet
he made his memorable reply, "I have certainly
said that a man has no reason to be ashamed to
have an ape for his forefather. If there were an
ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it
would rather be a man of restless and versatile
intellect who plunges into scientific questions with
which he has no acquaintance, only to obscure
them by aimless rhetoric and skilled appeals to
5 8 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
prejudice." Of course the effect of the discussion
was to give the new viewpoint a publicity it would
not otherwise have received.
These two revolts, led by Copernicus and Darwin,
paved the way for others. The third challenge was
to the belief that the matter of which the body is
composed and the processes that go on in the body
are necessarily fundamentally different in kind from
those that proceed in the ordinary material world
around us. This was the next step in establishing
the uniformity of Nature. And lastly there is to-day
the movement which seeks to break definitely with
the world of restricted common sense and offers
us a universe finite in extent, continually expand-
ing, incapable of detailed description in terms of
common experience, and only to be described by
means of abstruse mathematical symbols.
It is the driving force of science that brings it into
revolt in the manner I have shown. This does not
mean that individual scientists are themselves
rebels against prejudice. On the contrary, in com-
mon with the rest of mankind, they have their
prejudices, they are biased, and endeavour to ex-
plain away anything that makes their own accepted
beliefs uncomfortable. No one has adequate evidence
for ninety per cent of the beliefs he holds, and indi-
vidual scientists are not different in this respect from
the rest of mankind.
3. SCIENCE IN ACTION
LET us now turn to some of the material of science
in order to study the methods which have been
evolved for its examination. The piece of the
universe I propose to ask you to examine is some-
thing which has never been seen but which everyone
has felt the air. We have felt it strike our faces, it
has chilled us to the bone, we have heard it howl
and shriek, we have smelt it but we have never
seen it. And yet, unseen as it has been, "blowing
where it listeth," we have mastered it and turned
it to our own use. How has this been done?
The range of motions and of pressures of the air is
enormous. Place your face close to a loud-speaker or
to earphones and you can detect no air disturbance ;
and yet the very fact that you can hear sounds
shows that the air actually is in gentle motion. You
wave your hand close to your face and you can feel
a gentle breeze. Outside in the street a piece of
paper is being blown to the housetops, the wind
pressure upon it is as great as its weight. You must
have seen a hoarding or a deeply rooted tree levelled
by the sheer force of the wind. The pilot of an
aeroplane travelling at 400 miles per hour would
probably break his arm if he suddenly exposed il
to the direct blast of the wind. It is this capacity
for exercising pressure which air in motion possesses
that scientists have turned to advantage.
60 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
What else do we know about air? It has weight,
of course, which can easily be verified by weighing
a flask full of air and then when pumped empty.
What else? Well, try this experiment. Light a ciga-
rette. Draw in a mouthful of smoke. Bring your
mouth close to a polished surface say a sheet of
glass, a polished surface of table, or a sheet of
paper. Now breathe the smoke gently on to the
surface, without too much draught. Look how the
smoke seems to cling to the surface. Now blow very
gently along the surface, and notice how little waves
appear on the surface of the layer of smoke, rapidly
rolling up into a sort of eddying motion, and break-
ing up almost like spray. The smoke still hangs on
close to the surface. It seems to be sticky. Is it just
the smoke that is sticky or is air also sticky? How
can we find out?
How would you find out if a liquid were sticky?
You would dip something into it,, say'your hand,
and see if the liquid stuck to the surface. Make
the experiment. Put a coin in a bowl of water, rub
the surface of the coin with the water while it is
immersed and then pull it up into the air. When
you return it to the water you will find that the
coin is covered with bubbles where the air has
stuck to its surface. Air is sticky.
So air is heavy, it is sticky, and it can exert a
fairly strong pressure against a surface on which it
beats directly.
Have you ever noticed that if you are standing
SCIENCE IN ACTION 61
in a wind and want to listen carefully you turn
your head round so that the wind does not beat
directly on to the ear, but moves smoothly past it?
What happens to this pressure when the wind does
not meet the surface dead on but runs across it?
Make this experiment. Take a flat sheet of
paper and hold it with both hands, by a thumb
and forefinger at two adjacent corners. The other
two corners will droop away from you. Now blow
steadily and strongly across the top of the paper
from the front to back. Although you are blowing
along the top and not on the under surface of the
paper, you will find the paper gradually rising until
it is almost horizontal, as if it were being forced
up from underneath or sucked up from above. We
conclude that this pressure exerted by moving air
does not merely offer resistance to movement
straight through it, but if the surface is placed
edgeways to the wind, or if the surface moves edge-
ways through the wind, a lifting force upwards is
produced on that surface. This is the principle of
the aeroplane wing. If the wing can only be driven
forward, it will at the same time be sucked upwards.
Broadly speaking, to solve the problem of aeroplane
flight we have to ask how it is possible to get the
greatest lifting effect from the wind with the least
expenditure of effort in driving the wing forward
against the opposition of the wind.
Consider an aeroplane. Strip from it all the things
that do not matter for our purpose. Strip away the
62 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
wheels, the under-carriage, the cabin ; eliminate the
tail and the fuselage, everything, in fact, except
the wing surface and the propeller. We ought to
keep the engine, because the propeller must be
driven, but if the presence of the engine makes it
too complicated, throw the engine also overboard.
All we want is a wing surface and a rotating pro-
peller. The propeller is so shaped that as it is spun
it acts like a fan, buffeting the air, and grabbing
it to itself and discharging it behind in a steady
stream. As it pushes the air away from itself back-
wards the propeller is at the same time pushed
forward. Have you ever stood on ice and tried to
push something away from you, and found that you
were also pushing yourself back at the same time?
We have a similar situation here. The principle is
a general law in mechanics action and reaction
are equal and opposite. When I was a boy we used
to make a steamboat by getting an egg, which had
been emptied through a small hole at one end,
filling it with water, resting it on four vertical nails
on the boat, and boiling the water in the egg by
means of a candle. As the steam was driven out
through the hole, the back pressure, or the reaction
of the steam on the air, pushed away the boat in
the opposite direction. The same principle was at
work. In the aeroplane the propeller carrying with
it, of course, the rest of the aeroplane pushes itself
forward by kicking against the air. As the wing is
thus driven forward, the suction effect on the upper
SCIENCE IN ACTION 63
surface of the wing comes into play ; a great draught
is created by its own motion forward, and the whole
machine is sucked up. The machine is in flight.
Of course there are all sorts of complications in
practice. You cannot keep the propeller turning
without a fairly heavy engine which has to be
lifted. You cannot lift such a heavy mass of material
and send it along at high speeds and expect it to
hold together with string. A great deal of weighty
structure is needed to hold it together, and that
extra weight has also to be lifted. Moreover, as the
aeroplane is rushing through the air at great speeds,
these extra parts are offering resistance to the air
they act as an obstruction. And in order to drive
against this you require stronger and heavier engines.
There are a whole series of further complications,
but I shall limit our discussion to a consideration
of air pressures only.
There are two problems of importance that call
for solution :
(1) How should the exposed parts of the machine
be shaped, in order that when these parts meet the
onrushing wind during flight the drag or resistance
is as small as possible? To answer this question we
must study the way in which resistance depends on
shape.
(2) What lifting force and what resistance is
experienced when a wing of a particular shape
is moved through the air at some definite speed?
We must study the relation of lifting force to speed.
64 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
Let us see how the scientific man attempts to
provide an answer to these two questions.
For this purpose I want you to go with me to
an Aerodynamics Laboratory. We enter a large hall
down the centre of which runs a single piece of
apparatus, in appearance like a long wooden box,
seven feet square and about forty feet in length,
rigidly fixed to the ground on metal supports so
that it stands about ten feet above the ground. This
long object is not really a box, for it is open at both
ends, so that it is more like a long horizontal wooden
tunnel suspended in mid-air. It is approached from
the ground about half-way along its length by a
flight of wooden steps leading to a glass door in the
side of the tunnel. Let us mount the steps, open the
glass door, and step into the apparatus. We find
ourselves in an elongated space seven feet high,
seven feet wide, and about forty feet long, opening
into the outer room or hall at both ends. Not,
however, quite freely, for at one end the passage
is blocked by a propeller. Through the centre of
the floor of the tunnel there projects vertically a
metal rod, fixed to the top of which is a beautiful
little model of an aeroplane, complete with wings,
struts, body, airscrew, tail, rudder and fins, and so
on. As we look we hear a click from below and the
propeller at the end of the tunnel begins to turn,
slowly at first, then faster and faster, sucking the
air through the tunnel in a steady stream. It soon
becomes clear that if we wait much longer we shall
SCIENCE IN ACTION 65
find ourselves in a terrific gale. We are out just in
time, for, with a roar, the wind is tearing along the
channel at a speed of nearly sixty miles an hour.
From the safety of the steps we look inside through
the closed glass door; the little model aeroplane,
perched securely on its vertical rod, is swaying very
slightly almost imperceptibly. Nothing more seems
to happen, so we descend the steps the roar of the
wind is beginning to make our ears throb. Below
we find two people at work, oblivious to the in-
tolerable noise. One is seated just below the spot
where the model aeroplane rests in the tunnel. He
is busy placing delicate weights on to a horizontal
metal beam, attached to the rod which goes through
the floor of the tunnel to the model above. We
discover that he is balancing with weights the wind
forces on the model, so that he can tell with great
accuracy how much lift and how much resistance
the model machine experiences in a known wind
speed. He is, in fact, weighing the forces on this
small model aeroplane. After each set of weighings
he signals to his companion, and the roar of the
wind in the tunnel increases. He then adjusts his
weights for greater and greater wind speeds. Turn-
ing to the other man, we find that his job is to keep
the wind speed steady during each set of weighings
and to know precisely what speed it is. How does
he do this? His eye is glued to a microscope focused
on a bubble inside a glass tube something like a
spirit-level. A rubber tube is attached to one end
66 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
of the glass tube and is connected to a hole in the
side of the tunnel past which the air inside streams.
He is measuring the speed of the wind in the tunnel.
But, you may object, the model aeroplane is not
in flight but at rest, and the air rushed past it.
Surely that is very different from what happens in
practice, when the machine moves and the air is
at rest. But is there any difference? Have you ever
seen an aeroplane flying against a heavy wind and
making scarcely any progress? It is flying never-
theless, and if the pilot were out of sight of the
ground he would be quite unaware of the wind.
Anyone who has been in an aeroplane knows that
there is little sensation of speed. It is the relative
speed that matters.
So far we have only seen measurements being
made on a model, perhaps two feet wide, about
one-twentieth the scale of the full-size machine.
The force on the full-size machine is required. How
can this be obtained from the measurements we have
seen being recorded? Another question might also
legitimately be raised. The greatest wind speed
being used in the wind tunnel was about sixty miles
per hour, while aeroplanes fly at speeds as high as
four hundred miles per hour. How can the lifting
force at the higher speed be found from measure-
ments taken at lower speeds?
These are not easy questions to answer in a non-
technical manner, but I can indicate the direction
in which answers are to be sought.
SCIENCE IN ACTION 67
Look over the shoulder of the man who is balanc-
ing the forces on the model. He has written down
in one column the numbers showing the forces, and
opposite each figure in another column the wind
speed. We notice a peculiar thing. When the wind
speed was doubled, the force went up four times.
When the wind speed was trebled, the force was
nearly nine times as great. When the wind speed
was quadrupled, the force was nearly four times
four that is, sixteen times the original value. There
seems to be a definite rule by which one could pre-
dict the forces for very much higher speeds than
those measured, provided, of course, that the law
continued to apply. It is important to notice this
qualification if the law continued to apply.
A similar argument applies to the question of
size. It is found that if a model of twice the size,
but otherwise the same shape, is put in the wind
tunnel, the forces on it are also four times the
previous values. If the model is increased to three
times the size, the forces are increased to nine times,
and so on. Again, the same type of law appears,
giving us the possibility of prediction. It is by such
investigations, together with numerous experimental
checks on full-size machines, that the scientific man
is able to use his knowledge of the model to esti-
mate the behaviour of the full machine. In the same
way^the designer can make his estimates and plans
with assurance.
Let us continue our journey through the labora-
68 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
tory, leaving the wind tunnel and passing to other
parts of the large room. On one side is a collection
of models that have been used in the work, parts
of machines, model wheels, tail planes, wings of
innumerable shapes, propellers of all sizes and
sections, engine radiators. Here is a peculiar piece
of apparatus designed to discover why in certain
circumstances a tail or a wing will begin to flutter
and possibly crumple up when in flight. There are
complete models set up to investigate the forces
that arise during spinning. Every aspect of the
problem has apparently been thought out. Here
are two investigators absorbed in the peculiar prob-
lem of predicting how the R 101 behaved just before
her collapse. They are working from a knowledge
of the forces she was likely to experience in those
last few dramatic moments of her flight. In another
corner stands a long wooden trough along which
water is slowly and steadily flowing. Upright in the
centre of the trough is a model of an aeroplane
part a strut. Thin streams of coloured liquid curl
and swirl around and past the strut, forming a
broad eddying wake of turbulent and disturbed
water in its rear. The same kind of thing happens
in air. The strut is removed and one of finer shape
is put in its place. The band of eddying fluid is niti? n
reduced and less energy is lost in useless disturbance.
In this way information is gradually forthcoming
concerning the best shape of the exposed parts of
an aeroplane, so that the resistance encountered
SCIENCE IN ACTION 69
may be reduced to the minimum. In another part
of the laboratory there is a model of a wind
tunnel, where experiments are being made in
order to change and improve the huge instrument
itself.
Let us go into one of the workshops. Fine instru-
ment-making is here the order of the day not the
standard orthodox instruments offered for sale by
scientific instrument-makers, but instruments in the
experimental stage. Here are mechanics and pat-
tern-makers who must work with extreme fineness,
for failure or inaccuracy at this stage carries mis-
takes into all the later stages.
It is clear that scientific research has a compli-
cated organization. Any piece of work has a number
of linkages we might call them horizontal and
vertical linkages. Horizontally, scientists in the most
diverse fields are dependent on the results of each
other's labour. In one laboratory we have seen those
engaged in aerodynamic research requiring, for
example, the results of optical research to enable
them to use reading instruments, requiring the
work of chemists to provide the gases, dyes, and
oils most suitable for rendering the flow of the air
and the water visible, requiring physicists to dis-
-over the effect of changes in atmospheric pressure
and temperature during the course of an experi-
ment, mathematicians to interpret the results found,
and so on. These and many others form the broad
horizontal band of research workers, whose constant
70 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
collaboration is essential for the success of any
piece of specialist investigation.
There is a vertical band of linkages, equally in-
dispensable. At one end of it there are accurate
workers in metal and wood, who produce the delicate
machinery required in the investigations; at the
other those whose job it is to direct and co-ordinate
the work as a whole. There are all grades of workers
in this vertical column from mechanics to ad-
ministrators but each grade is essential to the
smooth working of the whole. Science is a social
activity, and by this I mean not only that science
relies on the community for its support, not only
that the results of its investigations have important
social consequences, but also that scientists are a
solid and closely interlocked group, whose object
is the pursuit of assured knowledge.
4. IS THE UNIVERSE MYSTERIOUS?
I HAVE tried to show science at work behind the
scenes in order that two things might be appre-
ciated : first, the close contact with concrete things
that science persistently maintains, and secondly,
that nowadays scientific work is not an individual
activity but a corporate undertaking. It is carried
on by large groups of workers dependent one upon
the other for help, understanding, and verification
public verification I called it, in order to distin-
guish it from personal or private belief.
I propose now to discuss a much more difficult
question one which has become prominent because
of the efforts which are being made by some scien-
tific men to interpret scientific discovery and to
indicate to the man in the street the direction in
which science is moving. Any attempt to do this
is very desirable; for the day is long past when
understanding of a powerful activity like science
can remain the private possession of a few. But the
manner in which it has been done has revealed
what a difficult, and even dangerous, undertaking
it is. As I understand it, the function of a scientific
expositor is, first of all, to reveal to his hearers the
field within which science can operate, and secondly
to interpret the facts of science within that field.
A scientist, however, is also a private individual,
and unless he has clearly delimited his public respon-
72 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
sibilities, he is likely to be found gaily trespassing
in a private region where science does not yet
operate, and holding forth there about the things
he "believes."
I cannot illustrate the dangers more clearly than
by quoting from one of my correspondents. "Would
you kindly inform me," one writer asks, "if you
consider the statement 'there is no life after death'
a scientific one, when you take into consideration
the altered view scientists now take with regard to
the atom." Nor is this the only occasion on which
the same issue of the atom in relation to the "spirit"
of man has been raised.
Let me say at once, lest there be any misunder-
standing, that I would never say that there is no
life after death. Having been unable, after much
seeking, to obtain any satisfactory knowledge which
would even enable me to state in scientific terms
what the phrase "life after death" means, I cannot
yet say anything positive about it from a scientific
point of view. My correspondent, however, goes
further than I do. His question suggests that modern
researches into the constitution of the atom do
provide some information about "life after death."
I confess that I am completely baffled by the
apparent relationship between atoms and immor-
tality, and I doubt if the most sturdy believer in
psychic research would countenance the suggestion
of any relationship. And yet the belief is fairly
widespread that in some peculiar way recent investi-
IS THE UNIVERSE MYSTERIOUS? 73
gations into atoms and electrons point to the dis-
covery of something "spiritual" at the core of
scientific theory.
In order to clear the issue let me first draw a
distinction between two points. I want to contrast
two questions: "Is Science Mysterious?" and "Is the
Universe Mysterious?" It is the latter question that
appears as my title, but actually the question one
invariably hears discussed is "Is SCIENCE Mysterious?"
I want to show that the answer to this question is
definitely "No." There is no mystery in science.
You can make what answer you like to the other
question, for it does not come within my province.
If you ask me as a private individual what I feel
about it, of course I will tell you, but I should have
to speak privately and my statement would merely
have the standing of that of any other individual
man or woman. It would not have the backing of
the scientific movement.
"Is SCIENCE Mysterious?" is the question at issue.
One often hears it said by those who, having had
no chance of getting their science at first-hand,
have had to rely on interpreted information, that
the world is not deterministic like the inevitable
workings of a machine. They declare that the closer
scientists penetrate into the workings of Nature,
the clearer it is becoming that in the last resort
things happen of their own volition which is, of
course, only another way of saying for no apparent
reason. They say that this indeterminism or "free-
74 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
will" is to be seen in the minute details of the
structure of the universe in the behaviour of the
electron, and that it thus follows that in large-scale
events old-fashioned determinism is dead, and that
human free-will is an established fact.
First let me say something about the historical
setting of this theme. Of course the Greeks argued
about determinism, but its modern phase begins
about the time of Newton in the seventeenth cen-
tury. More than any other man Newton organized
into definite scientific laws our knowledge of certain
aspects of Nature in particular, facts about the
solar system. He showed that the movements of
planets in the remote past fitted in with his genera-
lizations, and that his laws could be used for pur-
poses of prediction. Throughout the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries the study of mechanics with
which Newton had been specially concerned passed
from success to success, and the application of the
laws of mechanics to engineering practice was fol-
lowed by remarkable achievements. Newton who,
by the way, was a very religious man thus un-
wittingly laid the foundations of a form of mechanical
materialism which reached its zenith in the nine-
teenth century. The world came to be regarded as
a vast complicated piece of machinery a clockwork
mechanism which, having once been set in motion,
with all its intricate interlocking detail, ran smoothly
and relentlessly along its predestined course, accord-
ing to the laws laid down by Newton.
IS THE UNIVERSE MYSTERIOUS? 75
Much has happened since that time to alter the
setting of this picture, but from what I have already
stated you will recognize that this mechanistic ex-
planation was a highly public view of the world, a
view which in actual fact has had tremendous success
in explaining and describing the visible behaviour
of material things, not only on our little earth but
throughout the solar system. Naturally, side by side
with this outlook there existed, and there still exists,
that private view of human behaviour which says
"I am master of my destiny, I can do this or that
just as I wish; my will is free." It was natural that
all those institutions and opinions associated with
the private belief in free-will should feel that this
powerful and successful piece of scientific machinery
might at any moment try to explain away personal
conduct as it had explained the machine. It is
possible that they felt that any such attempt would
be a threat to personal happiness. Therein arises
the traditional antagonism between science and
religion.
Now, certain things have happened in science to
change this picture slightly. I refer to the theory
of relativity and to the quantum theory. Not that
I propose to explain either relativity or the quantum
theory, but I shall try to show how these new
theories affect the problem of determinism.
It would be well, first of all, to explain in greater
detail what scientists mean by a "scientific law"
and by "observed facts." Everyone, given the right
76 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
kind of apparatus and the right kind of skill, can
verify "facts" for himself. Facts are the same for
everybody. A "scientific law" is a general statement
which covers and unifies observed facts. Let us take
a simple example to show how the scientist arrives
at his scientific laws.
You know those "Try your Strength" machines
that one finds in fairs and recreation grounds and
on piers in fact, anywhere where there is time and
money to waste. One is given a hammer and is
told to strike upon a block ; the strength of one's
blow can be seen by the rise of a ball which travels
up a column. If your strength is as the strength of
ten a bell rings, otherwise you fail to get your money
back. The principle of the thing is that the strength
of your blow is measured by the height to which
the indicator rises. Suppose you strike the block with
a certain known force and watch how high the
indicator rises. Then if you give the block a blow
twice the strength, you will find the indicator
rises to about four times the previous height. Use
three times the strength and the indicator rises to
about nine times the height, and with four times
the strength the indicator reaches sixteen times its
first height.
On seeing these figures you say at once that there
seems to be a rule or law which relates the strength
of the blow and the height to which the indicator
rises. I will state the law:
The strength with which the block is struck is propor-
IS THE UNIVERSE MYSTERIOUS? 77
tional to the square of the height to which the indicator
rises.
I want you to notice two things.
First. We seem to be in a position to state that
if we hammer with five times the strength the
indicator will rise to five times five, or twenty-five
times the height to which it rose on the first occasion.
That seems obvious from the results already found.
But I would remind you that there is no experi-
mental evidence for it. In order to be absolutely
sure we should have to strike the block with five
times the original strength and find out the height
to which the indicator rose. It is true that we are
induced by the results we have already obtained
to make a scientific prediction about the behaviour
of the indicator. A scientist would say that an
induction had been made i.e. that from a series of
observed facts a wider law uniting them all had
been formulated. Notice that in making our in-
duction we have overstepped the experimental
evidence. Far from being a definite assurance about
what will happen in the future, scientific prediction
is merely a statement that under such and such
definite conditions a certain result may be ex-
pected. In other words that expected result would
be consistent with our generalization. Let me state
this first observation categorically :
A scientific law is only a statement of what seems
extremely likely to happen.
Scientific law does not deny that further facts
78 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
may still come to light which are not in accordance
with that law.
Second. It is often said that one of the objects of
science is to state in advance what will be found
in the future under given conditions in other words,
to predict future experiences. What do we mean by
experience here? Consider the "Try your Strength"
machine again. A blow had to be struck in order
to observe the height to which the indicator rose.
Now when we double the striking force we find that
the height is not exactly quadrupled but only very
nearly quadrupled sometimes the height is a tiny
bit more, sometimes a trifle less. You might say this
was an accident. Try again and let us suppose the
machine is as perfect as science can make it and that
the required striking force can be exactly produced.
On ten separate occasions suppose the block be
struck with exactly twice the strength. On no
occasion does it rise exactly to four times the height
only very nearly so. You will probably cast about
in your minds for the cause of this apparent error.
You say that it is so small that your observation
must be at fault; that the ball which acts as an
indicator c 'intends" to rise to exactly four times the
height on each occasion, but for one reason and
another it fails to do so, and so on. But if you strike
the block with twice the force a hundred times, or
a thousand times, instead of ten times, you will still
find the same small error. You will then turn your
attention to an examination of the law, and you
IS THE UNIVERSE MYSTERIOUS? 79
might come to the conclusion that the law as you
had framed it was too perfect. You might say that
a law to be a perfect law ought to embrace these
minor errors of observation. You might say that you
do not want an idealized law but that you would
prefer a working law, one which would give you
the odds on getting one of a series of measurements,
all, of course, very nearly equal. The fact that you
have got an idealized law results from the method
of abstraction which I have already discussed. By
the method of abstraction you have stripped off
from the ball and from the blow all the things you
imagined to be of no consequence in practice. You
have got an idealized, or perfect, law. It may not,
and generally does not, meet the observed facts of
your real ball and your real blow.
You will see from all this that science makes
idealized laws and uses them for predicting what
is likely to happen in the future. These future events
may not be exactly as they are forecasted, but they
should nevertheless approximate to the prediction.
So if we look back on the rigid determinism of
the nineteenth century we see that it was too hard
and fast. This rigid determinism took scientific
laws as they were set out, sharply and clearly, by
Newton and his successors and assumed that they
were the laws of Nature. The assumption was made
that if only one measured accurately enough one
would find these laws exactly fulfilled. In other words,
the determinism of the nineteenth century considered
8o SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
that these exact scientific laws were really Nature's
laws, and that what you actually found in the world
of reality was only an approximation to those perfect
laws. We now see, however, that this was putting
the cart before the horse. Scientific laws no longer
occupy the magnificent and impregnable position
they once did. Whatever validity a scientific law
has is shown by the fact that the law is a good
approximation to the operations that actually go
on in this complex and changing world. Scientists
repudiate the idea that it is possible to predict
absolutely the features of the universe.
We are now ready to turn to recent researches
connected with the electron and the quantum
theory.
The electron is a scientific abstraction which is
causing people a great deal of trouble. If only one
could get hold of a single electron and make experi-
ments on it one might manage to make short work
of it, but electrons exist in groups and thus render
themselves immune from too close a scrutiny. One
has to deal, therefore, with the average of the
group the typical electron. Now electrons are quite
unlike anything that science has ever experienced
in the whole course of her history, but electrons
appear to be a basic constituent in matter, and so
any discussion of matter at that level involves an
explanation in terms of electrons. Hence our diffi-
culties.
First of all let me remind you of the relation
IS THE UNIVERSE MYSTERIOUS? 81
between atoms and electrons. For most purposes
a lump of matter a piece of iron, for example
behaves as a whole and remains one piece unless
you subdivide it. In describing the behaviour of this
piece of iron Newton's laws of mechanics approxi-
mately hold good. Now in theory our piece of
iron can be regarded as consisting of an enormous
collection of atoms. During any chemical change
these atoms remain intact. Once an atom, always
an atom, so to speak. But if you pour some acid
over the lump of iron it may dissolve. The lump
of iron as a whole will have disappeared, but the
atoms have not disappeared; they can all be
accounted for. They will individually have united
with the atoms in the acid. The presumed behaviour
of individual atoms in a lump is only part of the
story, however. For an atom, as you know, is sup-
posed to consist of a charge of positive electricity
round which there circulate at incredible speeds, and
at various distances from the central positive charge,
one or more tiny electrons like planets circulating
round the sun. That is the theory. These whirling
electrons are thought to be charges of negative
electricity. From substances like radium they are
shot out naturally, and in the laboratory they can
be knocked out of the atom if you hit it hard enough
with certain rays metaphorically speaking, of
course. Now the electrons move around the central
charge at various distances from it, but on occasion
they seem able to pass from one path to another
82 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
path. We only deduce that they have changed paths
because they have radiated light in doing so.
It is necessary to digress for a moment in order
to comment on the precision of our knowledge in
these fields. Ultimately, of course, all science depends
for its accuracy on the precision of experimental
measurement. When we come to deal with the
ultimate particles we call electrons and try to
measure distances and times distances between
two neighbouring electrons and times of passing
from one path to another we are working at the
very limits of scientific experience. The very act of
measurement affects the thing we are trying to
measure, for our effective measuring-rods and the
objects of our measurement are both ultimate par-
ticles. There is thus a fundamental difficulty of
measurement in these fields. Suppose, for example,
you tried to find out how cold some object was by
touching it with your hand, and suppose that every
time you reached out to touch it the heat from your
hand caused it to melt. The same sort of situation
is created in attempts to measure the electron. With
the ordinary conventions of space and time used for
measurements and predictions of speeds and dis-
tances of largish objects, an odd thing happens
when the tiny electron is measured. Its speed and
its position cannot be measured independently. The
more accurately you fix the speed the less accurately
can you fix the position, and the more accurately
you can measure the position the less accurately can
IS THE UNIVERSE MYSTERIOUS? 83
you measure the speed. Speed and position are
not independent and separate aspects of a
moving electron. If you wanted to predict where
a particle was going to be at some definite instant
in the future you would, of course, require to
know where the particle is now, and at what
speed it is passing through its present position. It
is just the same for a train. If you want to know
when the train from A will arrive in B you must
know the time it started from A and the speed at
which it is travelling towards B. But unfortunately
these two things cannot be found separately for the
electron, so that you cannot describe in detail its
behaviour as if it were an ordinary particle.
The reason for this difficulty is known. It resides
in the fact that there is a minimum quantity of
energy the quantum it is called which is capable
of taking part in any action. This quantum acts as
a whole. There is no half-way house. A quan-
tity of energy is either a quantum (or several quanta)
or nothing. You cannot have a fraction of a quan-
tum. As the electron moves on its journey and gets
from one path to another it gives out a quantum
of energy which shows itself in the form of light.
Now this quantum of light does two things. It
enables us to detect the presence of the electron,
but at the same time in being emitted it jerks
the electron right off its balance, so that we do
not see the electron where it is but where it was.
In this way it becomes impossible at the same time
84 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
to fix both the position of the electron and its
speed.
There is no mystery about the idea of the quan-
tum, yet some writers have suggested in popular
expositions that here is a problem that by its very
nature eludes determination and so is a mystery.
But I would ask you to remember this these
writers do not suggest that the electrons do not go
along paths of some kind. They are prepared to
state what proportion of a group is distributed
along one path and what proportion along another,
but they say that it is impossible to predict for
an individual electron which path it will traverse.
They can state how probable it is that it will go
along this or the other path. So there is really
nothing here to create confusion. Since it is known
how the difficulty has arisen there is nothing to
support the feeling that mystery lies at the very
heart of the universe. After all, every scientific law
ought to be stated only as a probability, and any
prediction, as we have seen, is only a statement
about what will probably happen.
The point I want to make is this. The newer
physics in its study of the electron has merely made
us recognize that there are limitations to the field
in which man can make accurate predictions. This
is not a new conception; it has been recognized in
other spheres. Man is limited, for example, by the
very nature of his sense organs. He is limited by
his heredity and by his environment and by his
IS THE UNIVERSE MYSTERIOUS? 85
social tradition. Even scientific truth is a limited
and temporary statement depending on the state
of knowledge of the time. It is true that a new
limitation has been exposed by this work on the
electron, but there is no mystery about it. It has not
affected the determinism which was essential to
scientific method before these recent developments in
physics. Predictions which were made and are still
being made on large-scale objects remain valid.
Finally, remember that what we have been dis-
cussing has nothing whatever to do with what is
called the "free-will" of human beings. Free-will
is a purely private belief, a purely personal inter-
pretation of human conduct. Science does not take
account of such beliefs. Next time you hear it
suggested that modern physics has knocked deter-
minism out of science, I hope you will call to
mind the considerations I have here put before you.
Without determinism there could be no science.
5 . SCIENCE DISRUPTIVE AND CON-
STRUCTIVE
LPOK round the room in which you are seated and
draw up a list of the things you can see in their
natural state just as they are found before they
have been tampered with by man. There is coal on
the fire, water in the glass, and possibly flowers in
the vase. There seems to be little else. Among all
this collection of things chairs, cutlery, books,
wall-paper, clothing, curtains, electric switches,
carpet, pictures, nails what is there true to nature?
Even the water might be soda water, the fire an
electric one, and the flowers imitation.
The difficulty you have in finding "raw material"
in your room will impress on you the extent to which
modern civilized life has come to depend for its
necessities and luxuries on the refining processes of
industry. Here are two pieces of paper. One is coarse
but strong. I find it difficult to tear. It will not lie
flat. I hold it up to the light and I find that there
are uneven clots in it. The other piece is smooth
and thin. When it is held up to the light its texture
is uniform. It lies flat and is suitable for writing on.
Think of the amount of labour, skill, and research
that have gone to build up these two types of paper,
each suitable for a special purpose^Here is a fountain-
pen with its iridium nib and its vulcanite container ;
there is a fire-place with its cast bars and orna-
SCIENCE DISRUPTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE 87
mental tiles|jLook at the carpet or curtain with its
intricate weaving and fast dyes. All these things are
of highly elaborate manufacture, dependent on the
application of complex scientific processes. They
are part of the ordinary furniture of our lives. In
this practical guise science has insinuated itself so
deeply into our homes, work, and amusements that
we are as little aware of it as we are aware of our
own breathing. It is not as if science were an old-
established tradition. There is scarcely an electrical
device in common use at the present day that is
more than thirty years old.
If these scientific amenities were suddenly with-
drawn, our civilized life would crumble. Life would
become impossible in our cities, with their large
massed populations, dependent on the smooth run-
ning of power stations for the preparation of food,
and on mechanical transport for its distribution. As
a community we have built on the assumption that
these things will go on, and that we may depend
on science somehow or other to satisfy new needs
and to overcome new dangers. Try to imagine
what steps you would take to-day if it became
known that by to-morrow morning every scientific
discovery and invention of the past century would
have vanished, leaving you to coge with the de-
mands of home and communal life! I suggest this
speculation not for idle amusement but because I
want you to appreciate what I mean when I say
that we have staked our future and the continued
88 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
functioning of our civilized life on a complete belief
in science.
I should like to explain more fully some of the
implications of this fact. Consider what Britain was
like 150 years ago. It was a country with a much
smaller population, a proportionately larger agri-
cultural industry, a strong merchant class, and the
small beginnings of industrialism. Then came the
new sources of power, coal and steam, and the face
of Britain rapidly changed. Cornfields and pasture
lands gave way to coal-mines and iron foundries;
quiet villages suddenly expanded into busy towns
and the country air was transformed into the smoky
atmosphere of cities. The rural population marched
steadily into the rapidly growing towns. In a
generation, Britain gave herself over completely to
the new mechanical age. Three facts are important.
First of all that the whole mode of life of the
greater part of the population of this country
was completely changed in one generation. Secondly,
that it was the discovery of new uses for steam,
coal, and iron which was the main factor affecting
the structure of Britain's population just as its
structure had previously been largely determined by
agriculture. And thirdly, that the kind of life which
our grandfathers built up in the towns rested on
the assumption that the new movement was perma-
nent and could be relied upon to last.
We have lived to see how false was that last
assumption. The needs of a community are not
SCIENCE DISRUPTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE 89
static. Urged on by these changing needs, scientific
investigation is itself a continual spur towards
change. Moreover, scientific progress cannot be
localized : it knows no national frontiers. Mechaniza-
tion spread rapidly but unevenly. Nor was it ever
asked how much mechanization was necessary to
supply the world's needs, or which countries were
best adapted to the process. In the absence of inter-
national action acute competition in world trade
resulted. Nor did Britain ever attempt to reorganize
her own industrial machinery in order to main-
tain her early advantages. She did not even make
full use of her scientific resources, which were con-
siderable.
The immediate changes which followed the
coming of the Steam Age were merely the prelude
to a continuous transformation, whose driving force
was the needs of the community. As science and
technology satisfied each need there followed far-
reaching changes of a social nature. This sequence
of events will come home to you if you try to draw
up a list of the industries that have come into
existence not forgetting those that have died in
the meantime during this past generation alone.
Let us ask ourselves whether we or our friends could
have found employment in our present trade or
profession fifty years ago. Consider an industry like
transport and take note of the succession of horse,
train, motor-car, aeroplane. Even "brain- work" is
being highly mechanized : in insurance offices and
90 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
banks one hears the soft hum of the computing
machine, adding and subtracting totals and sub-
totals. In the scientific laboratory electrical machines
perform the most complicated operations, differen-
tiating and integrating, computing horizontally and
vertically, enumerating the results, and even going
to the length of recording mistakes. Not only is the
machine thus taking the place of man, but it is
making man's work more accurate. Steadily and
relentlessly hands and brains are being replaced by
machines, and the making of these new machines
becomes itself a development of industry. Let us
examine one such development in detail.
When coal is heated in a particular way, three
main products are separated out coal-gas, coal-tar,
and ammoniacal liquor. As early as 1 789 the manu-
facture of coal-gas was begun ; fifteen years later a
public gas-works was established. Gas-lighting
spread. It was a social asset. The by-products of
gas-manufacture, however, were a social evil, and
became a nightmare to works' managers. Lighting was
a social necessity, but it was equally asocial necessity
to get rid of its evil-smelling consequences. It was the
scientist in the end, not the commercialist, who turned
to a study of these waste products. Bethell discovered
that one of the oils from the waste coal-tar was an ex-
cellent wood-preservative, a discovery that led to a new
industrial process and incidentally solved the nation's
problem of rotting railway sleepers. In 1825,
Faraday isolated benzine in the laboratory. Twenty
SCIENCE DISRUPTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE 91
years later benzine was discovered in coal-tar coal-
tar which had for years been thrown away by
enterprising business men who had even paid large
sums to have it removed. To pay to have it examined
by a chemist was a notion which had not presented
itself to them. In 1856, Perkin, a young chemist
aged eighteen, while experimenting with aniline, a
substance obtained from the benzine in coal-tar
discovered the first aniline dye. This dye was mauve,
and its discovery marked the development of the
modern dye industry with all its subsidiary interests.
The industries which have directly followed on
a scientific study of these waste treasures of the
coal industry are almost legion. Dyes of all shades,
naphthalene, ammonia, creosote, benzol, pitch, tar,
perfumes, paraffins, drugs, flavourings, disinfectants
to say nothing of high explosives. Industries con-
cerned with paint, india-rubber, varnish and stain,
composite fuel, wood preservation, felt manufacture,
to name only a few concerns, depend on the salvage
work of scientists who have rescued valuable raw
materials from waste rubbish.
The moral is clear. The present and future needs
of a community cannot be provided for ade-
quately and intelligently unless appropriate
machinery exists for the application and develop-
ment of scientific principles in industry. From the
birth of the scientific idea to the manufacture and
sale of the finished product there must be co-
ordination.
9 a SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
A significant test of intelligent planning in in-
dustry can be made by examining the effective-
ness of this machinery for adjusting supply to
present and future needs, and of exploiting the
natural resources of the country. In the applica-
tion of science to industry there are three
important stages. First of all the discovery in pure
science has to be made. There are the physicists,
chemists, biologists, biochemists, bacteriologists in
their respective laboratories concerned mainly with
fundamental theory, and the opening up of new
fields of inquiry. Their work is carried out prin-
cipally in the universities, in Government scientific
institutions, and in specialist museums and libraries.
The results of their investigations are to be found
in the journals of the learned societies freely
given to the world and often published at the
expense of the investigator. These scientists struggle
along, begging for grants towards the cost of appara-
tus and publication ; and, in the past, help has been
given grudgingly, as a luxury which the community
could ill afford although the history of technology
has shown that scientific research is a vital necessity
if communal life is to be developed successfully.
The next stage in the process brings us to the factory
laboratory, where the theoretical idea of pure
science has to receive its industrial baptism. The
function of the industrial laboratory is best illustrated
by an example. Take dyes. A new dye has been
isolated from coal-tar by the chemist. How fast is
SCIENCE DISRUPTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE 93
it? How does the crude dye require to be treated
to make it commercially useful? How much useful
dye is obtained from a given quantity of the coal-
tar? What is it going to cost to extract it? What
sort of commercial plant is most suitable? How are
the various stages in the extraction to be arranged
in the factory? What other materials not immedi-
ately available will be needed? How reliable is the
supply? What will the raw materials cost? Are
there any other processes that might be handled
with advantage at the same time? Are there any
by-products and what is to be done with them?
There are many questions which call for careful
study and experiment with model plant. At this
stage these questions cannot be answered either
by the pure scientist or by the manufacturer. They
require technical skill and an understanding of
full-scale factory conditions, as well as of scientific
experimentation.
An institution for the study of such problems I
call an industrial laboratory. It is an essential
development, and an industrial system that does
not deliberately provide for it can never hope to
be efficient. The stream of pure science will pass it
by and the system will become obsolete. It is not
enough to have one or two men with doubtful
scientific qualifications, underpaid and overworked,
to handle the transference. The link has to be a strong
one, or subsidiary industries will not develop from
the main stem as they must do if the changing needs
94 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
of the community are to be supplied. In this country
industrialists as a class have failed lamentably to
recognize this need. Among the multitude of indus-
trial activities on whose well-being the country rests
there are very few indeed in which this aspect
of industrial planning has shown itself. For want of
an effective channel of communication, a mass of
pure scientific knowledge probably lies industrially
sterile in the archives of the learned societies.
Every industrialist, every manufacturer, every
business man who has entrusted to himself the task
of carrying on industrial development, can now
ask himself whether during times of peace and
plenty he took serious thought of how new scientific
knowledge was to be utilized in his own manu-
facturing processes. Has he ever considered what
experimental processes would have to be devised
and tested in order that the natural resources of
the country could be explored and used to the
fullest extent? By natural resources, I refer not only
to material and plant, but to scientific knowledge.
One does not have to wait for an answer to these
questions. The answer is known. If politicians and
captains of industry in whose hands the security of
millions of our workers rests had been alive to these
problems, if they had been able to see production
and consumption as a scientific whole, the disastrous
gap between pure science and practical manu-
facturing processes might long ago have been
bridged. New ideas not merely make existing
SCIENCEDISRUPTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE 95
industries more efficient, but they create new
industries and this is infinitely more important.
The development of new industries, based on a
full knowledge of natural resources and an eco-
nomic scientific co-operation with other countries,
could build a new industrial Britain.
It is worth while considering some of the reasons
why there are so few developments of the kind I
have indicated. It may mean that our captains of
industry have not been alive to the importance of
scientific research and to the necessity of utilizing
it as soon as it becomes available and arranging
for its transference to industry. Again it may
mean that our industries have been organized on
too small a scale to afford the expense of research
laboratories. If this last reason be true, then we
must conclude that the individual existence in
their present form of these small concerns is a
serious drag on industrial progress. Is it possible
for small-scale undertakings to envisage the larger
issues that are vital to the community as a
whole? Can they afford to take a long view? The
answers to these questions should be sought by a
close scrutiny of the present organization of industry
and the ends which it is presumed to serve.
Fifty years ago Britain was more advanced
technically than any other country. We were the
most highly equipped industrial nation in the world.
Now we find ourselves sliding down the industrial
scale. Why? British workmanship is not discredited;
9 6 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
the craftsmanship of our mechanics remains, with
justice, pre-eminent throughout the world. Nor is our
science at fault. I should not be seriously challenged
if I said that our scientific men are in the forefront
in ability. It is freely acknowledged that British
scientists have been responsible for the discovery of
many fundamental principles which have revolu-
tionized industry the world over. There are many
historical reasons why Britain should be losing her
industrial pre-eminence, but apart from these,
somewhere in between the scientific man and the
mechanic there is a gap which tends to render
futile scientific ability and mechanical skill. It is
the existence of that gap which I have endeavoured
to reveal.
6. EVERYBODY A SCIENTIST
"WILL an accurate and objective statement of
scientific knowledge be sufficient to ensure its
general acceptance?" This is one of the most impor-
tant questions with which educationalists are faced,
and not only educationalists, parents, and propagan-
dists, but everyone of us. The answer given to it will
decide whether science will be a serious factor
in cultural progress. Some clue to the answer can be
found in the following illustration.
Suppose I have in my hand a most beautiful rosy
apple, and I offer it to you to eat. You ask where
I got it. From one of those apple-trees in the
graveyard fruit-trees thrive very well in graveyards,
you know. You do not want it? You will not eat
it? What is the matter with it? It is as good as
any other apple. It has the same acids, the same
sugars, the same rosy skin and luscious pulp, the
same chemical composition, and yet you will not
eat it. Well, I will not press you. Drink this glass of
water instead. Where did I get the water from?
I can assure you it is very special water indeed
highly purified. I went to-day to a sewage works,
and there I saw it being purified by a new biological
process. You would hardly believe it to look at it,
but it came from a repulsive, evil-smelling mush,
and now it is guaranteed absolutely pure, free from
bacteria or any form of contamination. What ! You
98 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
will not drink it? Well, you are foolish, it is really
cleaner and purer than the stuff that comes out of
your tap. If you knew that the water that comes out
of your tap, the water that you drink with such
relish. . . . What, you do not want to hear? How
extraordinary! When I assure you that this water
is chemically and biologically pure, you will not
drink it, and when I propose to tell you about the
water you do drink, you would rather go on drinking
than know the truth. It all seems very illogical !
Now, in spite of the ideally scientific attitude I
have assumed in this imaginary dialogue, I freely
admit that I might find myself unable also to
drink that water. I am doubtful, too, about the
apple. Please recognize the importance of the
admission I have made. You will see that although
I am aware of the scientific facts, my actions in the
last resort do not seem to be controlled by those
facts alone. Indeed, if I had been ignorant of the
facts, I might have enjoyed both the apple and the
water, but my knowledge called up a feeling of
revulsion they strongly affected my private world.
Now I have been trying to stress the fact that
scientific explanation is kept outside this private
world, borrowing nothing from it, building its
framework independently of individual likes and
dislikes. In so far as scientists are people with social
ideals, individuals who would like to see the scientific
spirit reflected in human development, they proceed
on the assumption that if only the facts are set out
EVERYONE A SCIENTIST 99
clearly enough people must necessarily accept them.
More than that, they assume that people will not
merely agree that the facts are true by saying so
in words, but will behave as if they believed their
truth. Is this a mistaken belief ? Do people, in fact,
act in accordance with their beliefs as expressed in
words? Every scientist and every teacher who would
like to see science pull its weight in the community
must face up to this problem of getting conduct to
reflect belief. Otherwise belief becomes merely a
verbal futility.
I remember one bright winter morning, when I
was a student, sitting reading in my room with the
sunlight streaming through the window. Presently
my landlady entered and quietly pulled the blind,
explaining that unless she did so the sun would put
out the fire. I was young and argumentative, and
immediately tried to find out on what evidence she
based her belief. She had, of course, nothing very
definite to go on, beyond a very firm belief and a
wide experience; but her experience consisted, I
discovered, in recognizing that when the blind was
drawn the fire always seemed to brighten up. I
pointed out that the same would apply to a candle.
When the sun shone on it, it seemed to become
dimmer, and yet it did not appear to burn any less
steadily. The light of the candle was merely obscured,
but, like the fire, it became bright again when the
blind was drawn. If the fire was being put out by
the sun, did it mean that the coal was burning less
ioo SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
steadily? There was, of course, no information on
the point, and she admitted that until there was
such information one could hardly assert that the
fire was being put out. I pulled the blind up and
showed her that all that apparently happened was
that the flames became less distinct, and at the
same time the blackness of the coals and the white
flakiness of the ash stood out more clearly in contrast.
I tried to disabuse her mind of what I conceived,
perhaps falsely, to be merely a piece of faulty
observation, a prolonged superstition. I thought
she appeared convinced. To strengthen the argument
I drew from her the admission that she had never
discovered that sunlight made a gas fire burn any
slower. I settled down to my book with that satis-
factory feeling peculiar to the successful propagandist.
An hour later I suddenly became aware that she
had quietly entered the room and again pulled down
the blind! Possibly she suspected that there was a
great deal more in the question than I had raised.
Possibly there may be. Whatever it was, she evi-
dently had this prior belief, this bias, which induced
her to disbelieve the evidence I had set before her
eyes, and to continue following a well-established
mode of conduct. In fact, she was not prepared to
believe the evidence.
Let me remind you of rather an amusing instance
of this same disbelief. Alexander Ross in the middle
of the seventeenth century attacked Sir Thomas
Browne for casting doubt upon the statement, given
EVERYONE A SCIENTIST 101
on the authority of Aristotle, that mice arise from
putrefaction. Ross had a firm Aristotelian bias. To
question Aristotle's statement as Thomas Browne did,
he asserted, was "to question Reason, Sense, and
Experience," and he urged doubters to "go to
Egypt and see for themselves fields swarming with
mice begot of the mud of the Nile." A battery of
argument is let loose to support the old tradition.
We all hate parting with our superstitions.
There is another illustration in the comet of 1712.
Whiston, the mathematical divine, had predicted on
good evidence that it would become visible on
Wednesday, October i/jth, at 5.5 a.m., and that in
accordance with an old superstition the world would
be destroyed by fire on the following Friday morning.
The comet duly arrived to time, and panic spread
in the belief that the rest of the prophecy would also
be correct. People crowded on to barges and boats
on the Thames, feeling that on the water they would
be safest. Over one hundred clergymen, it is said,
went over to Lambeth Palace to request that special
prayers should be said for the emergency. Shares
fell heavily. People rushed to take their savings out
of the bank. Whiston, of course, had no evidence
for this part of his prediction. Scientist enough to
appreciate the meaning of an astronomical calcula-
tion, he yet held tenaciously to a piece of superstition.
That, of course, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Are we more advanced now? How many of
our superstitious beliefs have we really discarded?
102 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
The accumulation of scientific knowledge alone is
no guarantee of the purity of our beliefs. Is science
itself free from superstitions? One is inclined to
doubt it if one looks at the great scientific figures
of the past and inquires into the nature of the
beliefs they professed. Copernicus, who disestablished
the Earth from its splendid position at the centre of
the universe, believed that the planets were urged
on in their courses by propelling angels. Kepler
drew horoscopes. Newton applied his mathematical
genius to working out the astrological predictions
in the Book of Daniel. Boyle, one of the founders of
the Royal Society, believed in the doctrine of the
transmutation of metals into gold, so did Newton and
Leibniz, co-inventors of the differential calculus.
Priestley, who discovered oxygen, could scarcely
understand its significance, so intensely did he believe
in that mystical fluid Phlogiston which then obsessed
scientists.
Even in more modern times scientists have become
so accustomed to a theory that they tend to develop
a superstitious belief in its truth. The belief in the
ether is a case in point. Again, we have all met the
intelligent Westerner who, having lived in India for
several years, assures us that the famous disappearing
rope trick actually takes place. He says that the
Indian boy really disappears. Nor need one go to
the Orient for tales of such credulity. How many
people avoid walking under a ladder, cast salt over
their left shoulder, and jokingly touch wood at the
EVERYONE A SCIENTIST 103
suggestion of danger? People still have a sneaking
half-belief in mascots and amulets, charms and
talismans, and hate to part with them lest bad luck
befall. How many people are wearing at this moment
some little luck-bringer with which they would not
part. And when bad luck comes do they discard
their little black pig, or swastika, or elephant's hair
ring, or shark's tooth? How many refuse to wear
pearls on a Friday? How many believe in the "Laws
of Juridical Astrology?" How many could have their
fortunes told and bear the indications of an evil fate
with complete equanimity? Is not the swagger of
disbelief an indication of a little nervousness?
We must not fall into the error, therefore, of
presuming that man, in his present stage of evolution,
can be satisfied by science alone or by cold reason.
We are complex creatures wrapped up in our past,
and we must not expect our conduct to be dictated
by intellectual ideas alone. Common sense cries for
consistent and reasonable actions, but how many of
us are consistent and reasonable?
An important communal issue is raised. If we are
each to continue to act according to our particular
prejudices, we are going to find it hard to live together
in peace. Since we must live together we shall have
to find a common basis of conduct arising out of
accepted and agreed beliefs. Belief resting on
scientific fact is, so far, the sole method of approach
to knowledge which enables unanimity of assent
to be won.
104 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
It is by education that we usually try to teach
the difficult task of living together. If education is
to fulfil its task it will require to be permeated with
the scientific spirit, it will require to eliminate from
its teachings all superstitions and all beliefs that
cannot stand critical examination. Every question
raised by the child will have to be taken and
made an excuse for examining the evidence for the
answer given. Throughout its career the child will
have to be accustomed to sifting evidence. It must be
taught to appreciate the meaning of knowledge and
the perspective of man's forward groping. Education
must be built upon a scientific basis. I do not suggest
that teachers are not at present carrying out a difficult
task in an admirable manner, but their endeavours
are often limited by the superstitions of the child's
environment. I am not now discussing technical
education. My plea is for something fundamentally
cultural. As civilization becomes more mechanized
and scientific, and as communal life comes to rely
more closely on the steady functioning of scientific
processes, it is essential that educational methods
should develop on parallel lines. Just as old
machinery becomes obsolete and is scrapped, so
false traditions and baseless superstitions must be
discarded and eliminated from the social heritage.
It is largely a question of early habits. Unless we
early instil critical habits into our children, unless
we encourage them to call for evidence on all
conceivable occasions, they will rapidly adopt a
EVERYONE A SCIENTIST 105
habit of simply believing, duly followed by "be-
lieving behaviour." Thus superstitions persist
and remain in the common stock of traditional
action. It is obvious that if ill-founded beliefs are
to be eliminated verbal exposure alone is not
enough. The behaviour called forth by the super-
stition must also receive attention. It may not be
difficult to demonstrate that belief in the unluckiness
of the number 13 has no foundation, but how are
you going to prevent people from acting upon a
belief that 13 is unlucky? How are you going to
make them sit down 13 at a table?
Educationalists are faced with a twofold problem.
In the first place teachers must see to it that through-
out the whole course of the child's education a
critical attitude is adopted to the question of evidence.
In the second place teachers must set out to condition
behaviour. It is not sufficient to explode the supersti-
tion ; the explosion has also to shake the child of a
habit. And that is not easy, for by the time children
arrive at school many superstitions and prejudices,
taboos and traditions, are already well established.
A bias has been introduced into the child's outlook
from its tenderest years. How to adjust educational
practice to meet these difficulties is a matter for
serious study, and teachers themselves will require
to shed many superstitions in the investigation.
In a thousand ways Science has already been called
in to the help of Education books, pictures, films,
gramophones, wireless, are all aids to learning. But
io6 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
these things are the machinery of science ; the spirit
of science has yet to be liberated for educational
service and instilled into social relations. It is a
problem that calls for the enterprise and initiative
of our generation of teachers and thinkers. By
striving to permeate social life with the spirit of
critical foresight, by seeking to guide conduct with
accurate knowledge. Science may yet carve out a
new future for mankind.
PART II
WHAT IS MAN?
JULIAN HUXLEY
and
JOHN R. BAKER
JULIAN HUXLEY
i. MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING
DURING the present century we have heard so much
of the revolutionary discoveries of modern physics
that we are apt to forget how great has been the
change in the outlook due to biology. Yet in some
respects this has been the more important. For it is
affecting the way we think and act in our everyday
existence. Without the discoveries and ideas of
Darwin and the other great pioneers in the biological
field, from Mendel to Freud, we should all be different
from what we are. The discoveries of physics and
chemistry have given us an enormous control over
lifeless matter and have provided us with a host of
new machines and conveniences, and this certainly
has reacted on our general attitude. They have also
provided us with a new outlook on the universe at
large : our ideas about time and space, matter and
creation, and our own position in the general
scheme of things, are very different from the ideas
of our grandfathers.
Biology is beginning to provide us with control
over living matter new drugs, new methods for
fighting disease, new kinds of animals and plants.
It is helping us also to a new intellectual outlook,
in which man is seen not as a finished being, single
lord of creation, but as one among millions of the
i io SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
products of an evolution that is still in progress. But
it is doing something more. It is actually making
us different in our natures and our biological
behaviour. I will take but three examples.
The application of the discoveries of medicine and
physiology is making us healthier: and a healthy
man behaves and thinks differently from one who
is not so healthy. Then the discoveries of modern
psychology have been altering our mental and
emotional life, and our system of education : taken
in the mass, the young people now growing up feel
differently, and will therefore act differently, about
such vital matters as sex and marriage, about
jealousy, about freedom of expression, about the
relation between parents and children. And as a
third example, as a race we are changing our
reproductive habits: the idea and the practice of
deliberate birth-control has led to fewer children.
People living in a country of small families and a
stationary or decreasing population will in many
respects be different from people in a country of
large families and an increasing population.
This change has not been due to any very radical
new discoveries made during the present century.
It has been due chiefly to discoveries which were
first made in the previous century, and are at last
beginning to exert a wide effect. These older dis-
coveries fall under two chief heads. One is Evolution
the discovery that all living things, including our-
selves, are the product of a slow process of develop-
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING in
ment which has been brought about by natural
forces, just as surely as has to-day's weather or last
month's high tides. The other is the sum of an enor-
mous number of separate discoveries which we may
call physiological, and which boil down to this:
that all living things, again including ourselves,
work according to regular laws, in just the same
way as do non-living things, except that living
things are much more complicated. The old idea
of "vital force" has been driven back and back
until there is hardly any process of life where it
can still find any foothold. Looked at objectively
and scientifically, a man is an exceedingly complex
piece of chemical machinery. This does not mean
that he cannot quite legitimately be looked at from
other points of view subjectively, for instance;
what it means is that so far as it goes, this scientific
point of view is true, and not the point of view which
ascribed human activities to the working of a vital
force quite different from the forces at work in
matter which was not alive.
Imagine a group of scientists from another planet,
creatures with quite a different nature from ours,
who had been dispassionately studying the curious
objects called human beings for a number of years.
They would not be concerned about what we men
felt we were or what we would like to be, but only
about getting an objective view of what we actually
were and why we were what we were. It is that
sort of picture which I want to draw for you.
iia SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
Our Martian scientists would have to consider us
from three main viewpoints if they were to under-
stand much about us. First they would have to
understand our physical construction, and what
meaning it had in relation to the world around and
the work we have to do in it. Secondly, they would
have to pay attention to our development and our
history. And thirdly, they would have to study the
construction and working of our minds. Any one of
these three aspects by itself would give a very
incomplete picture of us.
An ordinary human being is a lump of matter
weighing between 50 and 100 kilograms. This living
matter is the same matter of which the rest of the
earth, the sun, and even the most distant stars and
nebulae are made. Some elements which make up
a large proportion of living matter, like hydrogen
and especially carbon, are rare in the not-living
parts of the earth ; and others which are abundant
in the earth are, like iron, present only in traces in
living creatures, or altogether absent, like aluminium
or silicon. None the less, it is the same matter. The
chief difference between living and non-living matter
is the complication of living matter. Its elements
are built up into molecules much bigger and more
elaborate than any others known, often containing
more than a thousand atoms each. And, of course,
living matter has the property of self-reproduction ;
when supplied with the right materials and in
the right conditions, it can build up matter
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING 113
which is not living into its own complicated
patterns.
Life, in fact, from the "public" standpoint, which
Professor Levy has stressed as being the only possible
standpoint for science, is simply the name for the
various distinctive properties of a particular group
of very complex chemical compounds. The most
important of these properties are, first, feeding,
assimilation, growth, and reproduction, which are
all aspects of the one quality of self-reproduction ;
next, the capacity for reacting to a number of kinds
of changes in the world outside to stimuli, such as
light, heat, pressure, and chemical change ; then the
capacity for liberating energy in response to these
stimuli, so as to react back again upon the outer
world whether by moving about, by constructing
things, by discharging chemical products, or by
generating light or heat ; and finally the property of
variation. Self-reproduction is not always precisely
accurate, and the new substance is a little different
from the parent substance which produced it.
The existence of self-reproduction on the one hand
and variation on the other automatically leads to
what Darwin called Natural Selection. This is a
sifting process, by which the different new variations
are tested out against the conditions of their existence,
and in which some succeed better than others in
surviving and in leaving descendants. This blind
process slowly but inevitably causes living matter
to change in other words, it leads to evolution.
ii4 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
There may be other agencies at work in guiding the
course of evolution ; but it seems certain that Natural
Selection is the most important.
The results it produces are roughly as follows. It
adapts any particular stream of living matter more
or less completely to the conditions in which it
lives. As there are innumerable different sets of
conditions to which life can be adapted, this has led
to an increasing diversity of life, a splitting of living
matter into an increasing number of separate
streams. The final tiny streams we call species;
there are perhaps a million of them now in existence.
This adaptation is progressive; any one stream of
life is forced to grow gradually better and better
adapted to some particular condition of life. We
can often see this in the fossil records of past life.
For instance, the early ancestors of lions and horses
about 50 million years ago were not very unlike,
but with the passage of time one line grew better
adapted to catching and eating large prey, the
other grew better adapted to grass-eating and running
away from enemies. And finally natural selection
leads to general progress ; there is a gradual raising
of the highest level attained by life. The most
advanced animals are those which have changed
their way of life and adapted themselves to new
conditions, thus taking advantage of biological
territory hitherto unoccupied. The most obvious
example of this was the invasion of the land.
Originally all living things were confined to life in
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING 115
water, and it was not for hundreds of millions of
years after the first origin of life that plants and
animals managed to colonize dry land.
But progress can also consist in taking better advan-
tage of existing conditions : for instance, the mammaPs
biological inventions, of warm blood and of nourish-
ing the unborn young within the mother's body,
put them at an advantage over other inhabitants of
the land ; and the increase in size of brain which
is man's chief characteristic has enabled him to
control and exploit his environment in a new and
more effective way, from which his pre-human
ancestors were debarred.
It follows from this that all animals and plants
that are at all highly developed have a long and
chequered history behind them, and that their
present can often not be properly understood without
an understanding of their past. For instance, the
tiny hairs all over our own bodies are a reminder
of the fact that we are descended from furry creatures,
and have no significance except as a survival.
Let us now^try to get some picture of man in the
light of these ideas. The continuous stream of life
that we call the human race is broken up into separate
bits which we call individuals. This is true of all
higher animals, but is not necessary : it is a conveni-
ence. Living matter has to deal with two sets of
activities : one concerns its immediate relations with
the world outside it, the other concerns its future
perpetuation. What we call an individual is an
n6 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
arrangement permitting a stream of living matter
to deal more effectively with its environment. After
a time it is discarded and dies. But within itself it
contains a reserve of potentially immortal substance,
which it can hand on to future generations, to
produce new individuals like itself. Thus from one
aspect the individual is only the casket of the con-
tinuing race ; but from another the achievements of
the race depend on the construction of its separate
individuals.
The human individual is large as animal individuals
go. Size is an advantage if life is not to be at the
mercy of small changes in the outer world: for
instance, a man the size of a beetle could not manage
to keep his temperature constant. Size also goes
with long life: and a man who only lived as long
as a fly could not learn much. But there is a limit
to size ; a land animal much bigger than an elephant
is not, mechanically speaking, a practical proposition.
Man is in that range of size, from 100 Ib. to a ton,
which seems to give the best combination of strength
and mobility. It may be surprising to realize that
man's size and mechanical construction are related
to the size of the earth which he inhabits ; but so
it is. The force of gravity on Jupiter is so much
greater than on our own planet, that if we lived
there our skeletons would have to be much stronger
to support the much increased weight which we
would then possess, and animals in general would
be more stocky ; and conversely, if the earth were
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING 117
only the size of the moon, we could manage with
far less expenditure of material in the form of bone
and sinew, and should be spindly creatures.
Our general construction is determined by the
fact that we are made of living matter, must accord-
ingly be constantly passing a stream of fresh matter
and energy through ourselves if we are to live, and
must as constantly be guarding ourselves against
danger if we are not to die. About 5 per cent of
ourselves consists of a tube with attached chemical
factories, for taking in raw materials in the shape of
food, and converting it into the form in which it
can be absorbed into our real interior. About 2*-per
cent consists in arrangements windpipe and lungs
for getting oxygen into our system in order to
burn the food materials and liberate energy. About
10 per cent consists of an arrangement for distri-
buting materials all over the body the blood and
lymph, the tubes which hold them and the pump
which drives them. Much less than 5 per cent is
devoted to dealing with waste materials produced
when living substance breaks down in the process
of producing energy to keep our machinery going
the kidneys and bladder and, in part, the lungs and
skin. Over 40 per cent is machinery for moving us
about our muscles; and nearly 20 per cent is
needed to support us and to give the mechanical
lever age for our movements our skeleton and sinews.
A relatively tiny fraction is set apart for giving us
information about the outer world our sense
ii8 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
organs. And there is about 3 per cent to deal
with the difficult business of adjusting our be-
haviour to what is happening around us. This
is the task of the ductless glands, the nerves, the
spinal cord and the brain ; our conscious feeling and
thinking is done by a small part of the brain. Less
than i per cent of our bodies is set aside for repro-
ducing the race. The remainder of our body is
concerned with special functions like protection,
carried out by the skin (which is about 7 per cent
of our bulk) and some of the white blood corpuscles ;
or temperature regulation, carried out by the sweat
glands. And nearly 10 per cent of a normal man
consists of reserve food stores in the shape of fat.
Other streams of living matter have developed
quite other arrangements in relation to their special
environment. Some have parts of themselves set
aside for manufacturing electricity, like the electric
eel; or light, like the firefly. Some, like certain
termites, are adapted to live exclusively on wood;
others, like lions, exclusively on flesh; others, like
cows, exclusively on vegetables. Some, like boa-
constrictors, only need to eat every few months;
others, like parasitic worms, need only breathe a
few hours a day; others, like some desert gazelles,
need no water to drink. Many cave animals have
no eyes; tapeworms have no mouths or stomachs;
and so on and so forth. And all these peculiarities,
including those of our own construction, are related
to the kind of surroundings in which the animal lives.
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING 119
This relativity of our nature is perhaps most
clearly seen in regard to our senses. The ordinary
man is accustomed to think of the information
given by his senses as absolute. So it is for him;
but not in the view of our Martian scientist. To start
with, the particular senses we possess are not shared
by many other creatures. Outside backboned
animals, for instance, very few creatures can hear
at all; a few insects and perhaps a few Crustacea
probably exhaust the list. Even fewer animals can
see colours; apparently the world as seen even by
most mammals is a black and white world, not a
coloured world. And the majority of animals dojiot
even see at all in the sense of being given a detailed
picture of the world around. Either they merely
distinguish light from darkness, or at best can get
a blurred image of big moving objects. On the other
hand, we are much worse off than many other
creatures dogs, for instance, or some moths in
regard to smell. Our sense of smell is to a dog's
what an eye capable of just distinguishing big moving
objects is to our own eye.
But from another aspect, the relativity of our
senses is even more fundamental. Our senses serve
to give us information about changes outside our
bodies. Well, what kind of changes are going on
in the outside world? There are ordinary mechanical
changes: matter can press against us, whether in
the form of a gentle breeze or a blow from a poker.
There are the special mechanical changes due to
120 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
vibrations passing through the air or water around
us these are what we hear. There are changes in
temperature hot and cold. There are chemical
changes the kind of matter with which we are in
contact alters, as when the air contains poison gas,
or our mouth contains lemonade. There are electrical
changes, as when a current is sent through a wire
we happen to be touching.
And there are all the changes depending on what
used to be called vibrations in the ether. The most
familiar of these are light- waves ; but they range
from the extremely short waves that give cosmic rays
and X-rays, down through ultra-violet to visible
light, on to waves of radiant heat, and so on to the
very long Hertzian waves which are used in wireless.
All these are the same kind of thing, but differ in
wave-length.
Now of all these happenings, we are only aware
of what appears to be a very arbitrary selection.
Mechanical changes we are aware of through our
sense of touch. Air-vibrations we hear ; but not all
of them the small wave-lengths are pitched too
high for our ears, though some of them can be heard
by other creatures, such as dogs and bats. We have
a heat sense and a cold sense, and two kinds of
chemical senses for different sorts of chemical
changes taste and smell. But we possess no special
electrical sense we have no way of telling whether a
live rail is carrying a current or not unless we actu-
ally touch it, and then what we feel is merely pain.
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING 121
The oddest facts, however, concern light and
kindred vibrations. We have no sense organs for
perceiving X-rays, although they may be pouring
into us and doing grave damage. We do not perceive
ultra-violet light, though some insects, like bees,
can see it. And we have no sense organs for Hertzian
waves, though we make machines wireless receivers
to catch them. Out of all this immense range of
vibrations, the only ones of which we are aware
through our senses are radiant heat and light.
The waves of radiant heat we perceive through the
effect which they have on our temperature sense
organs; and the light-waves we see. But what^ve
see is only a single octave of the light-waves, as
opposed to ten or eleven octaves of sound-waves
which we can hear.
This curious state of affairs begins to be compre-
hensible when we remember that our sense organs
have been evolved in relation to the world in which
our ancestors lived. In nature, for instance, large-
scale electrical changes hardly occur. The only
exceptions are electrical discharges such as lightning,
and they act so capriciously and violently that to
be able to detect them would be no advantage.
The same is true of X-rays. The amount of them
knocking about under normal conditions is so small
that there is no point in having sense organs to tell
us about them. Wireless waves, on the other hand,
are of such huge wave-lengths that they go right
through living matter without affecting it. Even if
122 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
they were present in nature, there would be no
obvious way of developing a sense organ to perceive
them.
As regards light, there seem to be two reasons
why our eyes are limited to seeing only a single
octave of the waves. One is that of the ether vibra-
tions raying upon the earth's surface from the sun
and outer space, the greatest amount is centred in
this region of the spectrum ; the intensity of light
of higher or lower wave-lengths is much less, and
would only suffice to give us a dim sensation. Our
greatest capacity for seeing is closely adjusted to the
amount of light to be seen. The other is more subtle,
and has to do with the properties of light of different
wave-lengths. Ultra-violet light is of so short a wave-
length that much of it gets scattered as it passes
through the air, instead of progressing forward in
straight lines. Hence a photograph which uses only
the ultra-violet rays is blurred and shows no details
of the distance. A photograph taken by infra-red
light, on the other hand, while it shows the distant
landscape very well, over-emphasizes the contrast
between light and shade in the foreground. Leaves
and grass reflect all the infra-red, and so look white,
while the shadows are inky-black, with no gradations.
The result looks like a snowscape. An eye which
could only see the ultra-violet octave would see the
world as in a fog; and one which could see only
the infra-red octave would find it impossible to
pick out lurking enemies in the jet-black shadows.
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING 123
The particular range of light to which our eyes are
attuned gives the best-graded contrast.
Then of course there is the pleasant or unpleasant
quality of a sensation ; and this, too, is in general
related to our way of life. I will take one example.
Both lead acetate and sugar taste sweet ; the former
is a poison, but very rare in nature ; the latter is a
useful food, and common in nature. Accordingly we
most of us find a sweet taste pleasant. But if lead
acetate were as common in nature as sugar, and
sugar as rare as lead acetate, it is safe to prophesy
that we should find sweetness a most horrible taste,
because we should only survive if we spat out any-
thing which tasted sweet.
Now let us turn to another feature of man's life
which would probably seem exceedingly queer t9 a
scientist from another planet sex. We are so used
to the fact that our race is divided up into two quite
different kinds of individuals, male and female, and
that our existence largely circles round this fact,
that we rarely pause to think about it. But there
is no inherent reason why this should be so. Some
kinds of animals consists only of females ; some, like
ants, have neuters in addition to the two sexes ; some
plants are altogether sexless.
As a matter of fact, the state of affairs as regards
human sex is due to a long and curious sequence
of causes. The fundamental fact of sex has nothing
to do with reproduction; it is the union of two
living cells into one. The actual origin of this remains
124 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
mysterious. Once it had originated, however, it
proved of biological value, by conferring greater
variability on the race, and so greater elasticity in
meeting changed conditions. That is why sex is so
nearly universal. Later, it was a matter of biological
convenience that reproduction in higher animals
became indissolubly tied up with sex. Once this had
happened, the force of natural selection in all its
intensity became focused on the sex instinct, because
in the long run those strains which reproduce them-
selves abundantly will live on, while those which
do not do so will gradually be supplanted.
A wholly different biological invention, the re-
tention of the young within the mother's body for
protection, led to the two sexes becoming much
more different in construction and instincts than
would otherwise have been the case. The instinctive
choice of a more pleasing as against a less pleasing
mate what Darwin called sexual selection led to
the evolution of all kinds of beautiful or striking
qualities which in a sexless race would never have
developed. The most obvious of such characters are
seen in the gorgeous plumage of many birds ; but
sexual selection has undoubtedly modelled us
human beings in many details the curves of our
bodies, the colours of lips, eyes, cheeks, the hair of
our heads, and the quality of our voices.
Then we should not forget that almost all other
mammals and all birds are, even when adult, fully
sexed only for a part of the year ; after the breeding
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING 125
season they relapse into a more or less neuter state.
How radically different human life would be if we
too behaved thus ! But man has continued an evolu-
tionary trend begun for some unknown reason
among the monkeys, and remains continuously sexed
all the year round. Hunger and love are the two
primal urges of man : but by what a strange series
of biological steps has love attained its position !
We could go on enumerating facts about the
relativity of man's physical construction ; but time
is short, and I must say a word about his mind.
For that too has developed in relation to the condi-
tions of our life, present and past. Many philosophers
and theologians have been astonished at the strength
of the feeling which prompts most men and women
to cling to life, to feel that life is worth living, even
in the most wretched circumstances. But to the
biologist there is nothing surprising in this. Those
men (and animals) who have the urge to go on living
strongly developed will automatically survive and
breed in greater numbers than those in whom it is
weak. Nature's pessimists automatically eliminate
themselves, and their pessimistic tendencies, from
the race. A race without a strong will to live could
no more hold its own than one without a strong
sexual urge.
Then again man's highest impulses would not
exist if it were not for two simple biological facts
that his offspring are born helpless and must be
protected and tended for years if they are to grow
126 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
up, and that he is a gregarious animal. These facts
make it biologically necessary for him to have
\vell-developed altruistic instincts, which may and
often do come into conflict with his egoistic instincts,
but are in point of fact responsible for half of his
attitude towards life. Neither a solitary creature like
a cat or a hawk, nor a creature with no biological
responsibility towards its young, like a lizard or a
fish, could possibly have developed such strong
altruistic instincts as are found in man.
Other instincts appear to be equally relative.
Everyone who has any acquaintance with wild
birds and animals knows how much different
species differ in temperament. Most kinds of mice
are endowed with a great deal of fear and very
little ferocity ; while the reverse is true of various
carnivores like tigers or Tasmanian devils. It would
appear that the amounts of fear and anger in man's
emotional make-up are greater than his needs as
a civilized being, and are survivals from an earlier
period of his racial history. In the dawn of man's
evolution from apes, a liberal dose of fear was
undoubtedly needed if he was to be preserved from
foolhardiness in a world peopled by wild beasts and
hostile tribes, and an equally liberal dose of anger,
the emotion underlying pugnacity, if he was to
triumph over danger when it came. But now they
are on the whole a source of weakness and malad-
justment.
It is often said that you cannot change human
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING 127
nature. But that is only true in the short-range view.
In the long run, human nature could as readily be
changed as feline nature has actually been changed
in the domestic cat, where man's selection has pro-
duced an amiable animal out of a fierce ancestral
spit-fire of a creature. If, for instance, civilization
should develop in such a way that mild and placid
people tended to have larger families than those of
high-strung or violent temperament, in a few centuries
human nature would alter in the direction of mildness.
But it is not only in regard to instincts and feelings
that our mind bears the stamp of the world around.
Bergson, the French philosopher, has gone as far >
to suggest that the very way our thinking processes
work is adapted to practical needs. To satisfy the
primary needs of life, man must handle and deal
with definite, separate material objects; to get a
general picture of the continuity of things in space
or time is not so pressing. In general it is what we
call intellect which thinks in the first way, about
separate objects ; and what we call intuition which
thinks in the second way, about whole situations.
Bergson points out that the evolution of our minds
has been largely determined by the practical
necessity for thinking in the first way, and that the
way men think is not the only way in which thinking
could be done. On the contrary, in a different kind
of world, organisms might develop in which most
thinking was intuitive.
If these ideas of Bergson's are perhaps a little
128 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
speculative, they are none the less worth reflecting
on, as showing how the human mind is doubly
imprisoned it is imprisoned in its own way of
thinking and feeling, and this way of thinking and
feeling is itself in a sense imprisoned in the material
world about it. When we come to another funda-
mental property of our minds, however, we are on
firmer ground. I mean our capacity for forgetting.
This is usually taken to be a natural property or at
least a natural imperfection of mind. And a certain
amount of our forgetting does seem to be due to this.
A great deal, however, quite definitely does not,
but owes its existence to the practical needs of
our life.
To a large extent we forget what it is convenient
for our own purpose to forget. If we ever do get a
chance to see ourselves as others see us, it is generally
a shock to find how many inconvenient facts about
ourselves and our actions, which are all too prominent
in the minds of others, have been forgotten by
ourselves.
Pavlov has shown how even dogs can be made to
have nervous breakdowns by artificially generating
in their minds conflicting urges to two virtually
exclusive kinds of action ; and we all know that the
same thing, on a higher level of complexity, happens
in human beings. But a nervous breakdown puts an
organism out of action for the practical affairs of
life, quite as effectively as does an ordinary infectious
disease. And just as against physical germ-diseases
MAN AS A RELATIVE BEING 129
we have evolved a protection in the shape of the
immunity reactions of our blood, so we have evolved
oblivion as protection against the mental diseases
arising out of conflict. For, generally speaking, what
happens is that we forget one of the two conflicting
ideas or motives. We do this either by giving the
inconvenient idea an extra kick into the limbo of
the forgotten, which psychologists call suppression,
or else, when it refuses to go so simply, by forcibly
keeping it under in the sub-conscious, which is
styled repression. For details about suppression and
repression and their often curious and sometimes
disastrous results I must ask you to refer to any
modern book on psychology. All I want to point
out here is that a special mental machinery has been
evolved for putting inconvenient ideas out of con-
sciousness, and that the contents and construction of
our minds are different in consequence.
Our current ideas, our feelings, our scientific
discoveries, our laws, even our religions are moulded
by the social environment of the period. We live in
a more or less scientific age : it is all but impossible for
us to know what it would feel like to live in a com-
munity which believed chiefly in magic. It is equally
impossible for us, living in an age of nationalism,
to look forward and know how people would feel
and behave in a unified, super-nationalist world.
We find it impossible to understand how our great-
grandfathers tolerated child-labour and slavery; it
is likely that our great-grandchildren will find it
130 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
equally impossible to understand how we tolerated
capital punishment or our present penal system.
But I have said enough, I hope, to give you some
idea of what is implied by calling man a relative
being. It implies that he has no real meaning apart
from the world which he inhabits. Perhaps this is
not quite accurate. The mere fact that man, a
portion of the general stuff of which the universe is
made, can think and feel, aspire and plan, is itself
full of meaning, but the precise way in which man
is made, his physical construction, the kinds of
feelings he has, the way he thinks, the things he
thinks about, everything which gives his existence
form and precision all this can only be properly
understood in relation to his environment. For he
and his environment make one interlocking whole.
- The great advances in scientific understanding and
practical control often begin when people begin
asking questions about things which up till then
they have merely taken for granted. If humanity is
to be brought under its own conscious control, it
must cease taking itself for granted, and, even though
the process may often be humiliating, begin to
examine itself in a completely detached and scientific
spirit.
JOHN R. BAKER
2. OUR PLACE IN NATURE
PROFESSOR JULIAN HUXLEY has reminded you that
as a result of the discoveries made in the last thirty
years, we do not regard man exactly as we did
at the end of the nineteenth century, and I now
propose to give some account of the state of know-
ledge on this subject. Naturally there will be accounts
of observations and experiments which not every
one will be in a position to repeat, but if you doubt
some comparison, for instance, between a gorilla's
skull and a man's, you should go to a museum and
look for yourself. I hope that you will look in? a
zoo or museum at the apes to which I shall refer.*
Familiarize yourself with the gorilla, chimpanzee,
orang-utan and gibbons, so that you could not
mistake one for another. Gorillas are rare in zoos
in Great Britain, as they do not live well in cap-
tivity, but you can see them in museums, and there are
splendid specimens in the Natural History Museum
in London. You go up the centre stairs, turn to the
right past the giraffes, up the next flight of stairs,
and then you will find them through a door on the
right. At the London Zoo it is very easy to find the
apes, as their house is the very first one you come to
when you go in by the main entrance. The chim-
panzee and orang-utans are on the right as you
132 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
enter and the gibbons on the right at the far end.
If you do not live in London, there is sure to be a
museum where you can see the chimpanzee, and
there are, of course, other excellent zoos in various
parts of the country. What I have to say will mean
much more to you if you have a concrete idea of
what the animals are like, even if you cannot make
an elaborate study of their anatomy.
Where is man placed in the animal kingdom to-
day? He is obviously a Mammal, that is, he stands
in the same group as rabbits and mice and cats and
dogs and horses and cattle, which all have hair,
are born in a fairly advanced condition, instead of
being laid as eggs, and which are all suckled by
their mothers after birth. There are, of course,
many more characters which we have in common
with the other Mammals. Now the Mammals are
divided into various Orders ; for instance, the Rodents
(the gnawing animals, rabbits and mice and guinea-
pigs), the Carnivores (flesh-eating animals, like cats
and dogs and bears), the Ungulates (the hoofed
animals, like horses and rhinoceroses and cattle
and sheep and camels and giraffes). Man quite
definitely belongs in the same order as the monkeys,
the order Primates, or nailed Mammals. These are
Mammals with nails on their fingers instead of
hoofs or claws, with two teeth on each side of each
jaw before the canines, with the eye surrounded by
a ring of bone, with well-developed collar-bones,
nearly always with ten fingers and ten toes, the
OUR PLACE IN NATURE 133
thumb being opposable to the other fingers, and
with two milk-glands on the chest.
Now where does he stand among the Primates?
First of all we can separate off the Lemurs, and say
definitely that he does not belong there. The Lemurs
are Primates, but very primitive ones, with rather
foxy faces, quite unlike monkeys in external
appearance. Also they differ from monkeys and
ourselves in not having the eye-cavity lined with
bone all round behind, and also they have a claw
instead of a nail on their second toe. Look out for
that claw in the little Lemur house at the London
Zoo, but it is not always easy to see, as the animals
often sit firmly on their hind feet as though they
did not want you to see.
Not counting the Lemurs, we have five fajnilies
of Primates. These are the Marmosets, South
American Monkeys, Old World Monkeys, the Apes,
and Men. By the Apes I mean the Gibbons, Orang-
utan, Chimpanzee, and Gorilla. Some of the monkeys
are often called Apes, but I think it is best to restrict
the term in this way. Now to which of the other
families is man most closely allied? Not to the
Marmosets, obviously, for they are curious little
Primates which cannot oppose their thumbs to
their fingers and have claws on most of their toes
and fingers, instead of nails. The South American
monkeys that is to say, the monkeys with pre-
hensile tails are very different from man. The usual
organ-grinder's monkey is one of these. Look at
134 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
their widely separated nostrils. If you can obtain a
skull, count the teeth. You will find they have six
grinding teeth on each side of each jaw.
The Old World monkeys, with non-prehensile
tails, are much more like man, for their nostrils
are close together and they have five grinding teeth
on each side of each jaw, just as we have. Neverthe-
less, they have certain striking differences. Their
grinding teeth are somewhat elongated from front
to back, instead of being squarish, as ours are. Also
many of them have curious swellings on their
buttocks, and many have pouches in their cheeks in
which they store food. Then, again, their breast-
bone is narrow, and they have no appendix and they
usually have tails.
Now I have mentioned a number of ways in which
the Old World monkeys differ from man, and in
every one of these points the Apes resemble man. There
can be no doubt from comparative anatomy ihat
the apes are closer to man than any other animals.
We may not like to come next to the gorilla, chim-
panzee, orang-utan and gibbon, but in our anatomy
we undoubtedly do. I must repeat that the Apes
resemble us in having squarish grinding teeth, a
broad breast-bone, an appendix, no swellings on the
buttocks, no cheek-pouches and no tail. Further,
they often walk on their hind legs. The gibbon
walks absolutely erect.
We do not come in the same family as the Apes,
because we do differ from them in certain important
OUR PLACE IN NATURE 135
respects. First and foremost we have our big toe,
which, as its name indicates, is the largest of our
toes, which it never is in the apes. Then our big
toe cannot be opposed to our other toes, and our
legs are longer than our arms, and our jaws stick
forward less, while our chin sticks forward instead of
receding, and our canine teeth do not project
beyond the others, and we have not got great bony
ridges above our eyes, and we have far less hair,
and last, but by no means least, our brain is very
much bigger. It is very nearly the biggest in the
whole animal kingdom, although we are so small
compared with many animals. It is far larger fKan
that of a cow or horse, and more than twice as big
as the largest ape's brain. It is only exceeded in size
by the brain of the elephant and certain whales,.
These differences suffice to place us in a separate
family, but probably we are more closely allied to
the apes than the apes are to the Old World monkeys.
I want to give you some idea of what it means to
say that we are closely allied to the apes, but in a
separate family. It means that in our anatomy we
are about as different from apes as antelopes are
from deer, or as hyenas are from dogs. You must
not suppose that that sort of comparison is very
exact, but it gives an idea of the scale of the
differences.
Now we have investigated the anatomy of man
and his relations a little, but we have not considered
the working of their bodies that is, their physiology.
136 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
Does man's body work in much the same way as
that of apes, or are there radical differences, which
show that man is not so closely allied to them as
their anatomy would make us think?
A lot of work has been done on this subject
recently, but it is incomplete, simply because it is
so difficult and expensive to use apes as laboratory
animals.
You know, of course, that gout is caused by uric
acid, which has an unpleasant way of collecting in
joints. Now what is this uric acid? It is a product of
the nuclei of the cells in the food which you eat,
and of the nuclei of the cells of your own body. All
Mammals make uric acid in their bodies, but most
of them turn about half of it into another substance,
called allantoin, which does not get lodged in joints.
The Old World monkeys do this and so they are
most unlikely to suffer from gout. But man has no
capacity whatever of changing uric acid into any-
thing else, and so it must either be excreted as such
or else stored up in the joints in a most painful
manner. I do not think that anyone has studied the
gorilla or orang-utan in this connection, but Hunter
has studied the chimpanzee and he has found that
it exactly resembles man and differs from the Old
World monkeys and lower Mammals. It has no
capacity of chanrfhg uric acid into allantoin. This
agrees with our conclusion from anatomy that man
is more closely allied to the apes than the apes are to
monkeys.
OUR PLACE IN NATURE 137
Now let us take another branch of physiology and
see how man compares with apes. Perhaps you have
had occasion to give blood to someone else by blood-
transfusion. If you have, you will remember that
it is not everyone who has the right sort of blood
to give to the person who happens to need it. If you
have the wrong sort of blood for a certain patient,
then his blood will destroy the blood corpuscles
which you give him. Your blood corpuscles will all
stick together in clumps and finally degenerate, and
they will not be of any use to him. Nevertheless your
blood may be perfectly suitable for transfusion into
the blood of somebody else, and if you are in urgent
need of blood yourself one day, then the saving of
your life by blood-transfusion will depend on know-
ledge gained in experiments like the ones I am going
to describe. These actual experiments were performed
in America not many years ago by Landsteiner and
Miller.
Suppose you take some blood of a macaque
monkey which is an ordinary sort of Old World
monkey and inject it into a rabbit. What happens?
The blood of the rabbit gets the property of being
able to make macaque blood corpuscles stick to-
gether. You can take some of this rabbit's blood,
and even if you dilute it enormously, it still possesses
this power of making macaque blood corpuscles
stick together. It has the same effect on baboon
blood. Now macaques and baboons are rather closely
related : they are in the same family. So perhaps it
138 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
is not very surprising that their blood corpuscles
behave in the same way when put into this rabbit's
blood. Even when enormously diluted, this rabbit's
blood causes baboon blood corpuscles to stick
together.
What about chimpanzee blood? Suppose you
take some of it and mix it with some blood from the
same rabbit as before, which was previously injected
with macaque blood. Now what happens? Will it
cause the chimpanzee's blood corpuscles to stick
together? Scarcely at all. It is clear that chim-
panzee's blood is very different from that of the
macaque and baboon.
What about human blood? It is the same as with
the chimpanzee's. The rabbit's blood, which is so
fatal to the blood corpuscles of the macaque and
baboon, has scarcely any effect.
It is clear that in their blood reactions man and
the chimpanzee are equally distantly related to the
macaque and baboon.
Take another rabbit and inject human blood into
it instead of macaque's. Now this rabbit's blood
acquires the property of making human blood cor-
puscles stick together. Let us take some of this rabbit's
blood and try mixing chimpanzee's blood with it.
The chimpanzee's blood corpuscles stick together.
Evidently chimpanzee's blood is very much like that
of man.
Is it exactly the same? Can we distinguish it by
tests of this sort? Take some of this last rabbit's
OUR PLACE IN NATURE 139
blood, which causes both human and chimpanzee
corpuscles to stick together. Put it in a glass vessel
and go on adding chimpanzee corpuscles to it
until all the substance which causes chimpanzee
corpuscles to stick together is used up. Now filter it,
and you have got rabbit's blood which has practically
lost its capacity to make chimpanzee's corpuscles
stick together. Now make the crucial test. Add
human blood. It still causes them to stick together.
Even when enormously diluted, it still retains that
property. So you see you can distinguish chim-
panzee's blood from man's by tests of this sort, but
only in rather a roundabout way.
There is one way in which man differs very
much from most wild animals, and that is in not
having a breeding season. It is true, of course^ that
more births occur at one time of year than another,
and this is especially so among the Eskimos, but on
the whole we can say that the human race is without
a special season. This was thought to be a peculiarity
of man, and perhaps a result of what we might call
domestication. Several domestic animals have lost
their breeding season as a result of domestication.
Unlike their wild relations, the cow and the pig
breed all the year round. Mr. Zuckermann has been
looking into this matter lately, and he has come to
the conclusion that man, after all, is not so peculiar
in not having a breeding season, because he finds that
many Old World monkeys lack one, and breed at any
time, producing young ones at all seasons of the year.
140 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
I must just mention one theory which Professor
Wood Jones has lately been suggesting. He thinks
that we are descended from animals like Tarsius,
and not from an ape-like ancestor at all. Tarsius is
a little lemur which is very different from all the
other lemurs. Go and look at him in a museum, for I
think he does not exist in a zoo in this country. He
lives in trees in the Malay Archipelago and is a
most extraordinary little animal with huge eyes.
Certainly he does resemble us more than the other
lemurs do. His muzzle has been very much shortened,
just as ours has, but perhaps that is not very signi-
ficant, for so has the bull-dog's for that matter. A
more important point is the socket for his eyes,
which is nearly walled in with bone behind, and
not open as it is in other lemurs. Then again its
after-birth is a lumpy sort of thing, as with us,
instead of having a membranous texture, as it has
in other lemurs. But in both these points Tarsius
resembles monkeys and apes just as much as it
resembles man. Possibly the common ancestor of
monkeys, apes, and man was an animal allied to
Tarsius, but it seems very unlikely that we are
more closely related to Tarsius than to apes.
The general conclusion which we have reached is
that the recent physiological work, on uric acid
and blood tests, confirms the older anatomical
evidence that the apes are man's nearest relatives.
3 . MISSING LINKS
WHEN I am dead, the chance that my bones will
become fossilized is very remote. Bones decay away
like the rest of our bodies unless a lot of very unlikely
things happen. First of all, a dead body will not
leave any permanent remains in the form of a
fossil unless it happens to be covered up and thus
protected from decay. That is fairly easy in the
case of animals in the sea. Rivers are always carrying
sediment out and depositing it, and tides and currents
shift the sediment and cover up the bodies of dead
animals. But even in this case it is by no means
likely that the bones will be fossilized. Much more
probably they will gradually dissolve away, and
leave no trace of themselves. Fossilization is rather
a complicated process. It involves the replacement
of each particle of bone, as it dissolves away, by a
less soluble and therefore more permanent substance.
When that has happened, the chances are still very
remote that anyone will find the fossil thousands or
millions of years later. Our quarries and mines and
cuttings are mere scratches on the surface of the
earth. With terrestrial animals the chances of
fossilization are still less than with marine ones.
They are likely to die and decay without being
covered up. It would be quite absurd to look with
any great hopefulness for the fossil remains of the
ancestors of any given animal. It would not simply
142 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
be like looking for the proverbial pin in a haystack,
for then you are supposed to have the advantage of
knowing that the pin is there. But in this case you
are looking for a soluble pin in a haystack in a
thunderstorm, and you always have at the back of
your mind the disconcerting thought that perhaps
it is no longer there.
That is the reason why we cannot describe the
evolution of every species of animal in detail. The
obvious thing to do is to study those animals which
happen to have left the best record of their evolution.
The horse is the best of all. We know the stages in
the evolution of the horse in great detail, and with
certainty. There are many other animals whose
evolution from simpler forms is also well known.
But if you take any animal at random, say a rabbit,
the chances are that there will not be a complete
fossil history of it.
One would not expect, then, to be able to find
much in the way of human fossils, and the fact is
that not many have been found. But we are in a
very different position now from what we were at
the beginning of the century.
At that time very little was known. A fossil skull
had been found in a cave at Neanderthal in Prussia.
This was definitely human, but had many ape-like
characters. The enormous bony ridges above the
eye are the most obvious features. Then there is the
retreating forehead, receding chin, and massive jaw;
and the form of the leg bones of this type of person
MISSING LINKS 143
shows that he must have shuffled along with his
knees bent all the time. A cast of the inside of his
skull gives a good idea of what his brain must have
been like, and one can see from it that the parts of
the brain concerned with speaking were poorly
developed.
Now in the last century people did not like the
idea of being descended from apes, and they were
not prepared to examine the evidence for it impar-
tially. They invented an excellent excuse for this
skull. It was an abnormality! That would get out
of the difficulty. The unfortunate individual had
some disease which made his skull grow in "that
funny way. A little peculiar, was it not, that hundreds
of thousands of his relatives, who of course had skulls
exactly like ours, left no fossil remains, while just the
single one who happened to be abnormal was
fossilized! But improbabilities do not worry people
who have convictions based on prejudice and not on
love of truth. Some people even suggested that
these skeletons were those of hybrids between men
and apes. This is incredible for two reasons. Firstly,
no cases are known of any two Mammals, so widely
separated as to fall into different families, being able
to interbreed. Secondly, even if one imagined the
impossible, and supposed that such hybrids could
be produced, it would remain incredible that the
millions of normal men of those geological times
should have left no trace whatever, while the few
hybrids were by a miracle fossilized and discovered.
144 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
How has the famous Neanderthal man fared in
our enlightened twentieth century? Many more
skeletons have been found, closely resembling him.
Neanderthal man has been found in Belgium,
France, and Gibraltar, and in 1925 near the Sea of
Galilee. With the skeletons are examples of his
implements, which differ from those of other fossil
men, and implements like these have recently been
found in Mongolia. His was an enormously wide-
spread race of primitive men, every one of them
having those very characters which our learned and
truth-loving forbears preferred to think of as due
to disease.
In 1921 a fossil skull, without lower jaw, was
found in Rhodesia. This had huge bony ridges
above the eyebrows, and in most respects was
rather like the Neanderthal man, but a little more
primitive. We must hope for more examples of this race.
These Neanderthal men were fairly recent, as
geological time goes, and also definitely more human
than ape-like. They were probably not on the direct
line of our ancestry, but died out perhaps twenty-
five thousand years ago, just before the last ice age.
Nevertheless they must have been closely allied to
our ancestors.
Now what about the real missing link, something
midway between ape and man? Where did we
stand at the beginning of the century?
A most momentous discovery had recently been
made. Dubois had set off to the East Indies with the
MISSING LINKS 145
avowed intention of finding a fossil ape-man, and,
miracles of miracles, had actually found one in
Java, after excavating for two years in Sumatra.
It was sadly incomplete just the top of a skull, a
leg-bone and some teeth but what was there was
an amazing link between man and apes. If Neander-
thal man's forehead may be said to recede, Java
man's is almost non-existent, for his head slopes
almost straight back behind his huge eyebrow
ridges. His brain must have been about half-way in
size between the brain of a gorilla and the brain of
a man, yet he must have been about as tall as modern
man. Here we have a very primitive man, or a
very man-like ape, call it which you will, who
existed as the geology of the place shows at
about the time of our first ice age, perhaps tyalf a
million years ago.
That was rather a shock for the nineteenth century,
and there was some attempt to discredit Dubois.
Unfortunately for the disbelievers, however, the
fossil bone was subjected to microscopical examina-
tion and proved beyond doubt to be genuine.
Since then there have been thrilling discoveries
of intermediates between apes and men. I must pass
over a lower jaw found near Heidelburg in Germany
in 1907, although it is extremely interesting, simply
because it is only a jaw. Four years later some work-
men were digging gravel at Piltdown in Sussex,
when a fossil human skull was discovered. This was
a priceless specimen. One feels that one would have
146 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
sacrificed a hand or an eye to preserve this treasure
so that it could be examined by an expert. What
happened? Workmen, ignorant of its importance,
broke it up and threw the pieces into a rubbish
dump. By extreme good fortune Mr. Dawson had
been on the look out for pre-human remains in the
district for some time, as he had found peculiar
flints among the gravel, and someone gave him one
of the fragments. We must thank Providence for
putting Mr. Dawson there, for he had the dump
most carefully searched, and many of the fragments
were found. Experts then set to work to consider
how they should be fitted together, and different
experts had different ideas.
The main conclusions are the following. There
are scarcely any bony eyebrow ridges at all, and the
forehead rises quite steeply above the eyes. This is
most surprising in such an ancient skull, which is
probably not very much more recent than the Java
skull. But associated with this skull there was a
lower jaw which is to all intents and purposes that
of a chimpanzee. Many experts considered that it
was an extinct chimpanzee's lower jaw. The com-
plete absence of chin and the huge canine teeth
supported that view. These canine teeth must have
interlocked with those of the upper jaw like a dog's.
Now if we regard the jaw as belonging to the skull,
then we have a splendid missing link. But if they
do not belong to one another, then the find is not
nearly so significant.
MISSING LINKS 147
That is why the recent discoveries near Peking
are so tremendously important, for now an essentially
ape-like lower jaw has been found in the same lump
of rock as part of an essentially human brain-case,
and the Piltdown skull and lower jaw are thus
confirmed as belonging to one individual.
The story of the Peking discoveries is most
interesting. During the war. China started a geo-
logical survey, and got a Scandinavian, Dr. Anders-
son, to direct it. Dr. Andersson discovered rich
fossil beds about forty miles from Peking. A great
deal of excavating was done, but no human remains
brought to light. One day one of the Chinese Work-
men was overheard asking a companion why they
were wasting their time hunting for fossils in that
particular place, when there were far more about
half a mile away. That chance remark altered the
course of our knowledge of man's ancestry, for the
site of excavation was changed, and shortly after-
wards human remains began to be found.
The first discoveries were two teeth, but there was
nothing very special about these. Then in 1927
another tooth was discovered, which was sent to
Dr. Davidson Black in Peking for examination. It
was by no means by chance that Dr. Black was in
Peking. Years before he had taken the Professorship
of Anatomy at Peking, simply because he thought it
likely that pre-human remains would be found in
China, and he wanted above everything to carry
out research on this subject.
148 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
Careful measurement of this tooth convinced
Dr. Black that it was intermediate between a human
and an ape's tooth. He exhibited the specimen
widely, but it was received with scepticism.
A year later part of a jaw was found, and in the
same piece of rock part of a skull. I have referred to
that already. You will remember the jaw was essen-
tially an ape's jaw, and the skull essentially human.
Not only were these two bones found in the same
block; they were both obviously of a young indi-
vidual. There cannot be any doubt that they belong
together, and they confirm the lesson taught by the
Piltdown skull, that man retained the chinless con-
dition of his ancestors till rather a late stage of
evolution, when he had already got a large brain-
case. Dr. Black was now enabled, by a grant from
the Rockefeller Trustees, to devote full time to
research. Discoveries were coming thick and fast,
for in 1929 a momentous discovery was made by a
Chinese geologist, Mr. Pei. Mr. Pei found an almost
complete brain-case, quite uncrushed. Mr. Pei
sent it to Dr. Black, and Dr. Black spent weeks in
freeing it carefully from the rock in which it was
embedded. Dr. Black has now described the skull,
and casts of it have been made, one of which was
exhibited by Sir Elliot Smith at the centenary
meeting of the British Association.
Other finds have been made since. Altogether
parts of about ten people have been found.
The geological age of this primitive race must
MISSING LINKS 149
have been about the same as that of the Java
man.
What are the essential features of the skull? Does
it resemble Piltdown man closely? In one respect it
certainly does not. There are large eyebrow ridges.
The forehead is receding, and in this respect also it
resembles Java man. In one way, however, it is like
the Piltdown skull. If you put a finger on your
head just above your ear, and move it across the
top of your skull and down to the other ear, you
will find that your skull is smoothly curved. This
Peking skull is not smoothly curved like tha^It
has a distinct bump on each side opposite the part
of the brain which is used for understanding spoken
words, and another bump opposite the part con-
cerned in using hand and eye together. This /seems
extremely significant. It looks as though man was
just beginning to speak and use tools. As his brain
swelled in the appropriate places, so his brain-case
enlarged unevenly. This curious feature closely
resembles one of the reconstructions of the Piltdown
skull. Otherwise the brain was small, as we should
expect in a missing link. Certain parts of the skull
are very ape-like, especially the bones round the
base of the ears, and of course the lower jaw was
absolutely chinless and ape-like.
Let me summarize. Perhaps half a million years
ago man was in a very ape-like condition, as shown
by the Java, Piltdown, and Peking skulls. His
brain-case was smaller, and his brain was just
150 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
swelling in those regions which are concerned with
speech and the use of tools. His skull was thick.
His lower jaw was absolutely ape-like. These are
the three missing-link skulls, though the term is, of
course, no longer suitable. Then, ages later, we have
a large number of skeletons and tools from various
parts of Europe and Asia which belong to the
Neanderthal type. This race much more closely
resembles modern man. The chin is still small,
though the lower jaw is by no means ape-like. The
heavy overhanging eyebrow ridges and retreating
forehead are persistent marks of the beast. Neander-
thal man was probably fairly closely allied to a
not very remote ancestor of ourselves.
You can find casts of some of the skulls and lower
jaws to which I have referred in many museums.
In the Natural History Museum in South Kensing-
ton they are in the room to the right as you enter.
If you can find a skull of one of the aborigines of
Australia in a museum anywhere, you will find it
interesting to compare it with a European's, for it
is primitive in many ways. Notice the small brain-
case and the large eyebrow ridges and the receding
forehead. The hairy Australian natives are the most
primitive people living on the globe to-day.
Perhaps you will have come to the conclusion that
scientists are apt to base a lot of speculation on
very fragmentary evidence. The fossil skeletons I
have mentioned are very incomplete, except the
Neanderthal ones. As a matter of fact there is no
MISSING LINKS 151
undue speculation. Let me tell you a story which
proves this.
A long time ago, when people were just starting
to colonize New Zealand on a large scale, a colonist
found a bit of bone in his garden. It was about
eight inches long. The finder thought it might be
interesting, and he sent it to Professor Owen in
England. Professor Owen examined it carefully, and
decided that it was a small fragment of a thigh
bone of a huge unknown bird allied to the ostrich.
He therefore published a paper saying that he
supposed that there formerly existed in New Zealand
a gigantic species of flightless bird, larger than the
ostrich.
Now perhaps you think that he was basing too
much speculation on too little evidence. B,ut he
was not. As New Zealand became better known,
more and more bones were discovered, and now
you can see whole skeletons of the great Moa of
New Zealand in many museums. Professor Owen's
speculation was proved to have been based on suffi-
cient evidence.
4. THE EVOLUTION OF MIND
JUST because we live such highly artificial, civilized
lives, we almost begin to think that we have scarcely
any of the primitive instincts which would have
been of use to our ape-like ancestors. But deep
inside us we still have those instincts, which often
come to the surface in emergencies. You can easily
prove to yourself that you have them.
Ask some friend whom you know to be a really
bad driver to take you out in his car. Relax and
allow your mind to wander where it will. Your
friend decides to overtake another car round a
blind corner. Here is a car coming straight towards
you!
Now look at yourself. What are you doing? You
are holding on firmly to something or other. It may
be the door-handle, or the dash-board, or part of your
seat, or even your friend's arm, or worse still the
steering-wheel, but the fact remains that if your
friend has really succeeded in frightening you, you
will probably be holding on to something,
Now holding on is perfectly useless to you, and
so it would be to any terrestrial animal. But think
how absolutely essential it is to animals which live
in trees. If they had not got a strong instinct to hold
on when frightened, then they would often fall to
the ground in emergencies and get killed. If our
arboreal ancestor had not had that instinct, he
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 153
would have fallen to the ground and got killed and
you and I would not be here to-day. 1
Here is another way in which you can show a
primitive instinct at work, but it is rather more
troublesome. If there is a large wood in your district,
the middle of which is far from any house or road,
go alone to the middle of it at about i a.m., and
walk about a bit. You are very likely to find an
almost overpowering instinct to return at once to
the society of other human beings. It is not simply
fear of the dark. People who are not in the least
afraid of the dark in ordinary circumstances are
afraid of walking about alone in woods at night.
This instinct must have been of great importance to
1 When this was broadcast, a listener (Mr. Worsley) wrote
to say that when he was frightened in a motor-car, his toes
contracted strongly, as though trying to grasp, and he was
unable to uncurl them while the emergency lasted, although
their contraction was painful. In my next talk I mentioned
this, and many other listeners reported this instinctive curling
up of the toes in emergencies, e.g., when being driven dan-
gerously in motor-cars, when a passenger in a stunting aero-
plane, in a ship in a violent storm, in difficulties on a precipice,
when about to take an anaesthetic, and even when frightened
by a description of an operation by a nurse. I have myself
often experienced this phenomenon in motor-cars. It is ex-
perienced in both feet not only by people who drive but by those
who do not, and is quite distinct from the automatic pressing
of an imaginary brake by the right foot only, which those
who are accustomed to drive often experience when being
driven dangerously by someone else. It is very interesting
that our instinct to grasp with the toes when frightened should
have so long outlasted the capacity of the toes to grasp effec-
tively.
154 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
our pre-human ancestors. The carnivorous enemies
of early man would soon account for anyone who
was foolish enough or rather sufficiently lacking
in this instinct to walk alone in woods at night.
Carnivores are far less likely to attack if two or more
persons or animals are together, and this instinct
completely fails to appear if two or more people
are present. Our ancestors must have been especially
easily attacked in woods at night compared with
most animals. Their sense of smell, like ours, must
have been poorly developed, so that they could not
wind approaching enemies. Further, they must have
been very defenceless before they took to using
weapons, for their canine teeth had become reduced
from their huge primitive dimensions. Their ability
to escape by climbing was small in comparison with
that of an ape with an opposable big toe. Escape by
running would be difficult in a wood. No wonder
their instinct not to wander alone in woods at
night was strongly developed.
My brother, Mr. S. J. Baker, informed me that he
found no such instinct while sitting in trees waiting
for big game in Indian jungles at night, but that
he experienced the strongest instinct not to descend.
It seemed possible that this disinclination to descend
might be rational and not instinctive in an Indian
jungle, where there was actually more danger on the
ground than in trees. I therefore decided to test
the matter in a wood in England, where there could
be no question of a rational fear, since there was no
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 155
danger. In order to make sure that the instinct
would appear, I got a friend to bring me into a wood
which I had never been near before and leave me
in it. I had no compass, no whistle, no stick, and no
match nor light of any sort. I here quote my notes
made directly after I left the wood. I have thought
it best to present them exactly as I wrote them down.
I was left alone in Whiteleaf Wood, near Monks
Risborough, at 12.10 a.m.
"At first I stood still, and no instinct appeared.
Then I began to walk, and found an instinct not to.
However, I did walk, but instinctively very silently,
putting my feet down slowly and as noiselessly as
possible. I forced myself to crash along for half a
dozen steps a few times while in the wood, butjfound
it quite hard to force myself. When I made an unex-
pected noise in walking, I instinctively stood stock
still, without moving any part of my body, even if
I chanced to be in a peculiar position, as when
stooping to pass beneath a bough. When I heard an
unexplained noise not made by myself, I instinc-
tively turned my head towards the source of the
noise, or partly towards it, and then remained stock
still, however peculiar my attitude chanced to be.
I was constantly glancing back over my shoulders,
and felt my back insecure. When I walked along
quietly, giving all these instincts full play, I felt
fairly comfortable, but I was extremely uncom-
fortable while forcing myself to crash along. Never-
156 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
theless I did feel an instinct not to walk at all, very
strongly, and especially to remain still with my
back to a big tree.
"I did not feel any instinct to climb a tree; but
when I climbed one, I immediately felt perfectly
happy and unconcerned, and did not care whether
F. came back or not, except that I was afraid that
I might fall if I went to sleep. I did not want to
descend the tree and start walking again at all,
but made myself do so. When on the ground again,
I felt anxious to get back to the branches of the tree,
although I did not feel like that until I had once
experienced the sense of security that the branches
of the tree gave me.
"I climbed the tree again, descended again, and
climbed again, and renewed the sensations produced
before.
"F. returned and brought me out of the wood.
The feeling of security given by climbing was
surprising to me. I was very sceptical about it
before.
"I have written this down directly on my return
to F.'s house. I must record that I felt just like what
I imagine a wild animal feels like when walking
about in the woods alert, suspicious, on the qui vive
all the time except when in the tree."
Anyone who doubts the reality of these feelings
should repeat this experiment. It is essential that he
should be in a strange wood, with no way of finding
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 157
his way out, and he must be quite alone, and it
must be the middle of the night.
It appears to me quite possible that we are
only terrestrial by tradition and not by instinct.
Our instincts may still be arboreal, as in many
children. In exactly the same way the otter is not
instinctively aquatic. Far from it. Every young
otter must be forced by its mother to enter the
water against its will. It must be taught by its
mother to swim. I could give you many instances of
the importance of tradition in animals. The wild
children who have occasionally been found have
usually been arboreal, and their extreme agility
in trees has made it difficult to catch them. It should
be recalled, too, that most people prefer to go
upstairs to bed.
Perhaps this consideration of primitive instincts
will have paved the way for a comparison of the
brain of man and apes. It is important to remember
that we may not be so superior to the ape as we seem,
for this reason. Much of our apparent cleverness is
due simply to the ability of our minds to comprehend
what others have discovered and communicated to
us by speech and writing. Speech and writing tend
to give us a very conceited impression of our own
brains, for they enable us to profit from the wisdom
of the ages in a way which would be totally im-
possible to the chimpanzee and orang-utan, even if,
except in the matter of speech, he had the same
innate mental powers as we have. There is no evi-
158 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
dence that the innate intelligence of man has
increased in the slightest degree during the historical
period. Discoveries have been made, and speech
and writing have enabled these to be broadcast, so
that each generation piles on new knowledge and
discards what it proves to be erroneous. Thus
knowledge increases, but it seems certain that the
brain is not evolving.
I think there can be no doubt that articulate
speech separates us more from animals than any-
thing else. Without speech, what knowledge of the
universe should we have to-day? Fancy yourself
cast up on an uninhabited island as a child before
you had learnt to speak. Suppose that it was a land
flowing with milk and honey, so that you did not
simply die at once. How much would you find out
about the universe before you died? One cannot
say, but it would be very little. Do you think you
would have been able to distinguish six objects from
seven? Certainly it seems unlikely that you would
have got as far in the multiplication table as twice
two make four. When we think of the great geniuses
of history, we must appreciate the great extent to
which they relied on the world's store of knowledge
existing at their time in the form of speech, whether
spoken or written. Speech, and especially written
speech, enables us to start where our ancestors left
off. The elementary student of biology to-day
knows more about evolution than Charles Darwin
ever did.
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 159
Can any apes speak at all? It all depends on what
we mean by speech. The gibbon and the chim-
panzee certainly have vocabularies. Definite sounds,
which we can reproduce by phonetic spelling, have
definite meanings. But none of these sounds indicate
anything except emotional states. The chimpanzee
can say something meaning "extremely pleased,"
or "very fond of you," or "bored," or "hostile."
But he has no name for any concrete object, not
even for a banana, or a tree, or water. The evolution
of speech in our sense must have started by some of
our pre-human ancestors beginning to attach
definite sounds to definite concrete objects. The
great advantages accruing from even a rude form of
speech would result in the natural selection of the
speakers and their offspring in the struggle for
existence.
Apart from speech, is there such a tremendous gap
after all between a man's mind and an ape's? It is
incredibly hard to know what is going on in the
mind of an animal. When I see a cow, I often think
to myself what an extraordinary blank in knowledge
its mind represents. I know its anatomy perfectly
well and a certain amount about its physiology.
The world's store of knowledge on these subjects is
immense and almost incredibly detailed. But its
mind! When it lies there chewing the cud, I have
not the very slightest idea what it is thinking about,
or if it is thinking at all. Is it turning over the events
of the day, or wondering about the future, or is its
i6o SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
mind an almost impenetrable fog, like our own
when we are half asleep? Has the cow consciousness
at all? This question does not seem at all ridiculous
when we consider what complicated things human
beings can do without consciousness when they are
sleep-walking.
Animal-lovers step in where scientists almost fear
to tread, and they have produced amazing and quite
incredible stories of the sagacity of the dog. These
stories are quite useless to anyone who really wants to
explore the mind of animals. They are recorded
by wholly uncritical people who are quite unable to
view a dog's behaviour objectively, but are carried
away by emotion and love of the remarkable. I
should be the last person to minimize the intelligence
of the dog, for I have always lived with dogs, and I
am very sensible of the astounding capacity they
have of interpreting inflexions of the human voice,
and also of recognizing voices. One of my dogs
never paid the slightest attention to the wireless
until he heard me broadcast. The moment I started
to speak he recognized the voice, and paid attention
to the wireless for the first time. But such incidents
as these really lead nowhere. They are not much
more helpful than the obviously untrue dog-stories.
There once existed a club in Oxford whose function
it was to invent dog-stories to send to a weekly
paper. A good deal of shrewdness must have been
needed to gauge the editor's credulity.
After stories of this kind, a little objective research
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 161
into the mind of animals comes like a breath of fresh
air into an ill-ventilated room. Professor Kohler, of
the University of Berlin, has made such an objective
research into the mind of chimpanzees and has
described it in his book The Mentality of Apes. While
nearly the whole civilized world was proving its
civilization by mutual destruction in the world-war,
he was carrying out his really thrilling investigations
in the island of Teneriffe. Professor Kohler had no
preconceptions, no desire to make out that his
chimpanzees were more or less intelligent than they
were. His idea was simply to test their intelligence
in an entirely impartial way.
The tests he devised were excellently thought out
and quite different from the usual tests. Let me tell
you what he was not doing. He was not testing/their
ability to imitate human beings, or to learn to
perform complicated actions. He was not testing
them as so many people have tested animals, who
think they are testing intelligence when really they
are doing nothing of the sort. A favourite method
with these others has been to put the animal in a
cage, from which it can only escape by pressing a
button which releases a door. In more complicated
tests the animal has to move several buttons and
latches in a certain order. The mistake in all these
tests is that the mechanism of the action of the
button in releasing the door is invisible, and though
the animal soon learns the trick, he can have no
insight whatever into its mechanism. People who
1 62 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
have experimented in this sort of way have often
concluded that animals are wholly lacking in
intelligence, but really it would be as sensible to
say that a man was wholly without musical taste,
when one had only tested his capacity as a weight-
lifter.
What, then, was the essence of Professor Kohler's
experiments? Simply this, that in every experiment
the whole solution of the problem set should be
clearly visible to the chimpanzee.
The experiments were performed by putting food
where a hungry chimpanzee could see it, but could
only get it if it exercised intelligence. The simplest
test of all is to put a banana outside the bars of the
cage with a string attached to it. All the chim-
panzees tested at once pulled the string and obtained
the fruit. Dogs are generally non-plussed by this,
though it would be simple for them to pull the string
with their teeth, if they had the intelligence to
comprehend the situation.
If a stick lies in the cage and a banana is placed
outside, out of reach, the behaviour of the chim-
panzee depends on where the stick is placed. If it is
placed in such a position that it can view the banana
and the stick at the same time, it uses the stick as an
implement to drag the food towards the cage. If,
however, it cannot see the stick at the same time as
the banana, it seldom has the sense to use it, though
it may look straight at the stick from time to time.
In solving these and other problems it is clear that
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 163
the chimpanzee has a real grasp of the situation.
It is not that it behaves at random in the first
instance till by luck it secures the fruit, and that
afterwards it repeats identically the same move-
ments of the same muscles as gave success before.
That is what some observers would have us believe.
On the contrary, the ape acts stupidly for a time,
and then suddenly grasps the situation. From that
moment its action is sure and decided, in marked
contrast to its undecided movements a moment
before. Next time the same problem is set, it solves
it more quickly, but often by quite different move-
ments of its body. Success comes from mental grasp
of the situation, and not from repetition of certain
bodily movements which chanced to bring success
before. ,
Curiously enough, chimpanzees are extraordinarily
stupid about removing obstacles, though quite
sensible about using tools. If a box is placed inside
the cage in such a position as to prevent the ape
from getting into a position from which it could
reach a fruit placed outside, only the most intelligent
of the chimpanzees have the sense to move the box ;
and even they take a long time to see the obvious
solution of the difficulty.
The chimpanzees become accustomed to obtaining
fruit placed high up, out of reach, by swinging on a
rope attached to a horizontal beam. This gave an
idea for an excellent experiment. The rope, instead
of hanging free, was wound round the horizontal
1 64 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
beam in three neat loops, not crossing one another.
It now became apparent that three neat loops appear
to a chimpanzee precisely as a hopeless tangle
appears to us. They all tried to untangle the rope,
but quite unmethodically, just as we often try to
straighten a tangle of string quite unmethodically.
If our brains were much more efficient than they
are, we should straighten tangles with sure, decided
movements, never making the tangle more complex.
Before judging the chimpanzee too harshly, however,
we must remember, as Professor Kohler remarks,
that many of us find a deck-chair as inextricable a
tangle as a chimpanzee finds three loops of rope.
What is the limit of chimpanzee intelligence? I
think that this is the hardest test that any of Pro-
fessor Kohler's animals passed. The fruit is placed
out of reach outside the bars of the chimpanzee's
cage. A stick is provided, but it is hung on the wall
so high up that it can only be reached by dragging
a box below it and climbing on it. It takes a very
clever chimpanzee to see what to do.
Professor Kohler considers that the chimpanzee
may actually be nearer to man in intelligence than
to many of the lower species of monkeys.
I cannot here discuss the expression of the emotions
in animals. Charles Darwin wrote a fascinating book
on this subject. On the whole the chimpanzee
expresses his feelings very much as we do, even to
scratching his head when he is puzzled and beckoning
with his finger when he wishes his friend to approach.
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 165
Next time you see a chimpanzee in a cage, you
will probably not view him with quite such con-
temptuous amusement as before. One should think
how one would behave if one were shut up in a cage
oneself, with no privacy and no clothes, let us say
in Japan, or in some other country where one could
not make oneself understood. Of course clothes give
us a wholly artificial feeling of superiority. Someone
has questioned whether we should have much
respect for the House of Commons if members were
compelled to sit in a state of complete nudity. Even
the House of Lords would lose something of its
dignity if subject to the same restriction. Yet our
respect should undoubtedly be for their brains and
disinterestedness, and not for their clothing.
So far we have only discussed the changes ,in our
outlook on the relationship between man and apes.
Perhaps you will ask this, "Is that the only way in
which the biological outlook has changed since the
end of last century as far as the mind of man is
concerned?" It is not, for many of our new ideas
apply equally to man and to animals, profoundly
affecting the way in which we regard man ; so now
we must take a more general outlook on modern
developments in the matter of the mind.
Probably you know what conditioned reflexes are.
In case you do not, I may first of all remind you
what ordinary reflexes are. If I were to touch your
hand with a red-hot poker a message would go
along your sensory nerves to your spinal cord and
166 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
another message would come back along your
motor nerves to the muscles moving your arm. Your
whole arm would be pulled away with great speed,
so quickly that the whole movement would be
finished before the fact that you had been burnt
had arrived at your consciousness. Undoubtedly a
great number of our actions are reflex acts in which
consciousness is not involved. Now what are con-
ditioned reflexes? If I were to play the note middle C
on the piano a great number of times , presumably
it would not have any special effect upon you beyond
being rather boring. But if I were to prick your
finger with a needle every time I played the note,
you would develop a reflex action of quickly drawing
your hand away every time the note was struck,
even though I no longer pricked you. This is a
simple example of a conditioned reflex. Another
example will make the subject even more simple.
When one is hungry, the smell of food causes a
reflex secretion by the salivary glands, so that one's
mouth waters. That is a simple reflex action. There
is no question of voluntary action here, because you
cannot make your salivary glands secrete by any
act of your will. 1 But conditioned reflexes often
grow up round these reflexes. If a certain gong is
used to summon you to your meals, just the mere
1 A dentist has written to tell me of a woman patient who can
open her mouth and eject a fountain of saliva at will. Pre-
sumably she uses a voluntary muscle to compress the salivary
gland. There is no evidence that she secretes saliva at will.
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 167
sound of that gong will cause increased secretion by
the salivary glands. Some very interesting experi-
ments on this subject have been done with dogs.
The conditioned reflex of watering in the mouth
at the sound of a bell is soon developed if dogs are
always fed immediately after a bell is rung. There is
no difficulty in showing that ; because if you ring
a bell but produce no food, saliva pours out into the
dog's mouth. That is simple, but here is something
much more interesting and unexpected. If you always
ring a bell a quarter of an hour before you feed your
dog, then your dog will develop a conditioned
reflex of secreting saliva a quarter of an hour after
the ringing of that bell.
It seems likely that conditioned reflexes play a
large part in our ordinary behaviour. Many of our
actions may be attributed to them, and this is an
important and expanding field of research at the
present moment. Nevertheless, it is possible that
some enthusiasts have gone too far in regarding
animal or human behaviour as almost exclusively
made up of an infinitely complicated system of
conditioned reflexes.
Then there are the ductless glands. So much
research has been done on them lately, and the
results obtained have been so exciting, that
they have found their way into the popular news-
papers, despite the fact that their study is a
branch of science. What are the most important
conclusions that we can draw from this study, so
1 68 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
far as the mind is concerned? That is fairly easy
to answer.
We now see that many of our actions and emotions
are by no means wholly to be ascribed to our
nervous system. There exist in our body definite
glands which pour definite chemical substances into
our blood-stream, which profoundly affect our
thoughts and our actions. The most important are
the thyroid gland near the Adam's Apple in the
neck, the pituitary gland between the roof of the
mouth and the brain, the adrenal glands near the
kidneys, and the glandular tissue of the reproductive
organs.
What are the effects of these glands? The straight-
forward way to find out is to remove them in the
case of animals, and see what happens ; or else we
can notice what happens when they are diseased.
Experiments and observations of this type have
conclusively proved that our emotions are very
largely controlled by chemical substances cir-
culating in the blood which have been produced by
the glands. It is interesting to note that the chemical
substances formed in each gland are the same in all
mammals which have been investigated, including
man. It has been possible in the case of some of the
glands to isolate the actual chemical compound,
and to analyse it, and in some cases to synthesize
it in the laboratory.
The thyroid is the easiest gland to take first. Its
secretion has the effect of increasing the rate at
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 169
which bodily processes take place, and not only
bodily but also mental processes. The person whose
thyroid gland is not functioning properly is not only
sluggish in his movements, but also in his brain. He
cannot help it. He must be provided with more
of the essential substance secreted by the thyroid
gland, and then he recovers. That is quite simple,
because the substance is easily extracted from the
thyroid gland of cattle or sheep killed for food.
Sometimes the thyroid gland of young children is
almost wholly deficient, and then cretinism results.
In extreme cases the cretin may have the bodily
appearance and the mental capacity of a child of
two, when its actual age is ten times as great. This
condition can be relieved by taking tablets of thyroid
gland by the mouth.
Some people have not too little, but too much
thyroid gland, which may succeed in secreting too
much of the essential substance into the blood-
stream. This results not only in undue physical
activity and bodily restlessness, but also in an unduly
active mind and mental restlessness. Such people
are usually thin and have an agitated expression.
The eyes often protrude from their sockets.
One must not fail to mention the adrenals. If
you inject some of the secretion of the adrenal into
a man, all the symptoms of fear are produced.
The face goes white, the hair stands on end, the
blood-pressure is increased, the heart beats
strongly so that its palpitations are easily felt,
170 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
and the normal movements of the small intestine
are arrested.
In the case of the reproductive organs, the matter
is simple, for the development of the sex instinct
depends on substances produced by the reproductive
glands. If they are removed in early life, these
instincts never develop. By removing the reproduc-
tive organs from an animal, and grafting instead
those of the opposite sex, one reverses its sex instincts.
In this way one may cause a male guinea-pig not
only to produce milk, but also to acquire the instinct
to suckle young.
There is no doubt that the mechanism is the same
in man, and the utmost care should be taken in
cases of abnormal sexual behaviour, to make sure
that the glands are normal ; for if one were to punish
a person for unusual behaviour when the glands
were abnormal, one would be doing a grave injustice.
You or I would behave abnormally if the inappro-
priate glands were grafted into us.
The fact of our relationship with animals is well
shown by recent experiments performed in France.
It was necessary to remove the ovary of a woman
by an operation. A fluid was removed from the
ovary, and injected into some ancient female rats
which were so old that the sexual instinct had been
lost. The result of the injection was that the instinct
was immediately reacquired.
It cannot be denied that the work on conditioned
reflexes and on ductless glands has given us a more
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 171
mechanistic conception of the mind. It seems much
more probable now that the mind is a mechanism
whose physical basis at least may one day be inter-
preted in terms of physics and chemistry. I have
only just been able to touch the very fringe of this
subject. I wish that I could give you some idea of the
enormous amount of work that has been done. The
investigators have performed experiments and made
observations which are repeatable. Anyone who
doubts them can experiment for himself. The more
one studies, the more one is absolutely forced to the
conclusion that chemistry plays a large part in the
control of our emotions.
This raises the old problem of mechanism and
vitalism. Are the body and mind to be regarded as
a machine working simply according to the laws
of physics and chemistry, or is there some ' funda-
mental distinction between animate and inanimate
matter? It seems to me that to be a vitalist is to
fight a losing battle all the way. A hundred years
ago, the first organic substance was synthesized
from inorganic materials in the laboratory. Pre-
viously it had been thought that such synthesis was
impossible. This was the first blow to vitalism. No
other organic substance was synthesized for some
time, and the vitalists became optimistic that
perhaps this was the one exception that proved the
rule. But since then many such substances have been
synthesized from inanimate substances in the
laboratory, and to-day no one would claim that any
172 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
particular substance in the body will never be synthe-
sized. The vitalist simply says that he thinks that we
shall be unable to interpret life in terms of physics
and chemistry. But the trouble is that every discovery
in biology brings us nearer to such an interpretation.
Every discovery makes his position less tenable.
Are we then to pronounce ourselves as mechanists ?
That, you will say, is the obvious alternative. Per-
sonally, I consider that it would be premature in the
extreme to do so. We must only be mechanists
when all bodily and mental processes have been
reduced to mechanics, physics, and chemistry,
when we understand precisely what chemical and
physical changes underlie and constitute every part
of every action, every thought, every memory,
every emotion, even consciousness itself. As yet we
do not begin to approach that position, and I con-
sider that the only reasonable position to take up
at the moment is that of scepticism. Nevertheless, let
us remember that at present all discoveries in biology
are leading us nearer and nearer to a mechanistic
explanation.
The recent discovery that excessively small
particles of matter do not obey the ordinary laws of
physics, which are only applicable to large masses,
has been interpreted by some as making probable
the existence of free-will. I agree with Professor
Levy that any unprejudiced person, if he really
thinks seriously on the matter, will agree that there
is no connection between the two subjects.
5. THE CONTROL OF DEVELOPMENT
I HAVE mentioned various changes in the way in
which we regard man, which have come about
during the course of the present century. You will
have noticed that the new work in anatomy and
physiology is a logical outcome of the old. There
have been thrilling discoveries, but it cannot be
said that we look at man in a fundamentally dif-
ferent way as a result of those which we have
discussed so far. That does not apply at all to what
I shall now relate, for in the realms of inheritance
and sex determination we now know much, where
practically nothing was known before. The begin-
ning of this century was the time when Jhe new
knowledge suddenly began to spring into existence.
In a limited sense that is not quite true, because
thirty-five years earlier the monk Gregor Mendel
had made his momentous discoveries on inheritance
by experiments on peas in his monastery garden.
But these discoveries were absolutely unknown to
the world at large, and their rediscovery, together
with the tremendous outburst of research which
they stimulated, only took place about the begin-
ning of the new century. The world's knowledge
of inheritance before was almost negligible. Men-
del's laws were found to have universal application
not only in plants and lower animals, but in the
higher animals and in man himself.
174 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
The 2ist of July, 1901, is a significant date in the
history of biology and of civilization. One day,
perhaps, children in schools will no longer learn
the dates of the accession of kings, but of really
important happenings in art, music, and science.
On that date the American investigator, C. E.
McClung, sent a scientific paper to the German
periodical Anatomischer Anzeiger. In that paper he
put forward his theory of the determination of sex
by chromosomes, which has been substantiated by
all subsequent research.
Now, how had McClung made these discoveries
which will result in his name being honoured cen-
turies hence when many ephemeral notorieties of
to-day are known by no one? You will probably
laugh. It was something so peculiar that it would
only be natural if it were to cause mirth. It is a
splendid illustration of the fact that those who do
very peculiar and eccentric things are commonly
those who do important things. If one has a child
with peculiar and apparently useless traits, it
may be better to allow him to develop them
than to attempt to mould him to an ordinary
pattern.
What had McClung been doing? He had been
studying grasshoppers. That in itself appears to have
been rather a useless and eccentric occupation, yet
when the day comes, as it surely will, when we are
able to control the sex of our offspring and of our
domestic animals, it will be primarily due to
THE CONTROL OF DEVELOPMENT 175
Me dung's studies on the reproductive organs of
grasshoppers.
The proper study of mankind is by no means
always man. The proper study in this case would
have been the reproductive organs of grasshoppers,
simply because for technical reasons the conditions
are easily studied in them. It must suffice to say
that the control of sex could never have been dis-
covered by the investigation of the reproductive
organs of man. Since the time of McClung's first
announcement, an enormous amount of research
has been done on this subject in the most widely
diverse groups of animals up to and including man ;
and as man is our chief interest here, we must now
concentrate upon the determination of sex in man.
What determines whether a given embryo is male
or female?
First of all, every woman produces one egg every
month. That egg has no tendency to grow into an
embryo of one sex rather than the other. With men
it is different. The reproductive cell is here a micro-
scopic structure shaped roughly like a tadpole and
progressing in the same way by movements of its
tail. Now these little tadpole-like sperms are of two
sorts, male-producing and female-producing. The
egg is fertilized by only one sperm. Should that one
chance to be a male-producing one, a boy will be
conceived. Should it be a female-producing one, a
girl will be conceived. The determination of sex
rests entirely with the sperm. Then, you will say at
176 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
once, what decides whether a given sperm shall be
male-producing or female-producing? To that there
is a complete answer.
Very probably you have already heard of chromo-
somes. They have often been discussed in broadcast
talks. They are minute, microscopic, generally rod-
shaped bodies discovered about 1880. A sperm is
extremely small, but chromosomes are much smaller,
for the head of the sperm of man contains twenty-
four of them, never more nor less, but always
exactly twenty-four. You can easily imagine twenty-
four rods of varying lengths, some so short as scarcely
to be rods at all, some long enough in proportion
to their breadth to resemble an ordinary ruler
viewed from the flat side. Twenty-three of these
chromosomes do not interest us for the moment,
but the twenty-fourth does. The twenty-three are
the same in every sperm, but the twenty-fourth is
not. Either it is a very big one, one of the biggest,
or it is a small chromosome, among the smallest.
There are two types of sperms, in exactly equal
numbers. One type has the big one, and the other
the small one. These special chromosomes are called
the sex-chromosomes, because they decide the sex
of the embryo. The sperms containing the large
sex-chromosome give rise to girls, and the sperms
containing the small sex-chromosome give rise to
boys.
The egg which is waiting to be fertilized by
a sperm also contains twenty-four chromosomes.
THE CONTROL OF DEVELOPMENT 177
Twenty-three of them are exact pairs for the
twenty-three chromosomes of the sperm. The egg
also contains a sex-chromosome, but it is always
the same, always a large sex-chromosome, an exact
pair for the large sex-chromosome of the female-
producing sperm.
When fertilization takes place, that is, when a
sperm fuses with an egg, forty-eight chromosomes
are brought together. Forty-six of these are ordinary
chromosomes, and the other two are the sex-
chromosomes. If the two sex-chromosomes are both
large, the embryo will grow up to be a girl. If one
is large and one is small, it will grow up to be a
boy. Its sex depends simply on its sex-chromosomes.
The fertilized egg-cell divides into 2, the 2 into 4,
the 4 into 8, the 8 into 16, and so on, until all the
millions of microscopic cells are formed which con-
stitute your body. Each time a cell divides, each
of the forty-eight chromosomes divides. So if you
are a woman or a girl, you have two large sex-
chromosomes in every cell in your body, in the cells
of your skin, your brain, your digestive organs, in
every part of you. If you are a man or a boy, you
have one large and one small sex-chromosome in
every cell in your body. It was because of that that
you grew to be a man. If the egg from which you
grew had been fertilized by a sperm containing a
large sex-chromosome, you would have been a girl.
I have said that the two sorts of sperms are
formed in exactly equal numbers, so no doubt you
178 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
will at once ask, "Then why are not exactly the
same number of boys born as girls?" Actually about
105 boys are born to every 100 girls in most Euro-
pean countries, and a considerably higher propor-
tion of boys even than that are conceived. The
male embryo is much more likely to die than the
female, and if that were not so, there would be a
great preponderance of boys. Males tend to die off
at all ages more than females, and so there is a
preponderance of females despite the birth of more
males.
How can we account for the conception of more
male than female embryos, if the male-producing
and female-producing sperms are produced in
exactly equal numbers? It seems that the male-
producing sperms either swim faster, or else have
some other advantage which enables them to effect
fertilization more easily. The sperm has a big journey
in front of it, when one considers its minute size.
It has to swim nearly two thousand times its own
length up the cavity of the womb. If it were mag-
nified to the length of ourselves, its journey would
be more than two miles.
These remarks about the size of sperms are a
digression, but the subject is so interesting that I
propose to digress further. I believe that someone
has calculated the total weight of all the sperms
fertilizing all the eggs which grow into babies in the
United States in a year. Not being able to obtain
these figures, I asked my brother, Mr. S. J. Baker,
THE CONTROL OF DEVELOPMENT 179
to make similar calculations. The results are so
surprising as to be almost unbelievable. If you took
all the sperms fertilizing eggs resulting in the birth
of babies during a thousand years in the whole of
England and Wales at the present birth-rate, they
would weigh about as much as a pin's head. That
is the total weight of the male contribution to the
continuance of the English and Welsh peoples during
a thousand years !
Another way of getting an idea of the minute
size of sperms is this. An enormous number of
sperms always compete for the fertilization of a
single egg, yet only one succeeds. I calculate that
one ordinary man produces in a year about enough
sperms to achieve the conception of as many infants
as are born in England and Wales in seven hundred
years, at the present birth-rate, if every sperm were
to achieve fertilization.
In the chromosomes of these microscopic sperms
are borne the factors which react with those of the
chromosomes of the egg and with the environment
to make us what we are, to determine the structure
of every part of the body.
The sex-chromosomes do not only control sex.
They also carry the factors for many other characters.
Take colour-blindness. The large sex-chromosome
carries either the factor for colour-blindness or the
factor for normal colour- vision. A single large sex-
chromosome never carries both, but a woman has
two large sex-chromosomes, as I have mentioned.
i8o SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
and so she may have the factor for normal vision
on one and colour-blindness on the other. In that
case, luckily, the normal one over-rides the abnormal,
and she does not show the least trace of colour-
blindness. Her sons, however, only have one large
sex-chromosome, and it is derived from her. Half
her sons, on the average, will get the normal sex-
chromosome from her, and half will get the one
bearing the factor for colour-blindness. So, on the
average, half her sons will be colour-blind. If she
marries a man who is not colour-blind himself, all
her daughters will be normal. She can only pro-
duce colour-blind daughters by marrying a colour-
blind man. Half her daughters will then be colour-
blind, as both their sex-chromosomes will bear
factors for colour-blindness. That is why men are
so much more commonly colour-blind than women.
Colour-blind men can be produced when both the
parents are apparently normal, but colour-blind
women cannot be produced unless a colour-blind
man marries a woman who is herself colour-blind,
or at least has it in her family.
There are several other diseases which are in-
herited in exactly the same way, and of course with
these also man is the chief sufferer. Haemophilia is
a good example. That is the disease in which one
bleeds profusely from a small cut. It is commonly
supposed to be due to the skin being malformed,
but that is not so. It is caused simply by a failure
of the blood to clot.
THE CONTROL OF DEVELOPMENT 181
One must not think of the large sex-chromosome
as being concerned only in the control of sex and
the inheritance of colour-blindness and haemophilia
and other diseases. That is not so at all. Boys
generally resemble their mothers rather more closely
than they do their fathers. This is probably because
they get their large sex-chromosome from their
mothers, with all the factors it bears controlling
development. The small sex-chromosome, which
comes from the father, is quite inert and bears no
factors.
The chromosomes other than the sex-chromo-
somes also carry factors controlling development.
I have remarked that it was in 1901 that McClung
first suggested that the chromosomes determined
sex. It was about a year later, on October/ xyth,
1902, that another American, W. S. Sutton, sent
a paper to the Biological Bulletin, in which he pointed
out the close correspondence between what chromo-
somes do and what the factors of Mendelian in-
heritance do. Nowadays practically all biologists
agree that the chromosomes are responsible for
Mendelian inheritance. Like McClung, Sutton
arrived at his conclusions from a study of grass-
hoppers.
There are many simple cases of Mendelian in-
heritance in man. If a girl with pure blue eyes
marries a man with brown eyes, who received a
factor for brown eyes from both his parents, then
all the children will have brown eyes. These chil-
i8 2 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
dren will really be hybrids for this character, but
brown eyes completely over-ride blue, and no trace
of the blue appears. The fact that they are hybrids
for this character appears when they grow up and
marry. If one of them marries a person with pure
blue eyes, the children will not all have brown
eyes, as one might expect. On the contrary, half
the children will have blue eyes and half will have
brown eyes. Of course in a modern small family
one might not get equal numbers, but the larger
the family, the closer the approximation is likely
to be; and if one took all such families in Great
Britain, the approximation to the ratio of one blue
to one brown would be very close indeed.
Most parts of the body do not present such simple
cases of Mendelian inheritance, because several
pairs of factors often affect each part. Thus at least
four sets of factors are concerned in the shape of
the nose, and therefore the results are not nearly
so clear-cut nor so simply explained.
I want to make it clear that though you may
have brown eyes yourself, and though your cousin
may also have brown eyes, yet you are quite likely
to produce some blue-eyed children if you marry
her or him. Your cousin and yourself have a
common grandfather and grandmother. Now your
grandparents themselves may have had brown eyes,
but one of them may have been hybrid for it, and
transmitted a factor for blue eyes both to your
father and to your cousin's father, and thus to you
THE CONTROL OF DEVELOPMENT 183
and your cousin, though none of these members
of the family have had blue eyes. Now suppose you
marry your cousin, some of your children may have
blue eyes simply because blue eyes come to them
from both parents.
Now blue eyes are of course most desirable
characters in the eyes of most of us, but some
undesirable characters are inherited in the same
way. One of these is congenital feeble-mindedness.
I hope I have made it clear that feeble-mindedness
might result from a cousin-marriage, though there
was no history of mental defect in the family.
This brings us to the whole question of inbreed-
ing, about which our knowledge has increased so
much recently. There is nothing whatever harmful
about close inbreeding in itself, but it do^s very
quickly bring to light any latent undesirable inherited
qualities. If the stock is completely free from these,
inbreeding has no bad effect whatever. The Pharaohs
used to marry their sisters generation after genera-
tion, and experiments on animals have proved that
once one has got the stock free from factors for
undesirable qualities, close inbreeding is harmless.
When two congenital mental defectives marry,
all their offspring are likely to be mental defectives.
If a mental defective marries a normal person, all
the offspring are likely to be normal, but to transmit
mental defect. That brings us to Eugenics, and now
for a moment we must leave pure science and become
applied scientists. In pure science there are no values.
184 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
The pure scientist simply describes. He does not say
what is good or bad. Nevertheless, I cannot help
feeling that mental defect is fundamentally bad,
and to allow congenital mental defectives to produce
children seems sheer madness. Actually they are
increasing in numbers in this country at a frighten-
ing rate. Unless something is done about it, we shall
before very long find ourselves in grave danger, as
they are among the most fertile people, while the
more desirable stocks are failing to reproduce them-
selves.
Many kindly people have been turned against
Eugenics because they have imagined that Eugenists
are snobs or anti-humanitarians, I hope very much
that I may be able to controvert that view. The
life of a mental defective, or of a person suffering
from some severe inherited disease, is one long
misery, and it would be humane to prevent such
individuals from being born. As to snobbishness, the
real Eugenist is the last person to be a snob. He
wants everyone to have an equal chance in the
world, so that the inherently best people, from what-
ever class, may be given a chance of showing their
desirable qualities. He must then try to find means
of encouraging their reproduction.
If a rich person wanted to leave his wealth for
the purpose of decreasing the amount of suffering
in this world, I do believe he could scarcely do better
than leave it for the cause of Eugenics. It may be
true that snobs and anti-humanitarians have in the
THE CONTROL OF DEVELOPMENT 185
past been drawn to the subject, but they have been
drawn mistakenly. The real Eugenist sees a practical
way of decreasing suffering and spreading wider the
desirable qualities of our race and other races. Let
me give you an example of what could be done.
Quite recently a Bill was brought forward in the
House of Commons to legalize Eugenic sterilization.
Had the Bill become law, it would have begun a
new era in the treatment of mental defectives. It
must be understood that the sterilizing operation
is in no sense a maiming operation. It does not
make one impotent, but only sterile. The Bill pro-
vided adequate safeguards. No person was to be
sterilized unless suffering from inherited mental
defect, and unless his own consent was obtained
(if capable of comprehending the matter), ^s well
as the consent of the parent or guardian or wife
or husband, and also of the Board of Control. It
had also to be made certain that no danger to
health was involved. Despite all these safeguards,
the House of Commons refused leave to introduce
the Bill.
Nevertheless it seems certain that the Eugenic
conscience of the nation will eventually be aroused.
JULIAN HUXLEY
6. MAN AND REALITY
IN the first contribution to this series I tried to give
a picture of man as a relative being to show how
his construction, his way of working, and even his
way of thinking, are only comprehensible in relation
to his environment. I shall now attempt something,
I fear, rather too ambitious I shall attempt to
show some of the ways in which the changed picture
of life given by modern biology is helping to deter-
mine a change in the general picture of the world
which we can draw for ourselves. For you must
remember that man's general picture of his world
evolves just as much as man himself. Indeed, it
must evolve it cannot stay still: the very notion
of fixity of dogma, or of knowledge, or of ideas is
an error and is wrong. One of the greatest marks
of the modern world is the realization that while
truth must always be incomplete, it yet can be
progressive.
In recent years, several men distinguished in
physical science notably Eddington and Jeans
have given us a lucid account of their world-picture.
Like all modern world-pictures, it has a basis in
the facts and theories of science, and extends over
into philosophy. I will not presume here to expound
their views, which have after all been published
MAN AND REALITY 187
and widely discussed. But there is one point about
them by which a biologist cannot help being struck.
The picture which emerges is of an observer con-
templating a world from the outside, as Jupiter was
supposed to contemplate Earth from the vantage-
point of heaven. The observer is not so much an
individual human being Sir James Jeans or Sir
Arthur Eddington personally but rather an arti-
ficial creation the human intellect, or perhaps
better the human intellect as represented by the
highest achievements of mathematical physics. And
the world observed is not so much the concrete
world as the ordinary man observes it, but a world
with all its qualities taken out of it except what can
be weighed and measured a world of mass, space,
time, and energy, a metrical, mathematical \yorld.
That is all very well. It may be the simplest
method of approach for the physicist. He is so
accustomed to thinking in terms of inanimate things
to be measured and reasoned about by his inquiring
mind that he has come to take the mind for granted
as somehow outside the things with which he as a
scientist is concerned. But this is not necessarily the
only or even the best way. The biologist, for instance,
cannot see the world in this way. He has a more
difficult job, for he knows that his mind is just as
much a part of the things which he as a scientist
has to investigate as is his body or the lifeless world
around him. He must try to account for the observer
as well as for what is observed : he cannot be con-
i88 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
tent to leave mind outside the field of his facts, but
must make it, too, part of the subject-matter of his
science.
To understand the situation properly, we must
look back a moment at the history of thought.
What I am going to say about the so-called primary
or secondary qualities of things is rather unfamiliar
or perhaps difficult ; but it is of the greatest impor-
tance for understanding the change which has
recently come over scientific philosophy. Children,
savages, and primitive philosophers are alike in
believing that the qualities of objects are somehow
in the objects. They would say that in an orange,
for instance, there inhere the qualities of being
round, yellow, having a certain pleasant taste, of
weighing so much, and being of such and such a
size. But with the rise of the scientific method in
the seventeenth century, people began to distin-
guish between different kinds of qualities of objects.
Some of them are still thought of as belonging to
the objects themselves: these were called primary.
The fundamental primary qualities were mass
which they defined as the amount of weighable
matter in a thing; and magnitude its size and
shape. But other qualities, it appeared, were put
into objects, so to speak, by us; and such were
called secondary qualities. Colour is an example,
and so are taste and smell. An ordinary man sees
an orange as yellow : but to someone who is totally
colour-blind it simply looks grey. And of course
MAN AND REALITY 189
even before this, common sense as well as science
had learned that whenever men ascribed emotion
or will or purpose to a lifeless object, they were
just projecting their own feelings into it. Savages
think of the thunder as a manifestation of anger,
because they are frightened by it. Early religions
put benignity and power and wisdom into their
idea of the Sun, because the Sun warms man, ripens
his crops, and looks down upon the earth.
Thus first of all will and emotion were taken out
of objects, and then all the secondary qualities, so
that nothing was left but what you could weigh and
measure directly.
But to-day we are reaching a new stage. For one
thing, we are seeing that the so-called primary
qualities are not any more in the objects than are
the secondary. They are just the most convenient
ways most convenient, that is, from the point of
view of science of describing how objects appear
to us. They are the most convenient because they
can easily be measured in terms of quantities which
all human beings agree about. Furthermore, other
qualities can be referred back, so to speak, to these
standards ; colour, for instance, can be referred back
to light-waves of a particular speed and size hitting
a special kind of chemical substance in the retina
of our eyes.
But they need not be thought of as in the objects.
So far as we can get a picture of physical reality,
the world is not made up of bits of matter of a
i go SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
definite size and mass, moving at definite speeds,
like innumerable tiny billiard-balls careering through
space. That was the first crude idea of the picture
revealed by modern physics with its discovery of
atoms and electrons. But now we are beginning to
realize that instead of the ultimate units of matter
being like our idea of ordinary material objects,
only much smaller, they are something wholly dif-
ferent. They are centres of energy, whose effects
shade off into remotest space. As Whitehead has
forcibly set down for us, every portion of the
universe would seem to be in mutual interaction with
every other.
We have no way of picturing such centres of
energy, save by an effort of the scientific imagina-
tion. They have, however, certain properties which
we can measure in the shape of mass, and others
which we can get hold of by measuring distances
and speeds. Thus, far from the so-called primary
qualities being peculiarly in matter, we simply take
over the idea of mass, distance, and speed from our
everyday experience of matter as it presents itself
to our senses; we find we can use them to get at
and measure certain aspects of the behaviour of
these ultimate units of the world; and from the
knowledge we thus get of their behaviour, we can
build up some doubtless rather inadequate picture
of what they really are like. It is only for matter
as perceived by our senses an orange, a table, a
stone that the primary qualities are any more real
MAN AND REALITY 191
than the secondary ones. To the physicist, the table
is an arrangement of energy, more condensed at
innumerable tiny centres, reduced almost to blank
space between the centres; and in regard to that
picture of the table, the ideas of mass and size are
just as much put in by man's mind as is the table's
colour, just as much the consequences of the
way man works as is the colour the consequence
of his eye containing certain kinds of pigment in
its cells.
There is another point. The development of
relativity theory has shown that these so-called
primary qualities are not even unchangeable. For
instance, an object going at a very high speed
changes slightly both in mass and shape. If from
the point of view of the physicist, the properties
of matter which we call mass and extension turn
out to be merely certain measurable effects of the
underlying arrangement of energy-centres, from the
point of view of the mathematical philosopher like
Einstein, they turn out to be variable properties of
a single system what he calls the space-time con-
tinuum in which matter, space, and time are all
inextricably blended, of which they are all merely
aspects which we artificially isolate in our thinking.
In either case, they disappear as primary essential
qualities of matter, and remain only as those mani-
festations which we human beings can most con-
veniently get hold of by accurate measurement.
Does all this have any real bearing on practical
1 92 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
life, on us as actual human beings? Is it not all too
abstruse and fine-spun?
I do not think so. It seems to me to have quite
definite bearings upon various ideas which, con-
sciously or unconsciously, go to make up our general
attitude to life; and of course our general attitude
to life must in the long run influence the way we
live.
To begin with it does in a certain sense put man
back in the central position from which science in
the beginning had pushed him out. Obviously it is
not the identical position. Science gives no support
to the idea that man is in any sense a privileged
being living in the physical centre of the universe,
with the rest of the world created for his use or
pleasure. But it establishes human beings as the
highest things of which we have knowledge ; and
it establishes human mind as the one agency which
brings order out of the mere chaotic hurly-burly of
experience. Either we must give up in despair, or
we must trust our own nature. The human mind
has created sciences, religions, arts, mathematics,
philosophies, moralities. On the whole, there has
been definite progress in these constructions of our
mind. We therefore have more reason for confidence
than for despair. But it must be a confidence in
ourselves and our own human powers, not an appeal
to something external. It is in that sense that man
is re-established in a central position.
And of course this way of thinking brings mind
MAN AND REALITY 193
into the scientific picture. The physicist sees the
world as an assemblage of matter and radiation,
but forgets to take proper account of the fact that
he is able to see it and reason about it at all. In
his picture, human mind remains a mere spectator,
outside the drama, and wholly unaccounted for.
But if, as all physiology tends to show, man is not
just a body plus a mind, but a body-mind, body
and mind being two aspects of his single nature ;
and if, as all general biology tends to show, he has
evolved from lower forms of life, and life in the
final analysis has evolved from matter which was not
alive; why, then, something of the same general
nature as mind must exist not only in other forms
of life but even in lifeless matter.
Thus knowledge and feeling and will are not just
something tacked on, so to speak, to a mechanical
universe, but the universe is seen to comprise two
aspects, one objective and mechanical, the other
subjective and concerned with mental and emotional
and spiritual happenings : and neither is more real
or true than the other.
Finally, mind is not just static. It changes : it, too,
like body, is evolving. And the ideas which man's
mind hammers out concerning the world he in-
habits are in the mental sphere like machines in the
physical sphere. They do a particular piece of work
more or less adequately. Just as modern hydro-
electric plants or textile mills are great improve-
ments on water-wheels or hand-looms, so our mental
N
i 9 4 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
machinery for obtaining, ordering, and controlling
knowledge and thought has improved enormously
from what it was among the cave-men or in the
time of Moses, in its evolution to the present-day
world picture based on science. But equally, like our
machines of metal and glass and electricity, it is
capable of indefinite further improvement.
The straightforward materialism of science from
the seventeenth to the nineteenth century rid us of
the idea of magic, and took purpose out of nature.
It was no longer necessary or even reasonable to
suppose that the stars required guidance in their
courses or at least, any more guidance than a stone
dropping to the earth or a stream running downhill.
It was no longer necessary or reasonable to imagine
that plants and animals, including man, had been
specially created, when variation and natural selec-
tion would account for their evolution. It became
as illogical to pray for rain as it would have to
revive the practice, which once seemed wholly
natural and sensible, of making sacrifices and carry-
ing out fertility rites to make the crops grow. It
destroyed the idea of infallible dogma in the in-
tellectual sphere, and put in its place the conception
of a slowly growing, changing body of knowledge.
But there it stopped. It was still in some ways
the unchanging spectator outside the world. It could
not see itself clearly as part of the evolving universe,
it could not yet grasp that its ideas and its very
method of thinking about things must change as
MAN AND REALITY 195
result of its interaction with new knowledge. Further,
it had been so concerned with the intellectual sphere
that it had hardly begun to extend its ideas into
aesthetics and morals. Most nineteenth-century scien-
tists, for instance, though rejecting the idea of a
fixed body of intellectual beliefs, still clung to the
idea of a permanently fixed moral code which
happened of course to be that of their own age,
nation, and class.
To-day we are beginning to see that the idea of
the Absolute, whether in truth or beauty or virtue,
is no more and no less than this : it is a necessary
consequence of the human faculty (the greatest
single difference between man and lower animals)
of being able to think in terms of abstract concepts.
Once man can say "this is true and that i^ false,"
he is setting up, even if often unconsciously, a stan-
dard of truth in the abstract. Once he can feel "this
is wrong," he has set up an abstract standard of
right. But it is an abstraction: the actual truth
which he possesses is always only more or less true,
the actual morality which he practises only relative
to the ideas and the circumstances of his time.
The physicist like Sir James Jeans tells us that
mathematical analysis comes nearest to describing
reality; and he feels driven to postulate a divine
creator or ruler who is responsible for the mathe-
matical order in the universe. But just here the
biologist, with his relativist view, feels very sus-
picious. Surely the physicist, just because he is
196 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
accustomed to leave mind out of his scientific picture,
and yet because mind just refuses to be left out
altogether, has put it back again in the form of a
divine mind. But the mathematical order in the
universe can just as well be thought of as merely
the product of the mathematician's wonderful
analysis, just as scientific laws are not laws in the
ordinary sense, imposed from outside by a law-
giver, but are simply the most convenient ways
which the scientist can find of describing how things
work.
The biologist is tempted to say that Sir James
Jeans finds a mathematical divinity ruling the
universe just because he himself is such a good
mathematician another example of the human
tendency, as Voltaire put it, of creating God in
man's image. So Paley, impressed with the evidences
of purposeful design in nature (evidences which
Darwin later showed could better be explained
without conscious purpose, by natural selection),
made of the Deity a Divine Artificer ; so the early
warlike Jews, before the time of the prophets, made
of Jehovah a jealous and wrathful divinity.
His own picture is rather a different one. He does
not believe that the present state of our knowledge
permits any deductions as to the ultimate nature
of the universe, its first creation, or final fate, its
possible purpose.
Scientific and mathematical laws are one of the
ways of our thinking about nature's happenings.
MAN AND REALITY 197
They are the most convenient way of abstracting
reality in terms of pure intellect, and also the most
convenient way, in the long run, of securing practical
control over external nature.
Art is another method of our minds for dealing
with phenomena; and religion is yet another. Any
one of these ways can be more or less good and
true in its own sphere ; but however true they may
be in their own sphere, they do not and cannot apply
to the others in their sphere. And of course, that
being so, life is more than science or art or religion
alone, and indeed more than a mere addition of
them and other separate faculties of life.
In any case, the absoluteness of scientific truth,
or religious feeling, or artistic Tightness, is something
which derives from us. The only immediate reality
we know is the stream of raw experience. Science
is but one way of arranging this experience in
accordance with the laws of our thought. The
scientific picture, like any other ordered picture
of the universe, is an abstraction.
But the biologist can go one step further. He does
not feel able either to assert or to deny that mind,
in the shape of a universal or a divine mind, is
behind the changing universe he knows. But he can
see that mind is an integral part of that universe.
Something of the nature of mind must inhere in the
essence of things. Under the particular conditions
found on this planet the pressure of circumstances
has forced mind to become more and more impor-
ig8 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
tant and elaborate until finally in man it has become
self-conscious and the most important single charac-
teristic of the stock.
Life may be a consciously planned experiment on
the part of a divine mind or it may not. But in
any case it is legitimate for us to say, on the basis
of the known history of life, that mind has become
the great progressive feature of life's evolutionary
trend. So that, even if our art and religion and
science are only our own ways of arranging the
jumble of experience, yet in attempting these
arrangements we are carrying on with the main
trend of evolution. The biologist finds it exceedingly
difficult to believe with the pessimists and the
sceptics that human life means nothing. It is part
of a larger whole, and of a whole with a main
upward movement. To continue that trend is to
fulfil evolutionary destiny. Clear thinking, deeper
feeling, and stronger willing are the chief means
of achieving that end. That, I think, is the biologist's
chief contribution to our changing picture of the
world.
PART III
WHAT IS CIVILIZATION?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
ALDOUS HUXLEY
HUGH I'A. FAUSSET
HILAIRE BELLOC
J. B. S. HALDANE
OLIVER LODGE
BERTRAND RUSSELL
i. THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY
THE influence of science upon the everyday life of
ordinary men and women is already profound, but
is likely to become much more so in the not very
distant future. Science is gradually transforming
social life in ways which call for new forms of
society, and which demand new qualities in eminent
citizens. Apart from all detail, the two chief changes
that are being brought about by science are the
increased importance of experts and the more
organic character of human society. Of these two
the first, namely, the importance of experts, is more
obvious than the other. Nevertheless a few words
must be said about it, since it is making effective
democracy increasingly difficult. All the everyday
apparatus of modern urban life power stations,
electric trains, telephones, electric light, etc. in-
volves scientific knowledge possessed by only a small
minority of the population. By killing off a suitably
selected i per cent of any modern nation, its present
mode of life could be made impossible. In matters
more directly concerned with government, the same
thing is true in an even higher degree. The art of
war, although it still requires soldiers, depends much
more upon the scientific inventor than upon the
man who risks his life in the face of the enemy.
202 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
The art of banking, as we have lately been learning
to our cost, is so intricate that even the recognized
experts make a mess of it. For all these reasons
democracy is less effective in a highly developed
industrial society than it can be in a simpler agricul-
tural community, since there are many questions
which ordinary men and women cannot understand,
and in regard to which they are compelled willy-
nilly to accept the opinions of specialists. The
importance of experts is likely to increase rather
than diminish as the part played by science in
daily life grows greater. We must therefore expect
that, in the future, government by experts will
largely replace government by the will of the people,
even if the outward forms of democracy are preserved
intact.
Even more important is the increasingly organic
character of society. When I say that society is
increasingly organic I mean that the acts of one
individual or set of individuals tend more and more
to have effects upon other individuals, perhaps in
distant parts of the world. The doings of a primi-
tive peasant who lives upon his own produce are of
little importance except to himself and his family.
But where modern industrial methods prevail, the
world has become a single economic unit. The
political passions of the Chinese may cause destitution
in Lancashire; the prejudices of the American
Middle West determine the character of the cinemas
offered for the amusement of Europe ; the existence
THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY 203
of oil in the Middle East profoundly affects inter-
national politics, and at one time even caused
friction between America and Great Britain.
In proportion as society becomes more organic,
it is necessary that it should be more organized.
A society is organic in proportion as what happens
to one part has effects upon another part; it is
organized when these effects are determined by
relation to the welfare of the whole. The human
body, for example, is 'at all times organic, and in
health is also organized. But in certain kinds of
disease (for example, cancer), while it remains
organic it ceases to be organized. Modern society
is very much more organic than the society of two
hundred years ago, and is somewhat more organized.
But the extent to which it is organized has not
increased nearly as fast as the extent to which it
is organic. If our scientific civilization is to be stable,
it is imperative that it should become much more
organized than it is at present ; there must be much
more deliberate planning and much less left to the
haphazard operation of individual impulse. This
applies to all kinds of matters : municipal, national,
and international. London, historically considered,
is a collection of villages which have gradually
coalesced, but in the present day it is a unit, and
one of its most important features is the means of
transport by which men pass from the circumference
to the centre in the morning, and from the centre
to the circumference in the evening. If London had
204 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
been deliberately planned to suit its present needs,
the streets would all be straight and all thorough-
fares.
The most important respects in which organiza-
tion is at present deficient are the economic anarchy
due to undirected enterprise, and the political
anarchy due to unrestricted national sovereignty.
The various parts of the world have become econo-
mically interdependent, but there is no international
economic organization either of production or of
banking. Each nation wishes to produce everything
itself, with the result that the industrial plant in the
world is capable of producing much more than the
world is able to consume. The increased produc-
tivity of labour resulting from modern technique
has therefore resulted in bankruptcy for employers
and unemployment for wage-earners, when, if there
had been any international organization of pro-
duction, it might have resulted in wealth for em-
ployers, and full wages, with shorter hours, for
wage-earners.
The economic anarchy in the world has proved
disastrous in recent years, but the political anarchy
consisting in the absence of an international gov-
ernment is likely to prove even more disastrous.
Immense scientific skill has been applied to the
technique of war, and unfortunately in recent years
methods of attack have made much greater progress
than methods of defence. The next war is therefore
likely to prove far more destructive than what, as
THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY 205
yet, we still call the Great War. Scientific civilization
cannot survive unless large-scale wars can be pre-
vented, and large-scale wars cannot be prevented
except by the establishment of a world government
possessing the only effective armed force in the
world. The indications at present are that men
would rather see civilization perish than adopt this
means of preserving it. But it is probable that after
the next war they will change their minds ; if they
do not, scientific civilization will disappear.
Owing to the increasing need of organization,
a scientific society, if it is to be stable, will neces-
sarily involve a diminution of individual liberty as
compared with the societies of the past. This is
regrettable, but apparently unavoidable. There will
be, however, such important compensations that,
on the balance, we may expect an increase in
human happiness. Science has already done a very
great deal to lengthen human life and to diminish
disease. In this respect it is sure to do more in the
near future. It has not yet destroyed poverty and
the fear of destitution, but it has created the tech-
nical possibility of achieving this result. In the pre-
scientific ages the total produce of human labour
yielded so little above a bare subsistence that only
a very small minority could enjoy tolerable com-
fort. Nowadays the productivity of labour is such
that, given a wise international organization of the
world's productive efforts, it would be possible
within a generation to secure tolerable comfort for
206 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
everyone without very long hours of labour. This
possibility we owe to science. The fact that it is not
realized we owe to stupidity and inertia. If men
acquire the wisdom to utilize existing knowledge
to the full, they may, within the next hundred
years, establish throughout the world a community
wholly freed from the dangers of war and poverty,
and at the same time healthier and longer-lived
than even the best communities now existing. This
cannot, however, be achieved without a consider-
able surrender of liberty, both in the economic and
the political sphere, since it requires an international
government and international control over pro-
duction and distribution.
No civilization worthy of the name can be merely
scientific. Scientific technique is concerned with
the mechanism of life: it can prevent evils, but
cannot create positive goods. It can diminish illness,
but cannot tell a man what he shall do with health ;
it can cure poverty, but cannot tell a man how he
shall spend wealth ; it can prevent war, but cannot
tell a man what form of adventure or heroism he
is to put in its place. Science considered as the
pursuit of knowledge is something different from
scientific technique, and deserves a high place
among the ends of life, but among these it is only
one of several. At least equal to it are the creation
and enjoyment of beauty, the joy of life and human
affection. A scientific society which did not promote
these things could not be considered positively
THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY 207
excellent, even if it were to eliminate much of the
pain and misery from which mankind has hitherto
suffered. The society of the future, assuming that
we can escape a cataclysm, will be more and more
a thing deliberately planned rather than a spon-
taneous natural growth. But in this deliberate plan-
ning the technician, if he is to be wise, will have
to take account of human values which lie outside
the immediate scope of his technique. Men of the
administrative type will necessarily have more power
in the scientific society than they have had at any
previous stage of the world's history, and if they are
not to abuse this power, their education will have
to be carefully directed towards giving them a
breadth of outlook which at present is not always
to be found among such men. There is iji this a
danger, but it is a danger which can be avoided
if men are sufficiently aware of it.
The scientific society differs from the unscientific
society fundamentally through the fact that in the
scientific society men know better how to realize
their desires. If this is to be a boon to mankind,
it is necessary that men's desires should be con-
structive rather than destructive. To secure that
this shall be the case is itself a problem for science,
namely for the sciences of psychology and educa-
tion, to which perhaps I should add physiology.
Power in the hands of men whose passions are
anarchic is dangerous, and I fear that mankind
will have to pass through some very painful ordeals
ao8 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
before they learn to use scientific power wisely. But
I cannot doubt that in the end the lesson will be
learnt, and that when it has been learnt, the human
race will find itself emancipated from many of the
greatest evils that have afflicted it in all past ages.
The immediate outlook is uncertain and full of
danger, but the more distant outlook permits hopes
which would have seemed fantastic in any earlier
time.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
2. ECONOMISTS, SCIENTISTS, AND
HUMANISTS
THERE are certain values which we feel to be
absolute. Truth is one of them. We have an immediate
conviction of its high, its supreme importance.
Science is the organized search for truth and, as
such, must be looked upon as an end in itself,
requiring no further justification than its own
existence. But truth about the nature of things gives
us, when discovered, a certain control over those
things. Science is power as well as truth. Besides
being an end in itself, it is a means to other ends.
Science as an end in itself directly concerns only
scientific workers and philosophers. As a means, it
concerns every member of a civilized community.
I propose to discuss here science as a means to
ulterior ends ends which may be summed up in the
single vague and comprehensive word, "Civilization."
Our civilization, as each one of us is uncomfortably
aware, is passing through a time of crisis. Why should
this be? What are the causes of our present troubles?
They are all due, in the last resort, to the fact that
science has been applied to human affairs, but not
applied adequately or consistently.
In the past, man's worst enemy was Nature. He
lived under the continual threat of famine and
2io SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
pestilence; a wet summer could bring death to
whole nations, and every winter was a menace.
Mountains stood like a barrier between people and
people ; a sea was less a highway than an impassable
division. To-day, Nature, though still an enemy, is
an enemy almost completely conquered. Modern
agriculture assures us of an ample food supply.
Modern transportation has made the resources of
the entire planet accessible to all its inhabitants.
Modern medicine and sanitation allow dense popu-
lations to cover the ground without risk of pestilence.
True, we are still at the mercy of the more violent
natural convulsions. Against earthquake, flood, and
hurricane man has, as yet, devised no adequate
protection. But these major cataclysms are rare.
At most times, Nature is no longer formidable ; she
has been subdued.
Our present troubles are not due to Nature.
They are entirely artificial, genuinely home-made.
The very arts and sciences which we have used to
conquer Nature have turned on their creators and
are now conquering us. The present crisis is of our
own making; we have brought it on ourselves by
allowing our mechanical and agricultural science to
develop more rapidly than our economic science.
We cannot buy what we produce and are therefore
compelled to keep our factories idle and let our
fields lie fallow. Millions are hungry, but wheat has
to be thrown into the sea. This is where, at the
moment, science has brought us.
ECONOMISTS, SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANISTS 211
What is the remedy? Tolstoyans and Gandhi-ites
tell us that we must "return to Nature" in other
words, abandon science altogether and live like
primitives or, at best, in the style of our medieval
ancestors. The trouble with this advice is that it
cannot be followed or rather that it can only be
followed if we are prepared to sacrifice at least
eight or nine hundred million human lives. Science,
in the form of modern industrial and agricultural
technique, has allowed the world's population to
double itself in about three generations. If we abolish
science and "return to Nature," the population
will revert to what it was and revert, not in a
hundred years, but in as many weeks. Famine and
pestilence do their work with exemplary celerity.
Tolstoy and Gandhi are professed humanitarians;
but they advocate a slaughter, compared with which
the massacres of Tinur and Jinghiz Khan seem
almost imperceptibly trivial.
No, back to Nature is not practical politics. The
only cure for science is more science, not less. We
are suffering from the effects of a little science
badly applied. The remedy is a lot of science, well
applied.
Everyone admits in principle that human activities
must be regulated scientifically; but when it comes
to applying this principle, two questions arise.
Science, in the present context, is a means to an
end: but what end? That is the first question. And
(this is the second question) by whom is this instru-
212 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
ment to be used? Who is to wield the power which
science gives?
To define the ideal human society is not too
difficult. It is a society whose constituent members
are all physically, intellectually, and morally of the
best quality ; a society so organized that no individual
shall be unjustly treated or compelled to waste or
bury his talents ; a society which gives its members
the greatest possible amount of individual liberty,
but at the same time provides them with the most
satisfying incentives to altruistic effort ; a society not
static, but deliberately progressive, consciously
tending towards the realization of the highest
human aspirations. Science might be made a means
for the creation of such a society but only on
condition that the powers it confers be used by
rulers inspired by what I may call humanistic
ideals.
Our present crisis is mainly and most obviously
economic. The fact is dangerous ; for it means that
the ends pursued by our rulers, at any rate in the
immediate future, will be primarily economic ends.
It means that the instrument of science will be used
by men primarily interested in economics and only
secondarily, if at all, in the higher humanistic values.
I have described the humanist's earthly paradise.
What is the economist's ideal society? Briefly it is
one where there is the maximum of stability and
uniformity. The economist wants stability because,
once you set machinery going, it is hopelessly
ECONOMISTS, SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANISTS 213
uneconomic to let it stop or run irregularly. Also
industrialists and financiers must be able to look
forward with confidence; in a stable world the
machine is able to go on running steadily. Again,
the economist wants uniformity, because the most
profitable form of mechanical production is mass-
production. The mass-producer's first need is a wide
market which means, in other words, the greatest
possible number of people with the fewest possible
number of tastes and needs.
Now stability and a certain amount of uniformity
are essential pre-requisites to any rational plan for
improving the quality of civilization. They are
means to ends, not ends in themselves. But it is
precisely as ends in themselves that the economist-
rulers of the immediate future are likely to conceive
them. It is easy to imagine an oligarchy of industrial-
ists and financiers using all the resources of science
first to secure world-wide stability and uniformity
and then, in the interests of production, to keep the
world stable and uniform. The aim of the economist
will be to make the world safe for political economy
to train up a race, not of perfect human beings,
but of perfect mass-producers and mass-consumers.
One of the things economist-rulers would be almost
bound to do is to suppress science itself. Once stability
has been attained, further scientific research could
not be allowed. For nothing is more subversive than
knowledge. So long as scientific research goes on,
society stands poised above a potential succession of
214 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
earthquakes. Any day some new discovery may
make all existing equipment obsolete, may revolu-
tionize all existing technique, or else, by changing
man's physiological habits, radically alter his whole
way of thinking and feeling. Having first made use
of science, economist-rulers would find themselves
forced to destroy it. Even humanist rulers might
often have to forbid the application of certain
discoveries. Let us suppose, for example, that a
method has been discovered for producing all food
synthetically. Humanist-rulers might feel justified in
forbidding the application of the discovery on the
grounds that agricultural life was humanistically
valuable.
But these are remote speculations. Let us try to
guess how the resources of science might be used or
abused by different types of rulers in the nearer
future.
I will begin with psychology, the science which
concerns us more closely and intimately than any
other the science whose subject-matter is the human
mind itself. In a rather crude and ineffective way
psychological knowledge is already applied to the
problems of government. It was shown during the
war that propaganda which is the art of influencing
the mind could become one of the major instru-
ments of national policy. Profiting by war-time
experience, the rulers of Russia and Fascist Italy
are systematically using this psychological weapon
to create new types of civilization. Even in conserva-
ECONOMISTS, SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANISTS 215
tive England our rulers have not disdained to take
a leaf out of the Soviet and Fascist book. Systematic
mass-suggestion by wireless and poster played a very
important part, as we all know, in the last election
and during the Buy-British campaign of the Empire
Marketing Board.
Propaganda is still relatively inefficient even in
countries like Italy and Russia, where the state
controls all the existing instruments of mass-sugges-
tion, from education to the movies and the Press.
But psychological science teaches how it could be
made almost irresistibly effective. Freud and his
followers have shown how profoundly important to
us are the events of the first few months and years
of our existence ; have proved that our adult mentality,
our whole way of thinking and feeling, our entire
philosophy of life may be shaped and moulded by
what we experience in earliest childhood. Following
another line of research, the great Russian biologist,
Pavlov, and the American Behaviourists have shown
how easy it is, with animals and very young children,
to form conditioned reflexes which habit soon hardens
into what we are loosely accustomed to call "in-
stinctive" patterns of behaviour. Such are the
scientific facts waiting to be applied to the solution
of political problems. Rulers have only to devise
some scheme for laying their hands on new-born
babies to be able to impose on their people almost
any behaviour pattern they like. No serious practical
difficulties stand in the way of such a plan. One of
216 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
these days some apparently beneficent and humani-
tarian government will create a comprehensive
system of state cr&ches and baby farms ; and with
a little systematic conditioning of infant reflexes
it will have the fate of its future subjects in its hands.
From the baby farm the already thoroughly con-
tioned infant will pass to the state school. He will
grow up reading state newspapers, listening to
state wireless, looking at state cinemas and theatres.
By the time he reaches what is somewhat ironically
called the age of reason, he will be wholly unable
to think for himself. None but approved state ideas
will ever even occur to him. This will make the
overt use offeree quite unnecessary. Dictatorship, as
a form of government, may have, in the immediate
future, a brief spell of popularity. In times of crisis
like the present, strong government is probably
necessary. But once the position has been stabilized
and, above all, once our rulers have been educated
up to the point of realizing the extent of the power
which psychological science has placed in their
hands, strong government will cease to be necessary.
When every member of the community has been
conditioned from earliest childhood to think as his
rulers desire him to think, dictatorship can be
abandoned. The rulers will re-establish democratic
forms, quite confident that the sovereign people
will always vote as they themselves intend it to vote.
And the sovereign people will go to the polling booths
firmly believing itself to be exercising a free and
ECONOMISTS, SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANISTS 217
rational choice, but in fact absolutely predestined
by a life-long course of scientifically designed
propaganda. Its choice will be made by an inward,
psychological compulsion much more powerful than
any pressure of physical force from without.
For the economist-ruler, scientific propaganda will
seem a heaven-sent instrument. He will use it to
train up that race of perfect producers and consumers
of which industry has need. He will find it invaluable
for producing and preserving that stability and
uniformity, without which machines cannot be
used to their maximum advantage. By means of it
a creed will be inculcated, racial and individual
idiosyncrasies as far as possible smoothed out,
contentment and conformity incessantly preached.
Indeed, scientific propaganda may enable future
rulers to do what the medieval popes and emperors
tried but failed to achieve. They may actually
succeed in creating a great world-wide community
united by common beliefs and aspirations, common
wants, tastes and thoughts. It will be a Holy Roman
Empire minus the holiness, a Christendom but
without the Christianity ... or if nominally Christian,
Christian in a way that neither the primitive con-
vert, nor the medieval Catholic, nor the later
Protestant would recognize as Christian.
What will be the attitude of the humanist towards
scientific propaganda? Fundamentally, I think, he
would be opposed to it. For if it were thoroughly
scientific and efficient, scientific propaganda would
2i8 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
obviously be quite incompatible with personal
liberty. Now personal liberty is, for the humanist,
something of the highest value. He believes that,
on the whole, it is better to go wrong in freedom
than go right in chains even if the chains are
imponderable, even if they are not felt by the
prisoner to be chains. Nevertheless, it may be that
circumstances will compel the humanist to resort to
scientific propaganda, just as they may compel the
liberal to resort to dictatorship. Any form of order
is better than chaos. Our civilization is menaced
with total collapse. Dictatorship and scientific
propaganda may provide the only means for saving
humanity from the miseries of anarchy. The liberal
and the humanist may have to choose the lesser of
two evils and, sacrificing liberty, at any rate for a
time, choose dictatorship and scientific propaganda
as an alternative to collapse. Again, the humanist
will have to remember that propaganda is a substi-
tute for force in general and war in particular. It
would certainly be worth forgoing a great deal of
liberty for the sake of peace.
I have dwelt at some length on propaganda
because it seems to me that, without it, there can
be no large-scale application of scientific knowledge
to human affairs. Psychology is the key science.
Many of the possible applications of biology, for
example, are so startling that they must be prepared
for by a regular barrage of propaganda. Sprung too
suddenly on the world, they would be passionately
ECONOMISTS, SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANISTS 219
resisted. Let us now consider a few of these possible
applications of science, speculating as before how
they might be used by the humanist or abused by
the economist.
Biologists have collected a very considerable
amount of information on the subject of heredity
and are steadily adding to their store. So far as our
knowledge goes, negative eugenics the sterilization
of the unfit might already be practised with toler-
able safety. On the positive side we are still very
ignorant though we know enough, thanks to R. A.
Fisher's admirable work, to foresee the rapid
deterioration, unless we take remedial measures, of
the whole West European stock. Eugenics are not
yet practical politics. But propaganda could easily
make them practical politics, while increase of
knowledge will make them also purposive and far-
sighted politics.
The humanist would see in eugenics an instrument
for giving to an ever-widening circle of men and
women those heritable qualities of mind and body
which are, by his highest standards, the most
desirable. But what of the economist-ruler? Would
he necessarily be anxious to improve the race?
By no means necessarily. He might actually wish
to deteriorate it. His ideal, we must remember, is
not the perfect human being, but the perfect mass-
producer and mass-consumer. Now perfect human
beings probably make very bad mass-producers. It
is quite on the cards that industrialists will find, as
220 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
machinery is made more fool-proof, that the great
majority of jobs can be better performed by stupid
people than by intelligent ones. Again, stupid people
are probably the state's least troublesome subjects,
and a society composed in the main of stupid people
is more likely to be stable than one with a high
proportion of intelligent people. The economist-
ruler would therefore be tempted to use the knowledge
of genetics, not for eugenic, but for dysgenic purposes
for the deliberate lowering of the average mental
standard. True this would have to be accompanied
by the special breeding and training of a small
caste of experts, without whom a scientific civilization
cannot exist. Here, incidentally, I may remark that
in a scientific civilization society must be organized
on a caste basis. The rulers and their advisory
experts will be a kind of Brahmins controlling, in
virtue of a special and mysterious knowledge, vast
hordes of the intellectual equivalents of Sudras and
Untouchables.
What is true of applied genetics is true, mutatis
mutandis, of applied bio-chemistry and pharmacology.
Our knowledge of what can be done by means of
drugs is still rudimentary. It may be possible, for
example, to modify profoundly men's character,
temperament, and intelligence by administering
suitable chemicals at suitable moments. Yet once
more, the same knowledge will be used by the
humanist and the economist in profoundly different
ways.
ECONOMISTS, SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANISTS 221
I will not discuss the possible effects on human
beings of other scientific discoveries. History shows
that almost any new acquisition of knowledge may
be made the basis of important practical applications.
The abstruse researches of Faraday and Clerk
Maxwell have resulted, among other things, in the
jazz band at the Savoy Hotel being audible at
Timbuctoo. Not a very probable result, you must
admit. But then the course of events takes no account
of verisimilitude. Fiction has to be probable ; fact
does not.
And here I should like to make what to me seems
an important point. We are unable to foresee what
discoveries in pure science will be applied to human
life. But equally we are unable to foresee all the
results of any given application of science. Certain
particular ends may be envisaged by the man who
applies scientific knowledge, and these ends may, in
fact, be attained. But almost inevitably other ends,
not foreseen, will have been attained at the same
time. For example, when Bradlaugh and Mrs.
Besant broadcast the medical knowledge which has
been applied as birth-control, their intention was
that families should be reduced in size. Their action
produced its intended effect; but it also produced
effects which they certainly did not intend. For
example, it forced architects to build tall blocks of
five-roomed flats, rather than long rows of fifteen-
roomed houses; and it compelled farmers to breed
small cattle rather than large ones. A century
222 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
ago prize bulls weighed as much as two tons ; to-day
small families require small joints of meat and prize
bulls weigh about half a ton. These unintended
effects of birth-control are not particularly important
or significant. But it often happens that the unin-
tended effects of an action are much more consider-
able than the intended ones. The application of
science to human life has already produced a large
crop of unintended effects, some of which are
highly undesirable. Science increases our powers of
foretelling the future ; but we may be quite sure that
it will be a very long time before the unintended
effect will be altogether eliminated. Nor must we
forget that these unintended effects will follow actions
undertaken with the highest possible motives. The
well-meaning humanist is as likely to give people
an unpleasant surprise as the ill-meaning economist.
Against unpleasant surprises there is no remedy.
Each unexpected situation must be dealt with
individually, as it turns up. We can only hope that
it will not prove too unpleasant, and that increasing
knowledge will permit of more accurate foresight.
I will only add this by way of summary and
epilogue. Science in itself is morally neutral ; it
comes good or evil according as it is applied. Ideally,
science should be applied by humanists. In this case
it would be good. In actual fact it is more likely to
be applied by economists, and so to turn out, if not
wholly bad, at any rate a very mixed blessing. It rests
with us and our descendants to decide whether we
ECONOMISTS, SCIENTISTS, AND HUMANISTS 223
shall use the unprecedented power which science
gives us for good or for bad purposes. It is in our
hands to choose wisely or unwisely. Alas, that
wisdom should be so much harder to come by than
knowledge !
HUGH I'A. FAUSSET
3. SCIENCE AND THE SELF
IN the first contribution to this series Bertrand
Russell viewed with some complacence the scientific
society of the future. He admitted that we have not
yet organized the world as a whole, but he was
hopeful that through science we should eventually
do so. I am not concerned, however, at the moment
with the question of world organization, important
as that is, but with the inner life of the individual.
Bertrand Russell, indeed, reminded us that the
things which give positive excellence to human life
are in the mind and heart, not in the outward
mechanism. And it is upon the mind and heart and
the relation of science to them that I wish to con-
centrate.
The questions I am going to ask and try to answer
are these : Has natural science, despite all its mental
and material conquests, impoverished our real life?
And, if so, must it continue to impoverish it? Is its
method of acquiring knowledge the only true method ?
Or is it fatally partial and one-sided?
This last may seem a surprising question, for
during the last hundred years the scientist has
popularized the view that he alone was exercising
his reason aright, and that those who claimed to
arrive at knowledge by other methods than his were
SCIENCE AND THE SELF 225
in different degrees clinging to false illusions because
they were too weak to face the truth.
He is perhaps less certain of this to-day. Neverthe-
less the assumption is still prevalent. Yet however
intelligible such an attitude was in mid- Victorian
times, when Natural Science was fighting a necessary
battle against religious obscurantism, it represents
itself to-day an equally dangerous kind of dogmatism.
For the scientist's method of acquiring knowledge
is not the only valid one. His aim is to reduce the
human mind to a sensitive machine which sorts
the facts given to it by observation, measures them
in relation to one another, and arranges them in a
correct pattern according to its own inherent logic.
When new facts are discovered, the pattern is
modified to include them. But it is always the simplest
pattern into which the facts will fit.
Obviously in such a process the mind can never
be a mere machine. An act of will is involved on the
part of the searcher and even a sense of form, akin
to that of the artist. But this personal element has
been generally denied by the scientist. He has
insistently claimed that his approach to truth is
purely impersonal. He has striven in his researches
to exclude every desire or interest of his own, and
the better to ensure this he has taken elaborate
external precautions against personal prejudice.
A necessary result of this attempt to acquire exact
knowledge independent of any personal act of
knowing is that the scientist, as Professor Levy has
226 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
already reminded us, can only deal with what is
constant and common to all observers. He is com-
pelled to disregard the unique reality of an object
and reduce it to a mere instance in a series of instances.
All qualitative values disappear beneath a ruthless
classification and all living form perishes in abstract
formulas.
This process of abstraction is displayed perhaps
most notably to-day in the subtle but tenuous
formulas of the mathematical physicists. But while
one may well admire the way in which the material
world has dissolved beneath their measuring-rods,
their attempt to produce a purely intellectual
representation of the universe has inevitably resulted
in what is at best only a ghostly skeleton of reality.
And every one of the physical sciences which attempts
an exclusively intellectual approach to Nature suffers
under the same disability. Since Ultimate Reality
cannot be calculated, since it must be immediately
experienced, they can never really know life, but
only something of the mechanism of life's expression.
But if ultimate Reality has escaped and must always
escape the physical scientist, he can justly claim that
his method has proved remarkably successful in its
own relative domain. And although the knowledge
which he has thus acquired has not noticeably
increased human happiness, it has made it possible
for man to master to some extent his physical
conditions, to alleviate physical pain, and to exploit
for his own material benefit the forces of Nature.
SCIENCE AND THE SELF 227
But there is another and older theory of knowledge.
According to it, we cannot know the reality of
anything unless we enter into it imaginatively,
unless we wholly identify ourselves with it and
realize it from within. To achieve real knowledge,
therefore, it is necessary not merely to observe and
co-ordinate facts, but to live the truth. Knowledge,
in short, depends upon the quality of being possessed
by him who seeks to know. To know better, it is
necessary to become different. For the more deeply
harmonized are a man's faculties of feeling and
thought, the finer and more fundamental are his
powers of achieving contact with reality.
This is the science of the poet, the mystic, and the
seer, and of all who try to know life with their whole
being. And we have an elementary example of such
integrity of being in the simple, necessary response
to life of the child and the peasant.
I am not, however, suggesting that the progressive
claims of modern science can be disproved by
pointing to the humble virtues of the peasant or
the child. For the rational self-consciousness from
which the world is suffering is necessary to human
development. And all attempts to revert to childhood
are inevitably doomed to failure.
Nevertheless simple people do offer us a suggestive
example, on the instinctive level, of wholeness. For
however undeveloped their powers of conscious
intelligence may be, the knowledge which they
possess and the thought which they exercise are
228 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
grounded in their very being. And this is true, on
a more advanced level, of all creative thought.
Unlike the critical analysis of science, it is an
expression of the whole being.
Such spiritual perception or imaginative know-
ledge is little regarded in the West to-day, because
we have been witnessing during the last hundred
years the culmination of a process clearly traceable
from the Renaissance in Europe and the Reformation
in England. It was as inevitable a process as that
which occurs in every individual who in passing
from childhood to youth is inwardly divided.
Out of this division a richer and deeper unity may
be ultimately achieved. But meanwhile, because the
individual is at conflict with himself, he is at cross-
purposes with life. He is either stricken with indecision
or he asserts his personal will against life, denying
it as a whole in the interests of one of its parts.
Consequently his soul loses all contact with its
depths and he becomes mentally expert but super-
ficial.
And Western civilization for the last hundred
years clearly reflects such a state, a state in which
the personal will of the individual has lacked any
creative centre, so that he has sought increasingly
his own private gain or glorification. And because
modern man has become thus uncentred, modern
civilization has been full of discord and aimlessness.
With immense resources of wealth and power, it has
lacked unity of design or purpose.
SCIENCE AND THE SELF 229
And the basic weakness of natural science, so far
as it claims to cure the disease of civilization, is that
it suffers from the disease itself. In its exploitation
of one faculty, the intellect, at the expense of all
the others, it has reflected and aggravated the
separation of knowledge from being. It has, indeed,
affirmed the unity of physical Nature, but it has
denied that higher unity to which man as a creative
spirit belongs. Certainly, as Aldous Huxley said,
science is morally neutral. But it is also spiritually
blind. Concerned itself only with the processes
reflected in physical matter, it has assumed and
popularized the view that these are alone real.
Because it can only deal with physical organisms, it
has tended to reduce man to the same physical level
as frogs or rabbits. And so far as modern man has
accepted the scientific view that his body is more
real than his soul, he has become the slave of external
things and secondary conditions instead of realizing
the inward freedom that comes of obedience to the
commands of the higher self.
Our greatest need to-day, therefore, is not to deny
the intellect, but to make it more profound. And
we can only do this by recognizing that it must
be subordinated to something more complete and
essential than itself.
The problem of knowledge and of life, and so of
civilization, is, in fact, ultimately, as all the great
mystics and spiritual teachers have insisted, a moral
one. They admit that man at a certain stage of his
230 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
development falls into sin or division. But they
affirm out of their own experience that by sustained
effort and self-culture, by humbling himself to life
and at the same time exercising and perfecting all
his faculties, man can bring his consciousness again
into a state of unity. And that in such a state of
unity not only, to use Blake's words, are the doors
of perception cleansed and the eternal significance
of every particular divined, but at the same time a
true disinterestedness is achieved.
The claim of the scientist to be disinterested
beyond all other men has been, however, so fre-
quently advanced and generally accepted that it
may be well to consider it for a moment. In a famous
letter to Charles Kingsley, Thomas Henry Huxley
wrote : "Science seems to me to teach in the highest
and strongest manner the great truth which is
embodied in the Christian conception of entire
surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact
as a little child, be prepared to give up every pre-
conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to
whatever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn
nothing."
It is hardly necessary to say that the manner in
which a little child sits down before fact is very
different from that of even the most conscientious
natural scientist. For the child's relation to fact is
not one of mental observance, but of such sensitive
and whole-hearted absorption that it is not perhaps
too much to say that no facts exist for him.
SCIENCE AND THE SELF 231
And the same distinction may be drawn between
the mystic's or the artist's surrender of his whole
self to the creative will and the precautions which
the scientist takes against personal bias. The one is
a moral and entire, the other only a mental and
partial act. Admittedly this distinction does not apply
to the greatest scientists, who have not only obeyed
the rules of research, but always possessed, too, the
gifts of divination. They, like the artist, by submitting
to a technical discipline, have prepared themselves
for the creative moment when a truth is given to
them. And it was given to them because instead of
priding themselves upon their intellectual respect for
fact they humbled themselves to reality. But such
scientists are as rare as men of disciplined and
disinterested vision always are. Moreover they attain
to truth not primarily through conforming to a
creed and a practice peculiar to science, but because
they are truly selfless and so inspired by the creative
spirit.
And such selflessness is not achieved by merely
surrendering the self to facts and to instruments
devised to measure facts.
Outside, indeed, the province of the laboratory,
in which impartiality can be technically guaranteed
in Biology, for example, as distinct from Chemistry
and Physics, or in such border sciences as Anthro-
pology, Psychology, and Sociology, which deal with
life where it has ascended from the purely physical
to the human plane we constantly find that the
232 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
scientist has projected his personal prejudice into his
interpretation of phenomena while claiming to be
wholly disinterested.
The blindness of nineteenth-century evolutionists,
for instance, to the co-operative principle in Nature
was due to an innate combativeness in themselves.
Their concentration upon natural selection and the
survival of the fittest to the exclusion of creative
variation and mutual adaptability reflected their own
individual limitations. And in the same way the
anthropologists of yesterday explained the life and
customs of savages in terms of their own self-assertive
consciousness, attributing to primitive man the
"tiger qualities" of a predatory civilization. For, as
Amiel wrote, "a man only understands what is
akin to something already existing in himself."
I would ask you to remember, therefore, in reading
Professor Levy's account of scientific method, that
the scientist's professed respect for facts, his interpre-
tation and even his recognition of such facts as
cannot be measured and tested by retorts and
balances, must depend upon the degree of his own
real integrity. And scientific method does not enforce
such integrity. For the discipline of the laboratory
involves no real change of being and no deep culture
of the self. It may and does encourage a specialized
habit of cautiousness and accuracy. But there is no
necessary relation between the sensitiveness of the
scientist's instruments and the real sensitiveness of
the man himself. Moreover, by delegating sensitive-
SCIENCE AND THE SELF 233
ness to instruments, or exercising it only in a narrow
and abstract field, he tends, as even Darwin regret-
fully admitted, to lose it himself.
It is possible therefore to be a brilliant scientist
and yet in feeling to be quite uncivilized.
For what is it to be truly civilized? It is surely
to draw upon deep inward resources and at the
same time to be finely responsive to one's environ-
ment; it is, out of the fullness of a true self, to respect
the uniqueness of every living person or creature and
to be incapable of exploiting them. It is to co-operate
with the spirit of Nature rather than to master her
physical processes by intellectual cunning or for
selfish ends. It is to live unattached to material
things and desires, yet accepting both as means for
the expression of a spiritual harmony.
A scientist may well be civilized in this true sense,
but only very partially as a scientist. For profession-
ally he is compelled to accept the physical and
quantitative aspect of the world as alone real and
to deny through all his working hours the validity
of anything but a mental and mathematical approach
to it.
Modern science, in short, by its insistence that
perception should be as much dehumanized as
possible and by its consequent blindness to those
living realities which escape its measuring instru-
ments, has tended more and more to empty life
of real meaning. Doubtless the material world has
dissolved before it into a fine-spun web of abstract
234 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
formulas, but the practical effect of this triumph of
the technical mind over matter has been to subor-
dinate man to the machine. For a mechanism is as
necessary an offspring of science as an organism is
of creative imagination. And although the elaborate
and standardized mechanism which science has
constructed in the modern world is proof enough
of its astonishing mental ingenuity, the individual
soul has been increasingly crushed and stifled beneath
it. Admittedly the negative side of the modern
scientific movement does not affect the disinterested
virtue of science at its purest and best. But the effects
of such pure science on modern civilization have
so far been slight compared to the overwhelming
pressure of applied science, and of its offspring, the
machine.
Certainly the machine, apart from its productive
and labour-saving uses to society, does impose a^
discipline upon those who serve it. It claims exactness,
efficiency, and a subordination of self to its technical
demands. But because its technical demands, unlike
those of any art or craft, are mechanical, because it
denies its servants the right to disciplined self-
expression, it tends to reduce them to ciphers, to
mere cogs in its ruthlessly rotating wheels. They are
cut off from the deep rhythm of life and condemned
to a sterile service.
And the evidence of this sterility extends far
beyond those who are actually tied through all
their working hours to machines. We live in a day
SCIENCE AND THE SELF 235
when the unique is everywhere being submerged in
the uniform, and although we may pride ourselves
upon a certain intellectual candour and dexterity
and to some extent a concern for physical well-being,
these virtues are conditioned and counterbalanced
by the fact that we have little desire to raise ourselves
to a higher pitch or, indeed, to conform to anything
but average standards.
Yet beneath our physical and intellectual activities
the deepest needs of the soul remain unsatisfied. And
physical science in itself can do nothing to supply
them. It can only strive to distract our attention
from them. And it does this in a typical way.
For how often are we asked to bow down before
the wonders of modern mechanical invention. And
at first we cannot but be impressed; nor would I
deny that some of these products, which we owe
directly to the scientific mind, may be of value as
well as utility. But if we consider the matter more
carefully, do we not find that the great majority
of them supply no really felt need? That by multiply-
ing trivial objects, we have multiplied trivial desires,
and that we could live a life more rich in meaning
without them? For the deepest need in man or woman
is to express the self in some sort of creative activity,
however humble. And although the burdened house-
wife may well be grateful to modern science for
certain labour-saving devices, and congested city life
would be impossible without scientific organization,
is not the emphasis which science lays upon labour-
236 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
saving and its eagerness to substitute the machine
for the person or reduce the person to the machine
a denial of true life values?
If science were merely striving to make more
tolerable soul-killing conditions which it has helped
to create, I would be more willing to approve its
endeavours and acclaim its successes. But if we are
to believe one of its latest exponents, it is even
working to deprive woman of one of the few kinds of
labour left in the modern world which can afford
a deep creative satisfaction by manufacturing human
life in a laboratory. The dangers that attend a
self-sufficient quest of knowledge could hardly be
better illustrated. Yet such a suggestion is wholly
in accordance with the logic of science. To manu-
facture human life is just as reasonable and right to
it as to manufacture poison gas.
But it may be said that the theory of knowledge and
of life, which emphasizes the eternal value of the self
and the need of wholeness in man's response to experi-
ence, has defects of its own when put to the test of
practice no less obvious than those of physical
science. And this cannot be denied. Modern psycho-
logists have done a real service in showing how often
those who claim to be inspired servants of the truth
and insist most forcibly upon the absoluteness of
their vision are in fact indulging their egotism or
compensating themselves for some inner weakness
or unsatisfied desire.
Critical detachment is, indeed, essential to truth
SCIENCE AND THE SELF 237
if self-delusion is to be avoided. But it should be
realized as a means, not an end, as an element in
creative activity. In modern science it has been
cultivated exclusively and with such energy and
pertinacity that it has almost destroyed the creative
unity of life. The part has usurped the place of the
whole; analysis has eaten not only into the body,
but into the spiritual nerve-centres of life.
Yet we have no right to complain of such special-
izing in itself. Natural science has, indeed, brought
light into dark places and led to discoveries which
can on the material plane assist us very considerably
in building up conditions favourable to creative
living, and may even help us to perfect, notably
through psychological understanding, that true
science of being to which it is itself indifferent.
But it can only do so if it is recognized as a servant,
not a master. "Scientific method," in the words oi
Jung, the most imaginative of modern psychologist^
"must serve; it errs when it usurps a throne." For
while a true spiritual science can include the men-
tal province of physical science within it, physical
science, however rarefied the fruits of its analysis
may become, can never in itself regain the unity oi
perception from which it has broken away. Yet the
fact that we have extended and refined our physical
knowledge to such a degree may well result in a
corresponding richness of consciousness and capacity
if we can recover a spiritual unity.
And this can only be achieved by cultivating ar
238 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
inward life to counteract the immense pressure of
material life upon us.
Far from helping us to develop that inward being,
to liberate and vindicate that essential self from which
true action and true knowledge spring, natural science
has inevitably hitherto denied it. And so its mental
victories have been won at the cost of our moral
defeat. And we shall remain demoralized until we
realize that we must creatively unify ourselves before
we can create value and unity in the external world.
For no true civilization can be achieved by working
adroitly on the surface. It is ultimately conditioned
by the spiritual strivings of countless individuals. It
has a soul, so far as they have souls. The partial
knowledge of natural science has doubtless proved
in excellent antidote to timid credulity and an
effective weapon against selfish ignorance. But it
las been and is in many ways fatal to the growth
of the finer spiritual qualities. When, however, it
is recognized to be partial, it may prove of real
service to men in the task of making themselves and
their world a whole.
Both Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley have
dealt largely with the possibility of curing the disease
of civilization from without. Science for them is the
doctor, who, as he becomes more skilled in his pro-
fession, may eventually cure the patient, if he does
not first kill him.
I have tried to suggest that the patient must cure
himself, that he can only recover real health by
SCIENCE AND THE SELF 239
inward effort and obedience to the deepest laws of
his nature, and that although he may in his sickness
need arid profit by the specialist's treatment, the
increasing tendency to depend on external aids,
the ulterior effects of which are hidden even from the
specialist himself, is a very dangerous one. For true
life and health can only be realized from within.
And although a scientific society might be efficiently
constructed by technical experts, it would be a
society in which the individual was not more but
less himself than in a tribal community. A civilized
society can only be created by men and women who
are experts, not in some particular science, but in
the art and understanding of Life.
HILAIRE BELLOC
4. MAN AND THE MACHINE
MAN seeks truth. He attempts to arrive at reality.
He is the only animal that feels this curiosity and
acts on it ; just as he is also the only animal that
laughs, that worships, that speaks and thinks
rationally. In other words, he is the only animal
that is not an animal.
There are many ways by which man arrives at a
truth. He arrives at a moral truth by the conscience,
he arrives at a mathematical truth by deduction, he
arrives at the truth on beauty and on order by his
aesthetic judgment. But one special way, applying
only to one sort of truth, is by repeated experiment
with material objects.
Man can learn what are called "The Laws of
Nature" by watching how similar objects behave
under similar circumstances; and by repeating the
experiment he confirms his certitude that the process
is invariable.
In making these investigations, man confines him-
self to what is measurable. To deal only with what
is measurable, to make the measurements accurate,
to confirm them by repetition, is called "The
Scientific Method" whether it is applied to chemical
phenomena, or to astronomy, or to archaeology, or
to documents. So long as you are dealing with a
MAN AND THE MACHINE 241
material object which can be measured and with
the reactions of material objects among themselves
you are practising what is called in modern language
"Science." But it is most important to remember
that when you are dealing with other things, which
cannot be subject to such a process, which cannot
be exactly measured, which cannot be experimented
with continually under identical conditions, the
scientific method does not apply. The pretence that
it does and that in these matters we can arrive
through it at the same sort of certitude we have on
physical laws is nonsense. For instance, the scientific
method confirms you in the truth that certain
musical notes are the product of repeated inter-
mittent action called vibrations and vaguely spoken
of as "waves." The scientific method can measure
these in the case of music and in the case of colours.
But it is quite worthless for the discovery of what
music or what painting is beautiful. Physical science,
arrived at by repeated experiment, man has always
possessed so far as we have any record of him.
Among other forms of search for truth physical
science has this particular importance, that by it
man has to some extent acquired the power of
controlling his material surroundings.
He achieves this mastery by the use of instruments
which science enables him to produce. He produces
them by combining various forms of scientific
knowledge. These instruments we call tools and
weapons. In their more complicated form we call
Q,
242 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
them machines. But it is important to remember
that there is no essential difference between the
simplest instrument, such as a saw, and the most
complicated piece of modern machinery, such as a
motor-car. They are all of them the products of com-
bining the results of experiment and observation in
physical affairs.
The number and capacity of such instruments, if
man be left with the opportunity to add to his
knowledge, naturally increases with the process of
time. But we must further remember that he has
never had continuous enjoyment of such opportuni-
ties. There have been set-backs as well as advances.
When there have been set-backs in the process
there is a decline in the number and capacity of
the instruments which man can use. Such loss
occurs not only by wars, plagues, and natural
catastrophes, but also by fatigue and by a change in
the objects men set before themselves. Men may
change from a mood in which they desire more
and better instruments into a mood when they
desire something quite different, so that the search
for new instruments, and even the capacity for con-
tinuing to make the old ones, diminishes.
There are plenty of examples in history of big
jumps forward in this respect, also long periods of
neither advance nor retreat, and other periods of
decline. There must have been a big jump producing
all the main tools of carpentering, sculpture, and
building, a jump which took place long before our
MAN AND THE MACHINE 243
earliest records. There was clearly a decline which
began in our part of the world about 1,700 years
ago, and then there was a long period of many
centuries when things were more or less stable,
without advance or retreat, and the same instru-
ments were used from generation to generation.
The time in which we live is the latest phase.
Perhaps the climax and quite possibly the end
of a very big jump of this kind. And the characteristic
of that time in our part of the world is a great
development in the highly differentiated instruments
we call machines, and side by side with them a
great development of applied scientific knowledge.
This change has powerfully affected the life of our
generation. Within living memory applied science
has transformed great fields of social and individual
action, and if we extend our time limit to a little
more than a century its action is still more apparent.
Almost all our instruments for transport whether
of men, goods, or ideas many of our instruments for
fashioning material, the great bulk of our weapons,
and a considerable proportion of the things we use
in daily habit have been profoundly affected by this
change.
In the presence of such a disturbance all men are
moved to ask themselves certain questions. These
questions are often put confusedly and the answers
to them ill thought out, but they can all be resolved
into two main questions to our generation. Unless
a right answer is reached to each of them we shall
244 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
suffer. These two questions are : First, Is the possession
of a new instrument a good in itself ? Second, How
far are we controlled by instruments : are they our
masters or are we masters of them?
Of these two questions the answer to the first one
ought to be self-evident. The presence of a new instru-
ment is in itself neither good nor bad. The only good
or bad about the business is the use we make of
that instrument.
Take a simple and fundamental case. It was found
scientifically by experiment and thus established by
proof that iron, if fashioned as a thin blade, could
be given a sharp edge by rubbing it against certain
other substances. It was found by experiment that
iron grew soft when it was heated and got hard
again when it became cool. It was found by experi-
ment that if you hit a soft thing with a harder thing
you can change its shape. By the combination of these
pieces of scientific knowledge men got the instruments
called the knife and the sword. Man had produced
these novel things by the use of science, but they
lay there before him neither good nor evil. He might
use them for good or for evil, and it depended upon
his mind which he did. He could with sharp iron
fashion wood for a shelter against the weather, or
cut another man's throat in a fit of bad temper, or
his own in a fit of depression. What has been true
of the knife for we know not how many thousands
of years is true to-day of the flying machine or the
latest explosive or the most recent poisonous chemical.
MAN AND THE MACHINE 245
It is neither good nor evil in itself, the good or the
evil resides entirely in its use, and that use resides
in the intention of man. The mind governs.
I have said that this should be self-evident, but
it must be repeated at the outset because in the moral
chaos of our time and the absence of a fixed set of
principles a great and perhaps increasing number of
people talk as though an increase in the number and
capacity of instruments was a good thing in itself.
There is in this connection one smaller point to
be noted which is often overlooked, namely that
every instrument has attached to it disadvantage as
well as advantage inherent in its action. For instance,
a new machine which enables you to cross the
Atlantic in five days may make the passenger suffer
much more from vibration than an old one which
did it in twice the time. And if on balance the
disadvantage is greater than the advantage, then
to use the machine is not a good but an evil.
But it is the second question which is the more
important and certainly the one which is now most
disturbing and most continually occupying the
modern mind. How far are instruments our masters?
Or how far are we masters of them?
It is quite obvious that in some degree every new
instrument, if its use be permitted, will affect human
life. We say, talking loosely, that the invention of
the plough turned men from pastoral to agricultural
communities. We say that the invention of the
railway both created great cities and compelled
246 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
men to the new form of travel. I repeat, the phrases
are loose and metaphorical, but in practice they will
serve, for in point of fact a new instrument providing
some good leads men into the habit of its use, and
that habit produces a network of other connected
habits by which man is in some degree controlled.
But in what degree? Everything lies in the answer
to that question, and, indeed, all the more important
questions set for mankind depend upon this point of
degree.
What we have to determine is not whether
machines in part control mankind. Of course they
do. Nor whether we may not on occasions subject
them to our will. Of course we can. Those men must
be rare indeed in England to-day who are not
continually compelled to travel by the aid of petrol ;
but those men are just as rare who cannot decide
on particular occasions whether they will travel
thus or no. The essential of the problem is to discover
where the balance lies. Does the initiative lie mainly
with us, with our wills, as individuals and as groups
of individuals, or are we in the main the passive
subjects of blind forces which our own activities have
let loose?
Upon the right answer to that continual question
turns the philosophy of our time, its general mood,
and the happiness or unhappiness of mankind.
Now the answer which you hear most commonly
in this country, which is given almost universally in
great sections of society and which is widely heard
MAN AND THE MACHINE 247
everywhere, is that we are controlled by these things
we have ourselves created. The initiative remaining
to us is a minor factor in the business as a whole,
the effect of the instrument upon us is the major
factor. Is that answer the right one?
At bottom the discussion is simply the old dis-
cussion which dates from immemorial time between
destiny and free-will. If the general answer comes to
be given permanently against free-will, one type of
society will result. If the answer is given the other
way, another and almost opposite type of society
will result. Of such moment is the debate.
The conviction against free-will is reinforced by
propositions which pretend to be scientific and which
would establish as a fact based on proof and admitting
of no denial that human action follows upon forces
extraneous to the will. But these affirmations are
not scientific. The experiments cannot of their
nature be identical or continuous or universal. We
are all conscious within ourselves of the action of
the will, and if we call it an illusion we do so because
we have accepted a certain mentality, philosophy, or
mood not because we have reluctantly admitted
the case proved against us by experiment. To think
otherwise is to put the cart before the horse, for it
is historically certain that the conviction of destiny
and the denial of free-will came long before the
insufficient and inconclusive experiments which
pretend to decide the matter by observation. Experi-
ment and observation are brought in here to confirm
248 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
what true or false philosophy had already concluded,
and not the other way about.
The belief that man is controlled by his environ-
ment and not his environment by man is powerfully
reinforced to-day by a mass of regulation and con-
straint, more widely spread in some societies than
others, but evidently present in a higher degree
throughout our civilization than it was, even a
generation ago, and far more than it was a lifetime
ago. A uniform type of education is imposed by the
State upon the mass of its citizens at a moment when
their minds are being formed as children. In adult
life every detail of action becomes more and more
subject to external regulation, and under the pressure
of such a political mood men naturally tend to the
general philosophy that man is not a free agent;
"the slave," said the wise man of antiquicy, "thinks
like a slave.' 3
The feeling is further reinforced by an historical
argument. We are told that the historical process
has always been as follows : first a new material
environment; then a change in the mind of man
effected by that environment. Thus we are told that
the invention of the printing-press was the main
force in producing both the Renaissance and the
Reformation. We were told not so long ago that the
use of steam in travel would weld men together
into one nation. Now we are told that instantaneous
communication of ideas by telephone and telegraphy
and far more rapid transit than steam ever gave
MAN AND THE MACHINE 249
have just the opposite effect and make human
enmities more bitter than ever. The two conclusions
are contradictory, but they spring from the same
source. Each takes it for granted that the machine
is the master of man.
In this great debate, the fundamental debate of our
time, the arguments upon the other side are less
ofter heard. It is with these I would conclude.
There are two kinds, the one drawn from observa-
tion and therefore themselves essentially scientific;
the others pragmatic that is, drawn from the con-
sideration of consequences, relying upon the results
that would follow in practice if the false philosophy
were to be adopted.
The arguments from observation, the strictly
scientific arguments, against the false a;id only
so-called scientific conclusion that the instrument is
the master of man is simply this : that if you look
about you, if you concern yourself with the actual
evidence and not with the guesswork or hypothesis,
the evidence is against the constraint of man by
machinery. It is against the thesis that man is the
creature of his environment. This you can see in
two ways. First, that the great mass of restriction
to which man is subjected in the states which suffer
most from such things is in no way the result
of any modern scientific development but wholly
political. Secondly, from the equally plain evidence
that the degree of restriction varies very greatly
between different countries and that the variation
25Q SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
has nothing to do with scientific attainment. Take
sumptuary laws. In one nation the citizen is prevented
from the free use of wine or beer by force. In another
he may only use these things in public places during
certain restricted hours. In another, for instance in
Germany, he has almost complete freedom. The
variation is not a function of scientific attainment,
it is a function of political mood. The same is true
of the dead mechanical level of State education.
The same is true of regulations forbidding men to
work in their own shops after a certain hour. The
same is true of any one of the thousands of constraints
which had been imagined for the enregimentation
and external forcing of human life.
Again, it is not historically true that the instrument
preceded the mood. Capitalism, for instance, had
already been established before modern machinery
came in to serve it, and that machinery might just
as well have served a different form of society. It
is not true that the great movements called the
Renaissance and the Reformation proceeded from
the capital invention of printing. They used it when
it came, but their origins were prior to its coming.
The mood of the Reformers, the mood of the
Renaissance scholars and artists, was earlier by two
or three lifetimes than the mechanical changes at
the end of the Middle Ages. So far as evidence and
reasoning go the argument is all on that side.
Instruments affect men, but man can control them,
and his destiny depends ultimately not upon the
MAN AND THE MACHINE 251
dead object he himself has framed but on the
attitude of himself.
Now when we take in its last place the practical
argument I find it the most conclusive. But even
for those for whom it may have no intellectual
value it must have a political value.
It is this. If we do not exercise our freedom of
choice, if we do not react, as we are capable of
reacting, against the uniformity of a mechanical
civilization, then we perish.
A mechanical civilization is almost a contradiction
in terms unless we give the word civilization the
mere meaning of "state of society." A mechanical
civilization or culture in the sense in which we talk
of the civilization or culture of Rome and Greece,
France and England, Byzantium and Venice, is
actually a contradiction in terms. Their traditions
of beauty in building, in letters and the plastic arts,
their tradition of debate in philosophy and religion,
their whole body of multiple thought and achieve-
ment detest mechanical rigidity. To be mechanical
is to cease to be civilized. And for this reason, that
the culture, the fruition, the happiness of society,
its possession of the living soul, depends upon the
faculty of choice in man. The very essential of life
is multiplicity, and variety proceeding from the
manifold human spirit is that one necessary factor
without which a human society ceases to be and
according to the degree of which it is a higher or
a baser society.
252 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
We have before us in this considerable modern
crisis this conflict between the machine and the
man a plain duty, which is to use our wills every-
where for the defence of Will. To make it our choice
to invigorate and multiply choice.
We must guard what is left of our freedom and
extend it, we must fight collective control, we must
mistrust the expert, we must question restriction
wherever it appears, compelling it to prove itself
necessary (as clearly it must be in particular cases),
throwing the weight of proof upon the enemies of
liberty and taking the rights of individual selection
for granted. We must, in the economic sphere, fight
not for greater collectivity of property, but, on the
contrary, for greater distribution of it; we must
fight for the small unit against the large one, for
the self-governing guild against the merger and the
combine. And these things we must do because the
opposite policy that which we have all been pur-
suing too long leads rapidly to death.
J. B. S. HALDANE
5. THE BIOLOGIST AND SOCIETY
FIRST I want to defend my own profession. Mr.
Belloc has said that we scientists can only deal with
what is measurable. That is not the case. It is a
scientific fact that hydrogen sulphide has a bad
smell in the opinion of ninety-nine people out of
a hundred. Now a smell is a sensation, something in
the mind. You cannot weigh it or measure it. So
far science can only deal accurately with rather
simple things in the mind, like smells and colours.
But that simple example shows that science does
not deal only with material objects, but with the
mind that knows them.
Mr. Hugh Fausset declared that the scientific
approach to reality was one-sided, and that we
scientists tried to reduce our minds to machines.
Now of course there are one-sided scientists, just as
there are one-sided painters and poets. But every
scientific man or woman, at least in the experimen-
tal sciences, must combine three qualities : reason,
imagination, and manual skill. And these must be
welded together by an almost passionate acceptance
of reality. Let us compare a great artist, Blake, and
a great scientist, Faraday. Blake saw angels and
devils where no one else could see them; he tried
to fit them into an intellectual system; and he
254 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
drew them and wrote about them extremely well.
Faraday, who was a man of original and flaming
imagination, saw lines of force where everyone
before him had seen empty space. He reasoned about
their properties. He devised and made apparatus to
test these properties. And nine times out of ten,
so he tells us, his imagination proved wrong. But his
feeling for reality his love of truth, if you like
was stronger than his imagination. He did not
publish his imaginings unless they conformed to
reality wherever he could test that conformity.
As a result of Faraday's work you are able to listen
to the wireless. But more than that, as a result of
Faraday's work scientifically educated men and
women have an altogether richer view of the world :
for them, apparently empty space is full of the most
intricate and beautiful patterns. So Faraday, just
because he was a more complete man, as I think,
than Blake, gave the world not only fresh wealth but
fresh beauty.
But I must leave physics to Sir Oliver Lodge. I
want to talk about my own science of biology the
study of living beings, including men. When Mr.
Belloc talked about the progress of science in the
last few centuries he was mainly concerned with
machinery, and said, quite truly, that a machine
was good or bad according to how we use it. Now
beside the great physical and chemical discoveries
there are great biological discoveries, especially in
the field of medicine, which Mr. Belloc did not
THE BIOLOGIST AND SOCIETY 255
mention. We have found out how, by organizing
the water supply, we can stop great plagues such as
typhoid and cholera. Now that kind of discovery,
provided it is used at all, is an almost unmixed
benefit. Nobody, outside a short story, has ever
used it to make an epidemic of cholera or typhoid,
and I doubt whether they could.
We are only at the beginning of medicine, and
have very little idea how much farther it may be
going. That depends not only on the progress of
medical science, but on whether the average man
and woman can be got to think biologically. Diph-
theria and scarlet fever could be made as rare as
typhoid if people could be induced to take the
necessary quite simple precautions. If politicians
thought in terms of biology as they now .think in
terms of economics they would realize that it is at
least as important to keep out foreign diseases as
foreign imports. I do not think this is a hopeless
ideal. Ordinary people are beginning to think to-day
as scientists were thinking a hundred years ago, in
terms of physics. They understand what is meant
by such words as voltage and self-induction. A
hundred years hence biological ideas may be equally
familiar. In that case there will be an end of the
tendency of which Mr. Belloc has written to put
the machine before the man.
Now I want to suggest what would be happening
to-day if this nation and other nations were biologi-
cally minded. The reasons for the present crisis are
256 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
fairly simple, and the most important is this : Science
has immensely increased our capacity for production.
No attempt has been made to ensure that the goods
so produced could be distributed. I suspect that this
is partly the fault of capitalism, but we certainly
cannot blame capitalism alone. We must blame the
fact that, in our public thinking, we have never con-
sidered the results of the prolongation of life which
we owe to medicine. Not only do many men live
beyond 60, but they preserve a great deal of vigour.
The average age of the Cabinet in March 1932 was
57. None of them were under 40, and 9 of the 20 were
over 60. In a former great national crisis, 150 years
ago, William Pitt became Prime Minister at 25.
Now a man of 60 or over has generally gained a
lot of experience of life. But he cannot adapt him-
self easily to a new situation, and the present world
situation is something entirely new. You cannot
expect old men to deal with it. The Universities of
Cambridge and Oxford are supposed to be very
backward and reactionary institutions, but they have
just agreed to a rule by which professors must
retire at 65, not because their intellects have decayed,
but because, with rare exceptions, they cannot keep
pace with the rapid increase of knowledge. Not only
our politics, but our industry, is controlled by old
men. The average age of the directors of a number of
representative companies is 62. Neither capitalism nor
any other economic system could keep abreast of
the times under such guidance.
THE BIOLOGIST AND SOCIETY 257
An electorate which thought in terms of human
biology would see that at least a third of the Cabinet
were under 40, and not more than a third over 60.
They would also take measures to transfer the
control of industry to younger men, whether its
ownership was public or private.
To-day we are engaged in imposing tariffs on a
number of foreign imports, and members of one
great party believe that this will encourage British
industries. But the arguments for and against tariffs
are wholly almost economic. The biological side of
the case is quite neglected. Now what would happen
if any members of the Cabinet took human biology
seriously? They would consider the effect of en-
couraging any particular industry on the national
health. A tax on imports of cut flowers will improve
the national health, because it will encourage more
men to enter the very healthy occupation of garden-
ing. If you take ten thousand gardeners and ten
thousand men of the same ages from other occupa-
tions, you will find that at the end of a year 432
from the general population and only 305 gardeners
will have died. So by encouraging gardening you
make Britain more healthy. But now suppose the
question came up of a tariff designed to encourage
the manufacture of files. The death-rate among
file-cutters is 85 per cent above the average nearly
double. No, our biologist-politicians would say, we
cannot protect your industry until you make it
reasonably healthy. Install proper protection against
258 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
poisoning your workers with dust, and when you
bring your death-rate down you shall have your
tariff -but not till then. It is just the same with
scores of other questions which are now being argued
on economic lines. The moment you take the biologi-
cal point of view, you start thinking of the man before
the machine, of health before wealth.
Now what would be the international policy of a
Cabinet who looked at world affairs from the bio-
logical, not the economic, angle? I believe that they
would consult with foreign colleagues of similar
temper, and begin preparations for the next world
war. Yes, the next world war. War is a terrible
thing, but it satisfies certain deep-seated desires in
many men, including myself. If we cannot satisfy
these desires somehow else, we shall do it by killing
our fellows as we did in the last great war. But I
believe they can be satisfied in other ways. The war
of which I am speaking is a war "not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, 55 a
war against the agencies of disease. If mankind
co-operated, we could abolish for ever a whole
group of pestilences, such as smallpox, cholera,
typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever, and such
carriers of pestilence as the louse. A campaign of
this kind would involve the co-operation of the whole
world. As long as a single Indian is suffering from
cholera, a single negro in Central Africa from small-
pox, there is a focus for that disease from which
THE BIOLOGIST AND SOCIETY 259
you or I may be infected. I picture a great army of
men and women sweeping across each continent as
the armies swept across Europe in the Great War,
systematically sterilizing every human being and
every house and leaving a clean world behind them.
Infectious territories would be blockaded as Germany
was blockaded in the Great War. There would be
hardships and dangers. But men and women wel-
come hardship and danger in a great cause.
If you are to have real world co-operation and
world loyalty, it must be co-operation for some
positive end, not for a merely negative end, such as
keeping peace. Now I expect most of you think that
the idea of a world war against disease is a silly idea.
It is a silly idea now. Fifty years ago the idea of a
regular air mail service between England and
Australia would have been a silly idea. To-day it is
a working idea. Such ideas as I am putting forward
will be working ideas fifty years hence if enough
people want them to be.
Medicine is at present the most important branch
of human biology, but it will not always be so. In
the first place some people are born with such great
physical or mental handicaps that no amount of
treatment can make them normal. Secondly, health,
whether of body or mind, is only one of many things
needed for a good life. It would undoubtedly be
possible to prevent the birth of a great many of the
defectives, though not perhaps quite so easy as Mr.
Aldous Huxley seems to think. But to make the
2 6o SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
average of the population cleverer or as Mr.
Huxley suggests stupider, much less to breed men
of genius, would be an altogether harder task. Let
me tell you why. For twenty-seven years a set of
quite competent biologists have been studying in-
heritance in a particular species of primrose which
has a generation each year. So those twenty-seven
years correspond to about seven hundred years of
human history. Although they could breed these
plants as they liked, some combinations of shapes
and colours have only just been made for the first
time. I have here one of our new combinations
which we made this year for the first time. I wish
you could see it. It has curious twisted petals with
toothed edges. It is like one of Mr. Aldous Huxley's
novels: either you like it very much, or you think
it rather unpleasant. I like it, but I expect about
half of you would hate it. Well, seven hundred
years hence we may know enough of human genetics
to say that the child of two particular parents will
probably be a writer of the type of Mr. Aldous
Huxley. I doubt if we shall get so far in a much
shorter time. But long before that time the study of
human genetics will have forced us to realize that,
with a very few exceptions, every human being is
born quite different from any other, that nothing
we can do to them will make them alike, and that
it is no good trying. As soon as that elementary
fact of human biology is realized, not as a mere
abstract statement, but as a scientific law supported
THE BIOLOGIST AND SOCIETY 261
by innumerable detailed examples, I think that we
may look forward to a rebirth of individual liberty.
Bertrand Russell and Mr. Aldous Huxley have tried
to make your flesh creep with prophecies about the
future tyranny of the expert, who is going to do
his best to make men uniform, like factory-made
goods. That would be plausible enough if physics
were the only science. But clearly a great many of
the experts would have to be experts in biology,
as doctors are to-day. Now one of the first things a
biologist learns is that no two frogs, let alone two
men, are quite alike. And if he is a geneticist,
studying heredity, he is mostly concerned with
those differences, and particularly with the odd
individuals who keep cropping up when we think
we have got a true-breeding population. The founder
of genetics in this country, William Bateson, left a
motto for his successors, of whom I am one. It was
"Treasure your exceptions." Treasure your excep-
tions. That represents the biological point of view,
whereas the engineer's point of view is "Scrap your
exceptions." In so far as our expert rulers of the
future are biologists, I am sure they will be a great
deal more tolerant than our present rulers of human
exceptions, the men and women who do not fit into
society as at present constituted, sometimes because
they are too bad for it, but occasionally because
they are too good for it.
A society based on the recognition of human diver-
sity might adopt a eugenic programme, but it would
262 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
at any rate make the nature of man, not that of
machines or institutions, the foundation of its social
philosophy. To a biologist the social problem is not
"How can we get these men and women to fit into
society?" but "How can we make a society into
which these men and women will fit?" Our present
attitude is quite different. For example, reformers
are constantly putting forward educational schemes,
such as the Dalton plan. Some boys and girls learn
far better under these new methods than under the
old one. But I expect the opposite is also true. The
old-fashioned methods worked fairly well on me,
and I found the sort of education that was thought
up-to-date thirty years ago very boring. For any
individual child there is some ideal system of educa-
tion, and educational methods will not be perfected
until we discover how to find that out in any given
case.
The same is true with the choice of a career. I
am going to quote from Professor Spearman, a
psychologist who is so scientific that a special branch
of mathematics has had to be created to enable him
to investigate the human mind. This is what he
says: "Every normal man, woman, or child is a
genius at something, as well as an idiot at something.
It remains to discover what at any rate in respect
of the genius." No one has done more than he to
find methods for discovering the nature of individual
genius.
In our present society industry is not even organ-
THE BIOLOGIST AND SOCIETY 263
ized so as to find a job for every able and willing
citizen. That will have to be done if civilization is
not to collapse. But in a scientific society the attempt
would be made to find the best possible jobs for
everybody. This is how the ruling group of a scien-
tifically organized society would be thinking three
hundred years hence: "The psychologists who have
been testing the school-children tell us that we may
expect three or four really first-rate musical com-
posers ten years hence. That will mean building at
least one new broadcasting station. But there is a
serious shortage of boys and girls who are likely to
be really first-rate air pilots. Probably only 15 per
cent of our people will be able to fly to work in the
morning, instead of 25 per cent, as we had hoped.
We shall have to modify our town-planning schemes,
and put down a number of our new factories in the
country, instead of bringing the workers in every
morning." That is the way people would think in
a civilization in which machines were regarded as
secondary to men.
Now for the question of liberty. I think it is fairly
clear that we shall have to sacrifice a certain amount
of our present liberties in the economic field. Either
industry will be organized more and more in great
corporations, private or public, or else legislation will
be needed to prevent this tendency. I think that
if centralization is accompanied by a measure of
control by the workers in it, the net result would
be an increase of liberty. Again I believe there will
264 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
be a progressive decrease of what Mr. Belloc calls
parental liberty, but what, from the child's point of
view, is often parental despotism. The liberty to
flog your child daily and lock it up in a dark room
is like the liberty of a medieval baron to hang his
serfs. It is a very one-sided sort of liberty indeed.
Incidentally, one reason why the biological point of
view is rare is that parents often protest when human
biology is taught to their children. There will
probably be a decrease of liberty as regards repro-
duction, where it is highly probable that any child
born to a couple would be a victim of serious physical
or mental defect. There may be a revival, on
eugenic grounds, of the medieval restriction on
marriage of first cousins. But there would be a
corresponding removal of existing restrictions to
love and marriage which are not based on ascertain-
able fact. There will probably be more regulations,
but regulations may make for more, not less, liberty.
I can drive my car as fast as it will go on the open
road, but if I am to do this I must conform to the
road code, and carry licences and other documents.
This seems to me fair enough. Such regulations have
made for increased freedom on the road for all
motorists except road-hogs and bandits. I think they
are inevitable as the material basis of our civilization
becomes more complex. The introduction of radio
has made a number of regulations inevitable. But
it has not diminished freedom.
Some of our existing unnecessary regulations are
THE BIOLOGIST AND SOCIETY 265
based on tradition. Most of them are based on the
great principle that if a few people misuse something,
the rest must be deprived of it. Such are our laws
about liquor, and the even more ridiculous law
which prohibits children from smoking. Now it is
a generally recognized biological law that one man's
meat is another man's poison. But few people
realize that it follows that one man's poison is
another man's meat. A scientific civilization would
recognize that there are a minority of people who
cannot be trusted with liquor, just as others cannot
be trusted with a car, and it would probably treat
them in much the same way. If I could get a drink
whenever I wanted it, I should be quite willing to
carry a drinking licence about, knowing that it
would be endorsed or taken away if I got drunk.
I cannot agree with Mr. Belloc that the philo-
sophical theory of the freedom of the will has much
to do with the question. You cannot make a suffici-
ently good man do what he believes to be wrong by
any threats or bribes. In that sense the will is free.
But you can, in some cases, find out the reasons
why some men are better than others. If that were not
so, we could not help our fellows to be good. With
the aid of psychology and genetics we can go a long
way to analyse the springs of character. In so far
as this analysis is possible the will is determined by
known causes.
But because most biologists do not believe in
free-will in Mr. Belloc's sense, please do not suppose
266 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
that they believe in Mr. Huxley's tall stories about
the possibilities of moulding the character from
outside. I do not claim to know much psychology,
but I know that the Behaviourists, an American
group of psychologists who claim that they can do
what they like with children's behaviour, are
generally wrong in their physiology, where I can
check them.
Four distinguished writers, one of whom is also
a very distinguished mathematician, have already
contributed to this symposium. All were mainly
concerned with applied science, and not with the
results which would follow if the average man and
woman adopted a scientific outlook. That is natural
enough. They learned their science from books, and
books usually present science as a finished product,
not something alive and growing, as it is in the mind
of the scientist. If you really understand how your
receiver works, not from books, but from experiment-
ing with its parts, you have got a more scientific
outlook than you will get from a dozen books. When
anyone tells you something about science, ask
yourselves if he or she has only learnt science from
books, or with their hands as well. Many of you are
skilled manual workers. So are most scientific men
and women, including Sir Oliver Lodge, who is
making the final contribution. This is one reason
why their point of view is in some ways more human
than the politician's or the writer's. The scientist in
his laboratory has to deal with this crystal or this
THE BIOLOGIST AND SOCIETY 267
flower, not with crystals and flowers in general. If
the rulers of this country ever adopt the scientific
point of view they will realize that they are controlling
the destinies of forty million men and women, all
individual, and all unique. And men are civilized
just in so far as they realize the uniqueness of their
fellows, and act upon their knowledge.
OLIVER LODGE
6. THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE
I HAVE been impressed by the amount of agreement
which one can feel with many of the preceding
contributions to this symposium. There are points of
difference, of course. I do not agree with all
Bertrand RusselPs outlook ; in fact, I often seriously
disagree with him, but on this occasion less than
usual; and, surprisingly, I am able to agree with
much that Mr. Hilaire Belloc said ; but then he dealt
mainly not with science but with the applications
of science, which he summed up under the term
"machines." These are made possible by science,
but the responsibility for their use or abuse belongs
not to science but to civilization. If so-called civiliza-
tion allows machinery to sap human freedom and
enslave mankind, science washes its hands of any
such egregious folly. That human welfare is the
first thing to aim at, and that of all industrial pro-
ducts or national manufactures the production of
human souls of good quality is the most ultimately
remunerative, "quite leadingly lucrative," has been
said forcibly and eloquently by John Ruskin. Let
us attend to his teachings in that at one time heretic
pronouncement Unto This Last.
Mr. Aldous Huxley is always interesting and
usually provocative, and on this occasion his
THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE 269
exposition of the methods and powers of science, and
his distinction between the aims of the economist
and the humanist in its modes of application, are
well worthy of attention. Not till he sets forth the
preposterous claims of the extreme Behaviourist
does he, perhaps purposely, lose touch with common
sense ; though he returns to it in his conclusion.
With what Mr. Fausset said I am in considerable
agreement, as will be seen by what follows. While of
most of Mr. Haldane's contribution I can only ex-
press respectful admiration. The scope of Biology at
the present time, especially in the new departments of
Bio-chemistry and Bio-physics, is intensely interesting
and of the utmost importance; and of this great
study Mr. Haldane is a distinguished representative.
With what he has said in criticism of the previous
speakers I agree in general, and I prefer to dwell
upon the parts where we are all in agreement; as
will doubtless appear in what I have to say on my
own account, except that in some cases I may be
disposed to go farther than the rest.
Where I differ from Mr. Haldane is where he
touches on what he might call branches of " human
biology," namely the sciences of Economics and
Eugenics. I doubt if electors and politicians, how-
ever biologically minded, will ever take the view
that youth and enterprise are more to be trusted
than age and experience in the conduct of affairs.
Surely there is room for the aptitudes of both the
old and the young. As to the discriminative use of
270 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
artificial modes of stimulating or protecting various
kinds of industry, healthy conditions for workers
could surely be investigated and supplied without
the reward of a tariff. My private hope indeed is
that custom-houses all over the world will be
abolished, and an era of free interchange of goods
established, before mankind is one century older.
The present move in the direction of assisting
empire trade may, I trust, be an indirect step
towards the ultimate attainment of that desirable
end.
The science of Economics seems to demand much
wisdom in its application. It has absorbed a great
deal of attention, but I do not feel sure how far it
is to be trusted; and the wisdom has often been
lacking. The younger science of Eugenics has not
yet advanced far enough for us to contemplate the
breeding of genius or of any specific brand of human
being. I doubt if our knowledge can ever be wisely
applied in that direction. If we interfere with
humanity to that extent we are trying to play the
part of Providence, and may make a mess of it. As
to the manufacture of human beings in a laboratory
or in a bottle, that, in spite of the author of Daedalus,
seems to me a lunatic idea. We have not yet vivified
a single cell; though indeed that achievement does
seem a possibility for the remote future.
I mistrust the application of Eugenics to humanity
in the positive direction: it may be necessary and
legitimate to eliminate the unfit, but not to decide
THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE 271
on any particular brand of human stock. Uni-
formity is not a thing to aim at, "It takes many sorts
to make a world," as the proverb says. Let us accept
what Mr. Haldane tells us is true, that no two
animals are exactly alike, and let us remember
Bateson's slogan, "Treasure your exceptions." Atten-
tion to unexpected and exceptional results is the
mode in which every scientific man is led to sur-
prising discoveries of real novelty ; and many have
been missed by neglecting that attention. Every
exception is full of instruction and may be of great
value. There is no mould into which human beings
can wisely be fitted, they must be free to develop
idiosyncrasies. A civilized community would give in-
dividuals a chance of developing their latent powers,
and then, so long as they were healthy in body and
mind, it would leave them free.
It seems to be a question whether the spread of
science is good for civilization or not, or in what
way it is good and in what way it does harm. Let
us see what we mean by science: I mean science
itself, not its applications. Many definitions have
been given, some of them too narrow, like "Science
is measurement/' which reminds one of Eddington's
"Pointer readings"; others, perhaps too general,
like the excellent phrase "Organized common
sense," used by Thomas Henry Huxley. If I were
asked for a definition of science I might say:
"Accurate knowledge concerning things which
appeal to the senses and concerning everything
272 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
that can be inferred about the causes of their
behaviour." Or I might modify that, because things
that appeal to the senses are literally "phenomena"
that is, appearances so the definition of science
is equivalent to this : Accurate knowledge of pheno-
mena, and inferences about the reality which under-
lies them. This assumes that there is a reality under-
lying all phenomena. There must be some reality
to account for the appearance. The appearance
might be a will-o'-the-wisp, or an image in a looking-
glass, but still full knowledge of it will enable us to
say to what it is due ; and it may be explained either
chemically, in the one case, or optically, in the other.
Accurate knowledge does not necessarily mean
metrical knowledge: it includes measurement, but
many things which are the subject of scientific
inquiry are not metrical, especially a number of the
facts studied in Biology. These are not amenable to
calculation, and yet our knowledge of them may be
accurate.
Many of the definitions that have been given of
science tend unduly to limit it, and do not lay
sufficient stress upon the scope of inference. Practically
everything may be made the object of scientific
inquiry. Palaeography, for instance, or the scrutiny
of ancient manuscripts : they can be examined and
interpreted scientifically. Psychology, or a study of
the human mind, is an undoubted science ; though
the manner of exploration differs in many respects
from customary scientific procedure. Even Theology
THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE 273
may be treated from the scientific point of view,
and has been called "the Queen of the Sciences,"
though the subject-matter there is infinite, and
mainly beyond our comprehension.
The things which are often popularly understood
under the heading "science" are really only the
applications of scientific knowledge to human pur-
poses. These applications belong more to civiliza-
tion than to science, they are more of the nature of
engineering. Engineering is undoubtedly based on
science ; but the constructions that it makes, and that
humanity uses, are the result of organized labour.
It may be a miracle of design, like the Forth Bridge;
but the uses to which it is put depend on the will of
the community. The same is true of a machine.
A machine is designed by an engineer with scientific
knowledge; it is constructed according to plan by
a number of workmen ; and it is used in such way
as the community may decide, either for good,
neutral, or evil purposes. Everything may be used,
or may be abused. In the last resort the owner, or
the community, has to decide. The mind of man is
ultimately the important thing ; and that means the
nature and amount of civilization.
"Civilization" must mean the art of living together
as a community, a variety of what biologists call
symbiosis. In a good civilization the action of every
part contributes to the welfare of the whole. The
community and the individual then thrive together.
If sections proceed to fight and seek to destroy each
274 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
other, that is not a result of scientific knowledge,
but of defective civilization. If our civilization is
full of evil tendencies of this kind, and aims at
destruction, scientific knowledge makes it more
dangerous, and gives it powers for evil which it
otherwise would not possess : but it can always
exert itself for destruction up to the limits of its
power, if it is so inclined. The will, both of the
individual and of the community, is the main
thing to get right, if we are to live together in a
civilized manner. Greed and selfishness are the
root of all evil, and scientific weapons may increase
the powers of evilly disposed persons. In some excited
states of society people have attended more to powers
of destruction than to powers of beneficence, and
have been willing to expend their corporate savings
in that wasteful and deadly way. We know by
bitter experience what the result of that is. One of the
results is the present crisis in which the world finds
itself.
Mr. Haldane spoke airily of the next "war"; but
he went on to explain his meaning. It was not an
internecine warfare of sections of humanity against
each other. It was an international corporate war-
fare, marching shoulder to shoulder against reme-
diable evils, such as plague, pestilence, and famine.
It was a war, he said, not against humanity, but
"against principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of the darkness of this world," a wrestling
with the uncivilized unconscious powers of destruc-
THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE 275
tion, which still exert their deleterious influence; a
war against diseases and social evils of every kind,
and the agents which propagate them.
Biologists, led by Pasteur, have now ascertained
the causes of many diseases, and some biologists
have shown the way, and been assisted by the
community, to take measures to stamp them out.
Thus it was when the United States of America
sent the engineer Colonel Gorgas to make habitable
the region near Panama, where white men had
suffered and died like flies under the ravages of
yellow fever and malaria. It was an administrative
operation, applying the results of scientific dis-
covery. Ross and others had discovered the germs
of malaria in the mosquito, and pointed out that
the way to attack the disease was to destroy and
stop the breeding of the noxious insect; and by
administrative regulations the task was accomplished.
In another field, another great biologist, Sir David
Bruce, set to work, travelling about in Africa in
order to ascertain the causes, and thus be enabled
to take measures for the prevention, of sleeping-
sickness, a deadly disease conveyed by the try-
panosomes carried by the tsetse fly. When that fact
was discovered there was still much to be done.
Bruce secured the co-operation of native chiefs,
who sent out search-parties in different districts to
find out the habits and localities infested by these
creatures. He was only able to make a beginning
Africa is a large continent. The Governments must
276 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
be interested in the problem, and must give facilities
for wholesale treatment. The way has been pointed
out by science : it remains for the will of humanity
to do the rest.
There are other scourges afflicting man, who thinks
he is civilized, which have still to be tackled. At
present they seem too much regarded as inevitable,
and not worth an effort. Effort is thought to be
hopeless. But if the corporate will of humanity
were directed to that end, if bands of scientific
explorers were encouraged to find a remedy, and if
then steps were taken to apply the knowledge on a
large scale, these foes of humanity could also be
overcome. The two great demands on the good will
and energy of mankind at the present time are :
more science that is, more organized knowledge;
and more civilization, or the determination to
apply that knowledge in good and beneficent
directions.
Science and civilization should co-operate, as a
pair of partners. Each can strengthen and supple-
ment the other; and together, jointly, they can
attain results impossible to either separate. Increase
of knowledge is all to the good, but by itself is
barren of results. Knowledge can fructify and bestir
the community to apply it in beneficent directions,
and to bring forth the fruits of true civilization. So
long as we have knowledge which we do not apply
to good purposes, we are not really civilized. The
workers in science are few and enthusiastic. They
THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE 277
sometimes lack the means even to carry out their
exploration to a fruitful end. They certainly have no
power of extensive application. The real need is,
first of all, for the community to encourage the
workers and provide the facilities, and next to have
the good will to apply the discoveries on a large
scale in beneficent directions.
Science and civilization are two forces that should
work hand in hand and progress together. At present
science has gone ahead, civilization has lagged
behind. The only time when the community has
really encouraged the scientific worker and made
extensive use of his labours is when it was engaged
on the uncivilized work of destruction, as in the late
war. Then Government grants were forthcoming,
expense seemed no object, and there were not
wanting factories for the supply of munitions of all
kinds. And still the nations feel a jealousy and a
fear of each other, and maintain an expensive
armament to attain what they imagine is security.
That is not the way to attain security : it is attain-
able only by indirect methods. The will of mankind
has to be set in the right direction. True civilization
is the power of living together on this planet in
mutual co-operation; the nations not squabbling
and seeking to damage each other, but pooling
their resources, combining their knowledge, and
advancing with a united front against the real foes
of humanity as a whole.
Youth is willing to serve in this enterprise. There
278 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
is excitement in it and danger. Many investigators
have already succumbed to tropical diseases; and
sometimes an investigator subjects himself to a
disease in order to study its symptoms with greater
precision. These are risks : and if there are scars,
they are wounds received in a glorious war. This is
the war of the future, to which the young of all
nations are called. There is plenty of high spirit, at
present lacking direction; plenty of energy, not
knowing how to expend itself; many unemployed,
who lack the power of initiating enterprises for
themselves. Not so much more education is wanted
as education in the right direction; more scope for
individual exertion; less dependence on the enter-
prise of others ; more initiative of our own. It is a
striking piece of exaggeration to say that "everyone
is a genius at something, and everyone is stupid at
something." Our present system of education finds
out the stupidity readily enough; but genius
generally has to find itself out, in spite of the system.
How to remedy defects in our educational methods
which result in a genius being commonly thought
stupid at school that is beyond me, but it is not
beyond the powers of humanity. If we encourage
the spontaneity of youth, and liberate it in effective
directions, a vast deal more could be accomplished.
What is done in science is done mainly by youths
who gradually become conscious of their own
aptitude, and struggle into a position where they
can develop it. The history of scientific discovery
THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE 279
and invention is full of examples of hostile circum-
stances overcome by individual enterprise and energy.
But how many there must be who fail to find the
mountain path, and who sink back depressed into
the general average.
Meanwhile, and in spite of everything, knowledge
is advancing at a tremendous rate : not all of it so
immediately applicable to human welfare as Biology
is. But every increase of knowledge ought to advance
true civilization, and enlarge our conception of the
material universe, which is our temporary home, and
in which we have opportunities for service. The
revelations of Astronomy have enlarged the universe
beyond all previous conception, and raised strange
problems about time and space and the fundamental
nature of matter and energy problems which exer-
cise the strongest brains among us and give much
food for philosophic thought. All this study is
valuable in the highest degree. It docs not affect
the bodily welfare of man, but it affects, what is
more important, his whole faith and outlook. Man
is a spirit, he does not live by material considera-
tions alone, he can look before and after, and attain
a wide comprehension of Reality. He is led by the
evidence of his senses up to a certain point, and then
has to depend on his powers of inference. With these
he can soar beyond all sense-perception, and trace
Reality in regions inaccessible to any sense-organ.
All this too is or should become the region of science.
It all conduces to a higher civilization. The universe
2 8o SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
contains far more than as yet we have any idea of.
We are encompassed about with a spiritual world
and are not yet aware of the fact, save from the
reports of a few trespassers, to which neither science
nor civilization attends. The Poet and Philosopher
can expand into this region, and can receive in-
spiration for the still further elevation of humanity,
until each generation as it passes can feel that
Tho* from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear us far,
We hope to see our Pilot face to face
When we have crost the bar.
INDEX
Absolute, idea of the 195
abstraction, the method of
42, 50-^79> *97> 226
aerodynamics laboratory 64
70
aeroplane, the 61, 66
air, the 59-67
allantoin 136
altruistic instincts of man 126
Andersson 147
anthropology 231-2
ape-man, the 37, 48, 49, 57,
125-6, 131-40, 142, 144-50
apes 131-40, 157, 159, 161
Aristotle 101
astronomy 279
atom, the 34> 35> 72, 73> 81,
190
authority 54
baboons 137
Baker, S.J. 154, 178
Bateson, W. 261, 271
behaviourists, American 215,
266, 269
belief and conduct 99- 1 05
Belloc, Hilaire 253-5, 264-
5,268
benzine 90-1
Bergson 127
Bethell 90
biology 109-110, 165, 174,
186-7, r 96-8, 218, 231,
254-5> 257, 260-1, 269,
272, 275, 279
birth-control 110,221
Black, Davidson 147-8
Blake, William 253-4
body, the human 117-18
Boyle 102
brain, evolution of the 1 57-8
breeding-seasons 1 39
British scientists 96
Browne, Sir Thomas 100-1
Bruce, David 275
carnivores 132
change, process of 40
changes, external 119-20
chimpanzees, 131-4, 136,
i 38-9* J 46 3 i57> *59> l6l ~5
chromosomes 174, ' 1767,
179-81
Church, the 53, 55
civilization 209, 213, 228,
233> 273-4. 276-7
coal 90-1
colour-blindness 180-1
common sense 53, 58
conditional reflexes 165-7,
170,215
Copernicus 58, 102
Dalton plan, the 262
Darwin 54, 56, 58, 109, 1 13,
124, 158, 164, 196, 233
Dawson 146
definition, limitations of 41
determinism 73-4, 75, 79,
85
282 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
dictatorship 216
disease, war against 258-9,
274-5
dog, sagacity of the 1 60
Dubois 144-5
dyes 9 1-3
economics 212-14, 269-70
Eddington, Sir A. 186-7,
271
education 38, 104-6, no,
207, 248, 250, 262, 278
Einstein 191
electricity 39, 41, 81, 118
electron, the 33, 34, 35, 73,
74, 80-4, 190
embryos 1 75-8
energy 41
engineering 273
environment 248
ether, the 102, 122
eugenics 1 83-5, 2 1 9-20, 259-
61, 269-70
evidence 34-5, 58
evolution 567, no, 114
experts, importance of 201-
2, 261
external world, the so-called
44
factory laboratory, the 92
facts 35, 75-6, 77, 79, 230
Faraday 39, 90, 221, 253-4
Fausset, H. FA. 269
fear 126
fertilization 1 75-9
Fisher, R. A. 219
fixity of belief 55
fossils 57, 141-5, 150
free-will 74, 75, 85, 247, 265
Freud 109, 215
Galileo 54
Gandhi 2 1 1
gas, coal- 90
genetics 220, 260-1
gibbons 131-4, 159
glands 167-70
gorillas 131, 133-4, ! 3 6
grasshoppers 1 74-5
haemophilia 180-1
Haldane, J. B. S. 269, 271,
274
Heidelburg jaw, the 145
Hertzian waves 120-1
historical evolution 38, 47,
55> U5
horse, the 142
Huxley, Aldous 229, 238,
259-61, 266, 268
Huxley, T. H. 57, 271
ideal human society, the 2 1 2
idealized laws 79
inbreeding 183
indestructibility of matter 4 1
induction 77
industrial laboratory, the 92-
3
industry and science 916
influences of social environ-
ment 36
infra-red light 122
institutions of Society 55
instruments 341-50
INDEX
283
Java man, the 145, 149
Jeans, Sir J. 186-7, *95
Jung 237
Kepler 54, 102
knowledge, accumulation of,
assured 34
knowledge, scientific 45, 225
227, 229, 272, 276, 279
Kohler, Professor 161-4
Landsteiner 137
language 47
language, scientific 43-5
Leibniz 102
lemurs 133
Levy, Professor 113, 172,
225, 232
liberty 263-4
life 113
life after death 72
light-waves 1 20-2
linkages in scientific research
69-70
living matter 112, 114, 115-
18, 121
Lodge, Oliver 254, 266
macaques 137
McClung, C. E. 174-5, 181
mammals 132
man
his limitations 35, 84;
his powers of perception
36 ; his social environment
36, 248-9; his ancestors
and historical background
37, 42 ; his false conception
of permanence 41 ; his
method of investigation 46 ;
and the idea of number 50;
and machinery 90, 252,
263 ; viewed objectively
111-12; brain of 115,157;
size of 116; sex features
of 123-4, 175; a gregari-
ous animal 126; as a
relative being 130; his
place in the animal king-
dom 132-40; and Men-
delian inheritance 181-2;
and truth 240, 279
mark, the 49-50
marmosets 133
mathematics 41, 49, 50, 187,
195-6, 226
matter 33, 41
measurements 52, 66, 82-3,
240
mechanics 74, 8 1 '
mechanization 89-90, 234,
241-50
Mendel 109, 173, 181-2
mental defective marriages
183-5
Miller, Hugh 57
mind, the human 127-8, 157,
159, 171, 192-3, 214, 225,
273
missing link, the 144
molecules 34
monkeys 1 33-40
name-sounds 48-9
natural selection 113-14,194,
232
Nature 58, 73, 79, 209-11,
226, 229, 232-3
284 SCIENCE IN THE CHANGING WORLD
Neanderthal men, the 142-
5> 150
Newton 74, 79, 81, 102
number 50
Old World monkeys 133-7,
'39
orang-utans 131, 133-4, Z 3^>
157
organization 203-5
Owen, Professor 151
Paley 196
Pasteur 275
Pavlov 128, 215
Pei, Mr. 148
Pekin skull, the 147-9
Perkin 91
physics 84-5, 109, 187, 226,
229, 237
Piltdown skull, the 145-7,
*49
prediction, scientific 77-8,
7-8o, 84-5
Priestley 1 02
primary and secondary quali-
ties of objects 1 88-9 1
primates 132-3
primitive instincts 152-7
progress 53, 186
prolongation of life 256-7
propaganda 214-15, 217-18
propeller, the aeroplane 62-
3>^4
psychology 129, 214, 218,
231* 2 3 6 > 272
public matters, operation of
science with 45-6, 47, 52,
75
quantum theory, the 75, 83-
4
radiation 34, 193
radium 41, 8 1
relativity 75, 191
religion and science 53, 55,
75
reproductive organs 170, 175
research 69, 92, 95
rodents 132
Ross, Alexander 100-1
Ross, Ronald 275
Ruskin 268
Russell, Bertrand 224, 238,
261, 268
Science
continual change and ex-
pansion of 33-5, 40, 42,
88-9, 271; evolutionary
setting of 38 ; and educa-
tion 38, 105-6; social
aspect of 39, 70, 71, 201;
language of 43~5>47; and
its concern with public in-
vestigation 45-7, 52, 75;
and name-sounds 48 ;
laboratory method of 39,
5* 92> 231, 232, 266;
objective process of 52;
and common sense 53;
the challenge of 53-8;
INDEX
285
lacking in mystery 73, 84 ;
and religion 53, 55, 75,
225, 230; and private be-
liefs 85 ; domestic ameni-
ties due to 86-7; co-
ordination with industry
91-6, and with civilization
276-7; as a serious factor
in cultural progress 97;
and man 192 et passim ;
achievements of 205 ; as
a means to ulterior ends
209, 2 1 1 ; and propaganda
217-18; unintended effects
of 222; relation to mind
and heart 224, 235, 238,
245; basic weakness of
229, 233, 236-7; and
mechanism 89-90, 234-5,
242-3, 246, 248-52, 268;
and medicine 254-6, 258-
9, 274-5; as learnt from
books 266; definition of
271-2; and the call to
youth 277-8
scientific instruments 35
scientific law 75-80, 84
scientific method, the 240-1
scientific society, the 206-7,
239 263
scientist, the
and his method 34, 41,
42, 47, 51, 67, 98-9, 224-5,
232 ; as a specialist 38-9 ;
as a revolutionary 54;
function of 71 ; and his
claim to be disinterested
230; and personal bias
231, 232
self-reproduction 112-14
senses, human 119-23
separation, scientist's method
of 39-40, 42
sex 123-4, i75-8i
size 116
social effect of the scientist's
labours 38
solar system, the 74
sounds 5 1
sound waves 121
Spearman 262
species 114
speech 158-9
sperms 1 75-9
Steam Age, the 88-9
sterilization, eugenic 185,
219, 270
superstition 102-5
Sutton, W. S. 181
tar, coal- 91
tariffs and biology 257
Tarsius 140
taste 123
Tolstoy 2 1 1
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4> 55-8
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ungulates 132
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X-rays 120-1
war 20 1, 204-5, 258, 274
wave-lengths, sound 120-2
Whiston 101
Whitehead Professor 190
Wilberforce, Bishop 57
will to live, the 125
Zero number, the
Zuckermann 1 39
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