Science and Faith: Part III:
The Medieval Synthesis and the Modern Fragmentation of Thought
Chapter 2
HISTORY HAS been defined as the "drift of culture," (28) and for the most part the word drift is appropriate since it implies a gradual change. It is convenient to divide history into epochs, but such divisions are not always meaningful. The flow of events goes on largely unbroken. Occasionally revolutions or wars mark the end of an age and serve as reference points, but more frequently the change occurs without too many people being aware of it at the time and only observing it concretely in retrospect. The passing of the old world view may not have been as sudden and as revolutionary to those who experienced the events which marked it as it seems to us now, and my description at the close of the last chapter is to this extent artificial. Yet it did come to an end: and the events which marked its breakdown can be examined with profit, because a new Synthesis is now being offered which parallels the Medieval one in many remarkable ways---and has, to my mind, reached a stage which is very close to that assumed by the Medieval Synthesis just before it began to break up. The causes of the collapse of the old world view were many and complex, some being internal and some external to it, but all had the same basic effect, undermining certain concepts fundamental to the integrity of the whole.
As an example of what I mean by internal causes, it may be recalled that man had been held to be central in God's creation. Since he lived on this earth, the earth itself was distinguished in a similar way. It was assumed on theological grounds to be at the center of the universe, and commonsense experience strongly supported this view, for it was "obvious" that the stars and the sun and moon circled the earth.
Aristotelian philosophy was seen to lend its support to this geocentric picture, and it was accordingly favorably received as being confirming of "the truth" and therefore inherently sound in itself. The test of truth, as always, was not experimental verification, but harmony.
We have already noted that in the eleventh century St. Anselm had believed that he might understand. But following him came Abelard seeking to understand that he might believe. This circumstance reflects a subtle change in the structure of thought which repositioned some of the older beliefs on a new base. This shift in emphasis from faith to reason had the effect of inverting the argument until it was held with equal assurance that since both reason (philosophy) and sense-experience supported the concept of an earth-centered universe and since man was on the earth, he must be central to all else and this fact proved his paramount importance. The conclusion was as before, but the premise had been changed.
Having once accepted this idea, it was inevitable that the theological view of man should be endangered the moment the earth's centrality was challenged, though the danger was not immediately apparent. (29)
As an example of what I mean by external causes, one may cite the following. Between A.D. 1200 and 1400, there occurred five events, each of which contributed in a specific way toward the weakening of the old world view and together destroyed it completely. These were the fall of Constantinople, the development of printing, the perfection of gunpowder, the discovery of the Americas, and the plague called the Black Death. (30)
The fall of Constantinople led to the migration back into Europe of educated Greeks who had preserved in Asia Minor the Western culture which had been eclipsed in Europe after the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410. It was virtually an intellectual blood transfusion.
The development of printing, using movable type, long known in the Far East, had the tremendous effect of making written texts available to the ordinary reader on a scale never before thought possible. The new learning and new ideas introduced by the Greek immigrants spread far more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case.
The perfection of gunpowder, also well-known but in a less effective form in China, had the result of bringing to an end the feudal system, since castles no longer formed the "safe retreats" they had for centuries. Lords and nobles began to find themselves dependent on armies, and this meant raising, hiring, and keeping soldiers; the fact of reciprocal dependency between nobles and common men meant the beginning of the end of serfdom and ultimately led to the rise of a middle class of free wage-earners.
To this stimulus was added the discovery of the New World, which not only enlarged man's domain and broke down some of ethnocentrism, but also led to such an increase in trade and in the accumulation of wealth that the benefits of heaven began to pale in contrast with the more assured benefits to be gained on earth.
Finally, the Black Death came as such a tragedy, so appalling in its effects upon the lives of so many millions of people, rich and sinner and saint, that faith in the benevolent order of things and God's sovereignty was severely shaken.
All these challenged a system that was too tidy to brook demand for adjustment or revision, too neat a bundle of questions and answers to perceive that they were no longer completely relevant, too cloistered to meet in open conflict with secular philosophies, too closely linked to the privileged classes to suit a bourgeois community, and too unwilling to submit to test by experiment to appeal any longer to the scientific minds which were forming the new intelligentsia. The collapse seems to have been sudden, almost like the instant disappearance of peace when total war is declared.
Theology as a Queen was deposed and her right to arbitrate denied in one area after another. The autonomy which each discipline began to claim for itself was not merely the rejection of the guidance of theology but even of any need to recognize interrelationships with other disciplines developing equally rapidly. The unity of knowledge was lost, and the loss was scarcely even noted. This autonomy expressed itself in the development within each discipline of a language and terminology appropriate to itself alone. While this had the effect of removing correctives which each science had once exercised upon all the others, it did have, however, the effect of greatly accelerating the extension of knowledge and of understanding within each branch of learning. And with greater understanding some greater control.
Thus came about a situation in which, as the church with a sense of futility became less and less effective and steadily ground as a spiritual force, science continually gained ground and authority as a secular one. The theologians naturally set about the building of fences by seeking ways and means of limiting the freedom of the scientists. But the latter continued to perform more and more miracles for the common good as the church performed fewer and fewer, and its defenses were futile.
So successful was the scientific method in increasing man's dominion over nature that the use of reason alone and the replacement of faith by a growing skepticism became the order of the day. Not unnaturally the church saw this---or thought it saw this---as the greatest danger to man's spiritual well-being, a well-being which had hitherto depended upon an unquestioning faith. Although the new knowledge led to a great increase in human productivity and the rise of a middle class which in turn favored the spread of Protestantism, even Protestants looked upon the new rationalistic attitude as being very dangerous to faith. Not only the Council of Trent, which was a Roman Catholic conclave, but even Luther himself speaking for Protestants felt it necessary to protest against the use of reason.
The catechism of the Council of Trent (1545-63) has this statement:
He who is gifted with the heavenly knowledge of faith is free from an inquisitive curiosity; for when God commands us to believe He does not propose to have us search into His divine judgments, nor to inquire into their reasons and causes, but demands an immutable faith...Faith, therefore, excludes not only all doubt, but even the desire of subjecting its truth to demonstration.
While Luther defined reason as "that silly little fool, that Devil's bride, Dame Reason, God's worst enemy," he added: (31)
We know that reason is the Devil's harlot, and can do nothing but slander and harm all that God says and does. If, outside of Christ, you wish by your own thoughts to know your relation to God, you will break your neck. Thunder strikes him who examines. It is Satan's wisdom to tell what God is, and by doing so he will draw you into the abyss. Therefore, keep to revelation and do not try to understand.
Calvin, too, viewed the free inquiry of the Humanists as the supreme heresy of thought, so that---as Randall points out---because the Reformers scorned all science, the way was left open for science to assert its claim to complete autonomy. (32) The rift between faith and science widened rapidly, and the emergence of the New Humanism seemed about to provide the common man with an alternative religion much more amenable to the spirit of the times.
It thus came about that from the religious ordering of secular life which had once been the rule, there came to be a secular ordering of life---even of religious life. The purpose of education increasingly became the emancipation of man rather than the worship of God, and the goal of life was the creation of a heaven here on earth much better suited to man's enjoyment because it was entirely of his own design. Kenneth Walker commented: (33)
When we trace the history of theology and science...we find that they slowly diverged from each other and in the course of time became isolated departments of knowledge expressing contradictory views of the universe. As Hardwick has pointed out, the human mind has a faculty of creating prisons for itself, and eventually the scientific spirit incarcerated itself in a materialistic scheme of the universe which completely cut it off not only from religion but from all fruitful speculation concerning man's nature. In like manner the self-sufficient pedantry of the church scholars had the effect of enclosing religion in a rigid casing of thought, which completely isolated it from all the new discoveries being made by the scientists. Insulated from each other's ideas and pitifully satisfied with the sufficiency of their respective beliefs, it was inevitable that in the end scientists and teachers of religion should come into conflict.
Although it is true that officially institutes of higher education adopted this apartheid policy, in the sphere of private life there are notable examples of scientists who maintained a more balanced view and did not hesitate to declare their faith while at the same time propounding their scientific views. The Royal Society in its founding membership contained not a few such men. As Coulson pointed out, a certain wholeness of outlook in the matter of science and religion lasted well into the beginnings of modern science. He wrote: (34)
Our Royal Society was founded in 1645, and to its growth and importance much of the dissemination of knowledge, without which science cannot live, is due. Among its members were John Wilkins and Seth Ward, both bishops; John Wallis, doctor of divinity and mathematician; Robert Boyle, the chemist who bequeathed the sum of £50 a year to found a lectureship for "proving the Christian religion against notorious infidels," and chiefly recommending his dear sister (his executor) to "the laying of the greatest part of the same" (i.e., his personal estate) "for the advance or propagation of the Christian religion among infidels"; John Ray, the founder of systematic botany and zoology, whose great book The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation exercised a profound influence among thinking people and was even used in a shortened form by John Wesley in training his traveling preachers; Christopher Wren, astronomer and architect of St. Paul's Cathedral; as well as the greatest figure of them all, Isaac Newton, who claimed (though we might perhaps disagree with him in this) that his theological studies were at least as important as his strictly scientific ones. It may be true that religious discussions as such were not permitted at meetings of the Society; but in their second charter, the Fellows were commanded to direct their studies "to the glory of God the Creator, and the advantage of the human race." And any doubts regarding the relation between the Society and the Church were to be dispelled by its first historian, Sprat, who wrote:
"I do here in the beginning most sincerely declare that if this design (of a Royal Society) should in the least diminish the reverence that is due to the doctrine of Jesus Christ, it were so far from deserving protection that it ought to be abhorred by all the politic and prudent, as well as the devout, part of Christendom."
Coulson rightly observes, "Of course, we know how the separation developed; it was the inevitable result of the atomization of knowledge."
University life gradually ceased to be a totality of studies pursued with a single object and harmoniously integrated into a satisfying world view. Centers of learning in time became what might far better be termed "multi-versities" than universities, (35) the only unifying factor being juxtaposition of faculties and simultaneity of lectures. What cohesion there was remained not because of any overriding feeling for a need of integration but purely for administrative convenience. (36) Such a blanket statement is, of course, too broad a generalization to be true in every case, for the breakdown of the "ideal" in many of the older universities led to the establishment especially in the New World, of new universities (Harvard, for example) which had as their original objective the restoration of the old ideal with its central religious emphasis. (37) But the tide of events was already running too swiftly, and one by one even the newer universities, like the older ones, departed from the goals that had inspired their founding.
Smaller denominational and nondenominational universities and colleges sprang up to protest against the complete divorce of the new knowledge and religious faith, but unfortunately these small universities were and have continued to be at a tremendous disadvantage. By their very insistence on the importance of faith they have often had to surrender much of the kind of recognition from the scientific community that is essential to their growth. They suffer from lack of top-flight staff, not having funds for high salaries; exceptionally brilliant students fearing inadequate stimulation are discouraged from enrolling; and funding agencies are apt to withhold grants, suspecting the absence of a sufficiently competent staff or sophisticated facilities for research in depth. There are probably exceptions, but it seems largely to be a losing battle unless there is some compromise of faith.
As universities have become multi-versities, so the universe itself has ceased to be a universe in the Medieval sense and has become instead an unimaginably great aggregate of bits and pieces, apparently purposeless in itself, of which our little earth is an inconsequential fragment, and man himself an even more insignificant by-product. This last is the saddest and most disturbing of all the consequences, yet those who accept it seem to do so with a strange kind of enthusiasm. (38) Thus George Gaylord Simpson wrote in his Meaning of Evolution: (39)
Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the order Primates, akin nearly and remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material.
On another occasion the same author wrote with even more enthusiasm: (40)
There was no anticipation of man's coming. He responds to no plan and fulfills no supernal purpose. He stands alone in the Universe, a unique product of a long unconscious, impersonal, material process, with unique understandings and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and indeterminable forces but his own master.
It is a heroic creed in the light of recent history, yet Simpson is merely working out to its logical conclusion a philosophy which rejects God. When there are no supernatural forces at work, then every appearance of what has hitherto been termed a spiritual life must be reduced to the level of physics and chemistry, perhaps ultimately to electrochemistry alone, and every appearance of transcendental purpose denied. Starting with an accidental by-product of natural forces, everything else must be supposed to have occurred as a result of the inherent properties of matter. This is not new. Democritus of Abdera (470 - 361? B.C.) explained the universe by a host of fortuitous circumstances, and Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500 - 428 B.C.) held that a single element must have somehow contained within itself the entire diversity to which it automatically gave birth in time. (41) Bertrand Russell wrote: (42)
That man is the product of causes which had no pre-vision of the end they were achieving: that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms: that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave: that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspirations, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins---all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
This pessimism is prevalent among modern authors. Not long ago Arthur Balfour expressed the same sentiment: (43)
The energies of our [solar] system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of universe will be for ever at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. "Imperishable monuments" and "immortal deeds," death itself and love stronger than death, will be as if they had not been. Nor will anything that is, be better or worse for all [that] the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless ages to effect.
It would have seemed utterly incredible to the Medieval mind that human beings could really accept and live by such a philosophy. And yet it is so. But there is evidence that just as the older view which had invited such an expansive exercise of faith and demanded little use of reason was ultimately destined to collapse, so now, we may discern that the modern view which depends so largely up reason and disallows the exercise of faith is also showing signs of its inadequacy. The human spirit cannot long survive a diet of such dry bread. A few years ago, Leslie Paul, with eloquence equal to that of Bertrand Russell, pictured Russell's world in the following way: (44)
The entire term of humanity is but a minute episode in a scarcely longer history of life on a cooling planet which for the most of its existence knew no life at all. And that planet in the infinite immensity of the universe is a tiny scrap of matter rushing with all other scraps---and from all other scraps---at colossal speed to heaven knows what destination in the curvature of space.
In no one knows what time, though it will be soon enough by astronomical clocks, the lonely planet will cool, all life will die, all mind will cease, and it will all be as if it had never happened. That, to be honest, is the goal to which evolution is traveling, that is the "benevolent" end of the furious living and furious dying...All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again. The final result...is to deprive it completely of meaning.
In his latest book, Simpson has two chapters devoted to an examination of why science has set out so rigidly to exclude the concept of purpose. (45) Basically his argument is that you cannot have purpose without a Purposer, and a Purposer introduces supernature, with which science cannot possibly deal by its own terms of reference. The faith of science, according to Howard Becker, is that the answer to any problem which it so far has been unable to resolve completely is simply "more science." (46) But science has been so successful in dealing with those limited aspects of experience to which it is restricted by its own catechism that the public has been led to assume that what science has ignored could in fact be denied altogether. (47) The scientist in turn, sharing in the spirit of the times, has ultimately come to support this view, so that an opinion has become very widely accepted which attributes to science an omnicompetence which it does not in fact have and did not originally claim. It enjoys competence by dealing only with part of the truth; and denying that there is any other kind of truth it claims omni-competence. In the meantime, no one is any longer disturbed when a paleontologist like Simpson speaks with a pompous infallibility certain philosophical issues which are entirely outside his field. On the contrary, the public is led to believe that what he has to say about the absence of purpose in the universe and man's position as accidental by-product of it has the same kind of absolute validity as his announcement about the size of some newly discovered prehistoric reptile. The Medieval Church made equally dogmatic statements which were similarly outside its competence to declare an opinion upon. And in precisely the same way, and for much the same reason, the common man was duly impressed: the tables have now been turned---but the practice is the same, and so is the effect.
Thus having rejoiced in his new liberation from the constricting world view which, while it imposed moral restrictions upon his behavior and thinking, at least gave meaning to life as a whole, man in time found himself largely free of restrictions---but also in a completely impersonal universe. It was not long before the entire absence of purpose or meaning in history proved intellectually disturbing, and efforts began to be made once again to reestablish meaning on some basis other than a theological one. (48) This reflected in attempts made to arrange history into cycles, to find in the successive rise and fall of nations and cultures a key which without introducing God into the picture, would still provide some kind of a "map" that would enable each contemporary culture to see its position in the march of events and to orient its thinking and behavior accordingly. The works of Vico, Petrie, Sorokin, Spenglei and Toynbee are all illustrations of this urge. To the extent that the controlling factor in the movement of history in each of their philosophies is strictly "deterministic" or "spiritual," to that extent various types of people have found them satisfying. (49) In the deterministic view, the controlling factors include such things as economics, climate, geography, genetic endowment, and natural resources. (50) Some have viewed history in cultural terms. Others like Toynbee have tended toward a more spiritual view in that they look upon the decay and collapse of a civilization as being caused by a breakdown in its moral life or a weakening of its spiritual vigor. On the whole, where the view has been predominantly deterministic, it has been more acceptable to scientifically minded people; where it has been related rather to values within the culture, it has been more acceptable to men of faith.
At any rate, these endeavors---and some of them have been tremendous works, massive in both scholarship and volume---are symptomatic of the need which man feels for some kind of faith in some kind of meaning and purpose in history. For most of us, a purposeless universe is not merely disquieting in the negative sense, but positively debilitating, undermining our sense of value in things which do not serve personally useful ends, and leading to a very unhealthy state of skepticism about "good" of any kind. Fromm wrote, "Another way of paralyzing the ability to think critically is the destruction of any kind of structuralized picture of the world." (51) This kind of negative effect---the absence of an integrated world view---is itself harmful. But the possession of one may or may not be satisfying. Benjamin observed, "Man achieves a satisfying life largely to the extent to which he is able to include the widest range of intellectual experiences with the minimum of conflict between any two." (52) A belief system that is compounded of mutually contradictory elements cannot survive; it must have an inner logical---rather, theological---consistency; it must have the power to create an integrating framework for all else.
Even among intellectuals where skepticism is a kind of habit of mind, there is a growing feeling that somehow the various branches of knowledge need re-integration, not merely because it would be convenient from the educational point of view, but because it is felt that the present situation imposes positive limitations on the practical use to which our accumulated knowledge can be put. These limitations, therefore, relate not merely to the desirability of achieving a true education in the classical sense, but even the more practical object of using the information to make further advances in control or in understanding. It is becoming apparent that a too rigid departmentalization has had the curious effect of making us ignorant, not because we know too little, but because there is too much to be known. The individual is no longer able to adjust to the growth of knowledge sufficiently to integrate it.
While there is no doubt that the lot of the average man has physically improved and culturally his opportunities are now immeasurably greater then they were in the Middle Ages, in the matter of controlling individual behavior the advance has not been so spectacular. The social sciences appeared to benefit tremendously by the new spirit of free inquiry and indirectly have sought increasingly to make use of the methods and tools which have contributed so greatly to man's control over his environment. At first, there was unbounded optimism that human nature was perfectible by scientific methods. Evolutionary philosophy encouraged this belief, for if man had reached his present high estate as the result of forces which operated in the absence of any deliberate and conscious attempt on man's part to improve himself, how much more might be achieved by effort consciously directed toward an end so desirable. Melvin Rader observed: (53)
At the dawn of modern science, man was immensely confident that its uses would be beneficent. The great medieval seer, Roger Bacon, was fired by a deep enthusiasm for the new world that science would create. It would reveal the past, present, and future, and secure the vast improvement and the indefinite prolongation of life! Similarly such Renaissance thinkers as Giordano Bruno, Leonardo da Vinci, and Thomasso Campanella, harbingers of the modern scientific and technological revolution were intoxicated with its infinite promise. Such optimism found ample expression in the work of Francis Bacon who believed that science would enlarge the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible---and in writing the New Atlantis jubilantly imagined the Utopia he believed scientific progress would achieve.
Of course, such a view is greatly encouraged by belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which held that the gains made in each generation would be accumulated so that each individual would stand on the shoulders of his predecessors. Sir Alfred Zimmern expressed it: (54)
Up to about fifty years ago, it was the accepted view among biologists that acquired characters-that is to say, physical and mental characteristics which a living organism took on during its own life time-were transmitted from one generation to another together with the original inherited makeup. It was this belief which enabled the early social scientists to have so confident a view about the social progress of mankind. They thought that biology gave them the authority to look forward to a steady process of development in human nature under the influence of a rapidly improving environment.
Improved conditions would lead to an improvement in human nature, and this in its turn would lead to a further improvement in conditions. Thus, by a process akin to that of compound interest, the gains would be increasingly multiplied on both sides until, in the course of a very few generations, the blessings of Western Civilization would be extended over the face of the globe, and man everywhere in the ancient East and in primitive Africa would be ready to live harmoniously under western institutions, and in the words of Tennyson, echoing the popular science of his day, to accept the authority of a single government, "the parliament of man," and "federation of the world."
Tennyson was influenced, like most men of his day, by Herbert Spencer's philosophy which, it should be pointed out, preceded the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, just as Tennyson's In Memoriam did---a fact surprising to many who are not aware of it. In his Social Statics, Spencer has a chapter entitled, optimistically, "The Evanescence of Evil." In this appears the following passage, which reflects the prevailing sentiments of the day: (55)
The influence that as advancement has hitherto been the rule, it will be the rule henceforth, may be called a plausible speculation. But when it is shown that this advancement is the working of a universal law; and in virtue of that law it must continue until the state we call perfection is reached, then the advent of such a state is removed out of the region of probability into that of certainty. If anyone demurs to this, let him point of the error.
Progress therefore is not an accident but a necessity...As surely as a blacksmith's arm grows large and the skin of a laborer's hand becomes thick...as surely as a passion grows by indulgence and diminishes when restrained...so surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man become perfect.
Perhaps one more quotation may be apropos, this time from Kenneth Walker, who wrote: (56)
The nineteenth century was an age of great expansion, of ever widening horizons and of unfounded confidence in the steady progress of humanity. It was believed that under the guidance of Science men were advancing swiftly towards a not too distant millennium.
And finally, a summary statement which shows how progress was to some extent identified not so much with improving human nature as with improving man's lot, in the firm belief that complete mastery of the cosmos would guarantee the improvement of man himself. This mastery was to result from "understanding," and by understanding was meant the reduction of everything to fundamental principles. Thus Andre Schlemmer wrote: (57)
To the scientist of, say, the end of the nineteenth history, the palace of science was to be an edifice the completion of which was merely a matter of time. The framework had been designed, some of the rooms were ready, some were only waiting to be furnished; on the other hand, some parts of the building were just having their foundations laid out but one could already have an idea of what the whole would be. The principles of conservation of energy and of matter were making the substance of the world under study materially solid and reliable, and the laws of physics were relatively simple and coherent. The atomic theory and the laws of thermodynamics gave a good account of what chemistry had recorded.
The discoveries in organic chemistry on the one part, and in biology on the other, made it possible to expect the reduction of the latter science to the terms of the former. Some striking experiments in psychophysiology, joined to the discovery of the localization of a few cerebral activities, gave the hope, soon transformed into belief, that psychology might be a part of physiology.
Evolution gave an account of the passage from elementary to human life, and history was explaining sociology itself by the action of economic and psychological facts. The whole world would soon be explained by a system of sticks and strings.
When Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in print in 1858, it was sold out almost in a matter of hours. Darwin himself seems to have been surprised, but his surprise is really only in keeping with a trait in his character which showed up in an odd lack of awareness of how much his own thinking was influenced by other people. It has often been said that ideas are born of the times and that the credited originator merely acts as a vehicle for the idea to find its own expression. (58) Calverton in his introduction to The Making of Man observed: (59)
The very simultaneity with which Darwin and [Alfred Russell] Wallace struck upon the theory of natural selection and the survival of the fittest was magnificent proof of the intense activity of the idea at the time. Every force in the environment, economic and social, conspired to the success of the doctrine.
In the University of Chicago Darwin Centennial Celebrations, a paper was presented by A. L. Kroeber on this very point, and he puts the matter in perspective, saying: (60)
There is a sort of huge disproportion between Darwin's specific contribution to Science...and the overwhelming effect which the establishment of this purely biologic principle [of natural selection] came to have on total science. There was evidently a particular historic concatenation in the world's thought which enabled Darwin's discovery to trigger off consequences so great.
Man, it seemed, had at last discovered the unifying principle he sought which---when applied across the board, not merely in zoology---would bring order into man's intellectual life. Tremendous excitement followed, because it seemed to many that a satisfying and rational world view might, after all, be possible without any need for even an "absentee" God, though Darwin himself hesitated to go this far at first. The word evolution became a household term, an open sesame to every process, and the key to all understanding. As Susanne Langer has pointed out, there are times when the very coining of a word seems to be all that is required to start vast new trains of thought and to set the mind free to explore in an entirely new way. (61) It is almost like the invention of a research tool such as the telescope or the electron microscope.
Where it had been sufficient in Medieval times in the face of any mystery merely to refer back to God, it now became necessary in the same situation merely to refer to evolution. Art, language, technology---everything began to be interpreted in this new light and history reconstructed accordingly. The determination to apply this concept universally created an intellectual atmosphere which--just as nature abhors a vacuum--equally abhorred the idea of discontinuities or exceptions. Once the concept had taken hold, it became consuming passion, in the life sciences in particular but in the physical sciences as well, to construct what Arthur J. Lovejoy has described as "the Great Chain of Being." (62)
The underlying principle here is that from the appearance of the very first atom to the final annihilation of all matter, if such a thing were ever to happen, one ought ideally to be able to establish a series of natural links from event to event which involved no supernature and no gaps whatever, not even the kind of gaps which would analogously be represented by discrete steps up an incline. This was no stairway, and much less a ladder---but a smooth incline, the stages not being perceptibly separated from one another. Of course, there were limits to this, and these limitations were freely acknowledged. For example, it did not seem likely that after the appearance of the first atom and before the appearance of the second one there would be a series of fractions of an atom in process of formation though even this is today being proposed. (63) But as far as possible everything was to be joined to everything else with no discontinuities. And it became a common past time to establish things in series---evolutionary series, that is. The simple always preceded the complex. The process of complexification was a natural one inherent in things themselves. Whenever two nearly related objects were juxtaposed, there was an irresistible temptation to put in the link between them. As Lovejoy says, for example, there was tremendous excitement when the polyp hydra were first identified as a link between plant and animal life. (64) And similarly biologists achieved great satisfaction when a link appeared to have been discovered (in archaeopterix) between birds and reptiles.
The "missing link," which was paramount to the whole system---the link between animals and man was predicted with such assurance because it was so necessary for the completion of the system that no one was really surprised when it appeared to be found in so-called fossil ape-man: Piltdown, for example. Indeed, that Piltdown Man proved so successful a forgery was only because those who believed in the "Modern Synthesis," as Huxley called it, accepted uncritically almost anything that was concordant with it. It was exactly what had happened in the Medieval one. The intellectual climate of both is the same.
But there have remained certain missing links of a quite critical nature, which tend to be hopefully minimized but yet persist. These are (1) the link between matter and no matter, i.e., the origin of matter itself, (2) the link between dead matter and living matter; (3) the link between man and the other primates; and (4) the link between what is merely consciousness and what is self-consciousness.
Considering these briefly, we have first the origin of matter. Failing all other solutions, it would seem that this problem has been skirted by suggesting, as Hoyle has done, that there "never was no matter," (65) that matter is eternal, and that the universe is everlastingly regenerating itself. But it seems to me that to say that matter has always been there is merely postponing the question of where it came from. We can no more conceive of the infinity of matter than we can of the sudden creation of it ex nihilo. Both require an exercise in faith which is scarcely supported by any kind of mental picture of what is involved. One is neither more nor less reasonable than the other.
With respect to the second missing link, it was firmly believed that Pasteur had once for all settled the question as to whether life could appear spontaneously. Since this demonstration had been made by the scientific method, it did not seem that it could be challenged. But it is being challenged now---a circumstance which illustrates what has been appropriately called the "implacable offensive of science." It is challenged by the discovery that in a laboratory environment it is possible artificially to create a situation, such as could have very well existed in the past, which permits the synthesis by natural forces of certain of the building blocks that distinguish living from dead matter. (66) These discoveries have led biologists to believe that life could have arisen purely by accident. It is the nature of things, they say, that anything which can happen will happen inevitably if one has enough time.
Concerning the third link, it may be said that it has been "found" many times, but further knowledge has invariably lessened the certainty that such finds really are the links sought. Man has not been completely defined yet, and although he is always looked upon as a unique animal in a class by himself, it is not so easy to define wherein his uniqueness lies. There is general agreement that his possession of language and his powers of abstraction are together decisive factors, but how is one to determine whether or not fossils possessed either of these things? Every effort to derive human language by some evolutionary process from the so-called language of animals has failed, and the first people to admit this fact today are the linguists themselves. (67) Nevertheless, the feeling persists that human language is merely an extension, and most people are persuaded that in a rather nebulous way they could conceive of the stages in the process. Thus, even here there is much wishful thinking that the Great Chain can yet be completed. These three links from no-matter to matter, from dead matter to living matter, and from animal to man are therefore optimistically believed to be well on the way to resolution.
And finally, there is the fourth link-which is more disturbing, since it is of such a nature that it is hard to conceive of any experiment which could be designed to resolve it. Superficially, the possession of self-consciousness does not seem to be essentially different from the possession of consciousness, and yet in fact it is: every line of research so far explored has only strengthened the view (1) that man alone possesses it and no other animal, and (2) that to its possession must be attributed all of civilization. Man's every thought and every word is ultimately dependent upon his powers of abstraction and his use of language, both of which are universally considered to be dependent in turn upon the possession of self-consciousness. Indeed, the very existence of science results entirely from this unique faculty. How did it arise? The point is worth examining.
The consciousness of creatures other than man is evidently not a lower form of self-consciousness but something qualitatively different, though perhaps sharing some element of it. Both involve awareness, and therefore both involve the central nervous system. Yet animals with no effective brain (decerebrated) perform many functions, (68) including the raising of young, which would seem to demand consciousness but which, it is reasonably sure, they do not possess in this mutilated condition. Even decerebrate humans show evidences of something which looks exactly like consciousness. Man has no way of knowing what "pure" animal consciousness is; when he thinks about the subject, he becomes conscious of consciousness in his own person and in this process becomes self-conscious. The evidence that animals do not have this self-awareness is extensive and involved: it is one of the few conclusions resulting from research in the behavioral sciences on which, as far as I know, there is virtually unanimous agreement.
So we have to account for a new thing in the natural order. If consciousness is awareness and if awareness is a form of nerve irritability and if the activity which accompanies awareness can be performed to an astounding degree as a kind of closed-circuit automated reflex, then it might be possible to derive consciousness from matter itself as a kind of specialized electrical activity. J. B. S. Watson and the Behaviorist School are really doing just this.
But self-consciousness is a step further: in this instance matter does not merely respond to stimuli, but actually becomes aware of its own inclination to respond, which is a very different thing. "Matter has become conscious of itself," as Mascall has put it. (69) And by so doing, it becomes possible for it deliberately to delay or check its own response. This delay is what makes man a freely acting creature, liberated from the chains which bind action to reaction and characterize all instinctive behavior. It is the supreme gift which Huxley is at pains to account for, but which he still wishes to call an accidental "acquisition," like sight or hearing or any other of the senses that are supposedly traced naturalistically to some inherent irritability in matter. He has spoken of it as "a glorious paradox" (70) that what is to be regarded as an essentially purposeless mechanism after one thousand million years of blind and automatic operation has finally generated freedom of choice as one of the attributes of our own species and in so doing has, as he expressed it, "superseded itself" as the blind thing that it once was. (71)
The evolutionists do not hesitate to derive sight and hearing from something that was in an earlier stage of evolution "not quite sight or hearing but incipiently so." One step further back, they propose, we find merely a "sensitive area"---photosensitive or pressure sensitive, as the case may be. Going back a step further still, we have only an aggregate of otherwise normal body cells that nevertheless happen to have the potential of becoming in time sensitive in these ways. Further back still, these cells are indistinguishable from all other cells, as indeed they appear to be at one stage in the embryo. The fact is, then, that these people are arguing for an unbroken chain in the process which "tends" of itself to move toward higher organization and capabilities entirely without the introduction of any new element or force. It is hoped to fill out the links not only between species of animals, but between the faculties they possess and the cells which structure these faculties, and even the atoms which constitute these cells.
In short, vision and bearing and all the other senses are merely terminal phases of capacities inherent in matter from the start, requiring only time and the right forces to "let them emerge." Thus arose the power of irritability---and of awareness---and therefore so also of consciousness. It is really not mysterious at all. All mystery is explained away by using the magic word evolution. Primitive people have long believed that the power to understand is dependent merely upon a knowledge of how to use the Magic Word!
In a way, it may be said that this movement toward the "reduction" of all phenomena associated with living things began with a manifesto presented to the world by three men: (72) Carl Ludwig (1816 - 1895), who taught most of the great physiologists of the world who were active in the latter part of the nineteenth century; Emil du Boris-reymand (1818 - 1896), the founder of electrophysiology; and Hermann von Helmholtz (1812 - 1894), who needs no introduction. Here in essence is what they agreed upon: "All the activities of living material, including consciousness, are ultimately to be explained in terms of physics and chemistry." This manifesto was received with varying degrees of interest. It was profoundly influential in Russia as the result of the studies of I. M. Sechenov (1829 - 1905), one O. Ludwig's pupils who demonstrated the physical and chemical factors altering the activity of the nervous system.
Later on, this philosophy was to influence profoundly the thinking of Bertrand Russell, who wrote: (73)
The evidence, though not conclusive, tends to show that everything distinctive of living matter can be reduced to chemistry, and therefore ultimately to physics.
The fundamental laws governing living matter are, in all likelihood, the very same that govern the behaviour of the hydrogen atom, namely, the laws of quantum mechanics...In the chain of events from sense organ to muscle, everything is determined by the laws of macroscopic physics.
It seems that once an idea has been accepted by enough people of importance it becomes self-perpetuating, being thereafter accepted by newcomers to the field not because it has been demonstrated by the scientific method but because of the weight of authority behind it. Now and then some outstanding scientist in the field may raise a question---as J. B. S. Haldane has done in this particular instance---but on the whole the doctrine, once it has hardened, tends only to be hardened still further by each successive generation. The unbelievable can be stated in such a way as to make it sound perfectly reasonable.
In a recent article in the British journal Nature, Ponnamperuma arrives at the conclusion that "life itself is only a special though complicated property of matter and that au fond there is really no difference between a living organism and lifeless matter." (74) Wood Jones observed that if you poke a corpse you can predict what will happen, but if you poke a live body you can't---and this unpredictability is a basic difference! But given enough information, Huxley might have replied, "This unpredictability will disappear."
This is one of the great goals of all science. Ralph Gerard observed, "Science aims to translate experience into general laws of predictive value." (75) It is true that in lowly forms of animal life prediction is more successful than in the higher forms, and that in the higher forms some prediction is still possible. But in man the method which has allowed prediction to be made elsewhere does not seem to have worked very well. Indeed, as Susanne Langer has observed, the failure of the method of the exact sciences to provide really vivifying leads to research in the social sciences may be evidence that they cannot actually be applied. (76)
In a paper relating science to sociology, Isaiah Bowman, the president of Johns Hopkins University, summed up the contributor of the former to the latter in the following way: (77)
It is a clever, cynical and hard-bitten world that science is making, one in which the idealistic and the spiritual are bound to have a diminishing place. Viewed against a background of classical education, science has been a disadvantage to our society.
If the most important questions of mankind are those concerning spiritual relations with one another and with God, then science is not to be taken seriously. Through dazzling discovery and successful practical application science gives a sense of power which is both demoralizing and dangerous..
Science has taught us analysis, but we have had as yet no large scale and equally successful synthetic constrictions that bear on human conduct.
The successes of science have largely resulted by treating nature as a machine. The assumption is then made that because man is part of nature, he too is essentially a machine---and therefore ought to be treated the same. Unfortunately, the method has not proved successful: it has merely led to his disappearance as a person so that it is no longer "man" that is being treated.
Thus it appears that in the case of man we are dealing with something more than merely an aggregate of matter. Thorpe has pointed out that Huxley himself has come a long way from the old view of the animal as merely a machine and has been driven to assent to the possibility that all living substance has what, for the moment, must be called "mind-like" properties. (78) This is perhaps why he took such a favourable attitude toward the work of Teilhard de Chardin, who attributed "mind" to the whole cosmos, to every particle in it, without admitting to a pantheistic view of it. (79) It is a strange thing to see Julian Huxley recommending the work of a theologian, as he did when he wrote the introduction to The Phenomenon of Man, but necessity as well as adversity makes strange bedfellows.
It is a long way from pure materialism to the admission that the very first atoms had a kind of mind-like component and "knew" what to do from the beginning, even though the knowing was a very lowly process. But to suggest that they had a kind of self-consciousness is to imply that they not merely knew what to do, but knew they were doing it! It is not simply a matter of admitting they possessed consciousness in some lowly form, but even self-consciousness. If this is not so, then self-consciousness is an intruder originating outside the system and not merely a result of the unfolding of the potential of matter itself. But such an intrusion cannot be allowed, and Huxley is thus virtually forced to say that man "is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself"! (80) It is amazing what words will do---and how easily they can gloss over a fatal flaw in an argument
In The Great Chain of Being, Arthur O. Lovejoy traces the attempts which have been made in the past to link all forms of life in an unbroken chain by introducing an infinite number of intermediate stages wherever there were apparent discontinuities. These links were demanded between species, of course, and between the non-living and the living. There can be no jumps. The connections must form a smooth slide. The same is required between unconsciousness and consciousness. As Lovejoy points out, "paripsychism" was the view that there is some kind of consciousness, some form of animatedness, some "soul" in everything---atoms, stones, plants, animals, man, angels, and God alike. It is a question of degree.
Consciousness is not considered to be an emergent property or function which is very quietly but very abruptly "there" in sentient matter, but must of necessity be assumed to have been existent at a very low level even before it was "manifested" anywhere. This has been termed the "retrotensive" concept, which holds that "whatever is empirically found in or associated with the more complex and highly evolved natural entities must inferentially be read back into the simpler and earlier ones." (81) It has been argued that there are but two views possible: Consciousness is inherent in all matter, even in atoms, or it has been introduced from outside.
In answer to Ponnamperuma, Professor Lawden wrote subsequently (also in Nature) that he felt the real problem had been skated around and not really faced up to at all. Thus he observed: (82)
For many years the evidence has been strongly in favour of the view that there is no difference between a living organism and lifeless matter and, in any event, experience in every field of science suggests powerfully that nature vs. a unity which can be divided into categories for human convenience, but that we must never lose sight of the fact that the boundaries so introduced are man-made and possess no counterparts in reality...
Nature seems to satisfy a principle of continuity, so that the marking of dividing lines on her fabric may throw into relief some features of the pattern but it inevitably distorts the reality.
This principle of continuity is exemplified as the smooth gradation of forms from the fundamental particles to ourselves, thus constituting a hierarchy at no level of which can a clear dividing line between the living and dead be distinguished.
Lawden then went on to say that the belief that even human behavior can be adequately explained by the laws of physics would no longer be challenged by many, yet he expressed some doubts as to whether the consciousness which is his brain---i.e., self-consciousness---can really be so accounted for. As he put it: (83)
I fail to understand how [self] consciousness could ever arise in any matter system how ever complex. A system of particles, each of which possesses the known physical characteristics of electrical charge, spin, etc., might very well be designed to behave like a human being but nut to experience consciousness as human beings undoubtedly do.
We may perhaps hope to explain human behaviour, but our experience of this behavior will remain unaccounted for [emphasis mine].
This question of self-consciousness was the subject of a paper by Seymour S. Kety, entitled "A Biologist Examines the Mind and Behaviour." (84) He first points out that machines can be built or can be designed which will evaluate and discriminate, learn from experience, and even adapt to changing situations, so that it seems possible that an electronic brain could be made which would simulate human behaviour. Yet "there remains one biological phenomenon...for which there is no valid physiochemical model and (or so it seems to me) little likelihood of developing one; this is the phenomenon of consciousness." The author uses the word consciousness, but the context of the paper as a whole shows that he really has in mind self-consciousness. Thus subsequently he quotes A. E. Fessard (Brain, Mechanisms and Consciousness, 1954) as having said,
"Momentary distributions of patterns of excitatory or inhibitory state have been proposed...as the basis for conscious experience; but what makes a pattern 'conscious' of its own patterning remains an irritating problem."
Kety then discusses the electro-physico-chemical basis of mental activity and shows that the total energy of the process of thinking can be measured in metabolic terms and expressed as a power requirement equivalent to twenty watts. Experiments are described which show that the "difference between normal consciousness and the depths of coma is only a matter of seven or eight watts." He adds, "Now that we have an energy equivalent for thought I'm not at all sure this proves the physical nature of consciousness."
Much of his own research has apparently been directed toward the determination of the metabolic cost of various types of abnormal mental activity, research which must have provided much reason to encourage the view that consciousness is "nothing but" an electrochemical process.
This leads Kety into a brief discussion of the mechanistic view of behavior. After quoting Claude Bernard to the effect that "determinism thus becomes the foundation of all scientific progress and criticism," he concludes:
Although I share this faith, I cannot avoid pointing out that it is faith rather than proof which forms the basis of this Olympian generalization.
It is my awareness of my own behavior that is the new thing crucial to the whole issue. Whence did this self-consciousness arise? The current mechanistic view is quite unable to account for it. I have a mindfulness of my own mind; because I have, I also possess the power to explore the ways in which it could have arisen. But this possession also engenders certain intellectual needs, leading me to search for my relationship to all the other existences around me which seem to lack self-awareness entirely and consequently enjoy a kind of harmony among themselves which I do not share in---yet which I often envy.
Man somehow stands outside the rest of Creation, able to contemplate both it and himself, and able also to ponder the meaning of his own strange unrelatedness to it. The psalmist, too, asked "What is man?" (Ps. 8:4). But he saw the question as part of a larger one with another dimension to it, the fact that God has taken special notice of him---indeed, in the Incarnation, has "visited" him in His own Person. God the Creator took upon Himself, not the form of animals nor the form of angels, but the form of man, thus creating a bond between Himself and man that is unique in Creation. It was because this fact was fully recognized in the Medieval world view that it still appears to have been so remarkably satisfying for all its faults. It viewed man, not merely as a creature of God and therefore part of the rest of God's creation, but as a creature so uniquely related to Him as to stand apart from all other creatures and with a unique destiny. It was natural to look upon all else, under God, as existing for his special benefit. The purpose of the universe was related to this God-to-man kinship. The meaning of everything was therefore found by reference to a point outside the system itself, the unique relationship between God and man, both of whom transcend the ordinary limits of time and space by which the rest of nature is bound. The modern world view denies this reference point and being therefore a closed system of cause and effect, cannot even "criticize" itself sufficiently to observe its own logical weakness and philosophical inadequacy. (85)
Man's mind works in such a way that it is pointless to speak of the universe as having a "purpose" unless it is a purpose which primarily has as its end something that concerns man himself. Some other purpose---say, to lead to a breed of super-animals other than man---still makes it, for him, an entirely unsatisfactory process.
Even most materialistic investigators admit that there certainly is every appearance of plan and purpose in nature. Thus Simpson in one of his more recent books agrees that "there are without any doubt directional forces in evolution." (86) And again "there is, or seems to be, an essential order or plan in spite of the great multiplicity. There seems, moreover, to be purpose in this plan." (87) Part of this purpose is observable in the phenomenon of pre-adaptation, by which is meant the appearance of a structure in an antecedent form which serves no purpose at the time but emerges in later forms as a useful organism. Again, to quote Simpson: (88)
There is little doubt that pre-adaptation does really occur...We shall see that pre-adaptation, with some expansion and modification of its significance, must be accepted...Earlier opinions that random pre-adaptation is an adequate explanation of adaptation were, however, quite unjustified.
Medawar gives as an example the fact that human beings are born with a thicker epidermis on the sole of the foot than elsewhere on the body. This is a pre-adaptation, for, as he points out, it can have served no purpose up to this time since the fetus is strictly treading water. (89) Throughout the history of life in the past, similar phenomena have been noted, the first evidences of a pre-adaptation often appearing a very long time before the organ began to serve a useful purpose---many, many generations later. The fact has so impressed one prominent paleontologist that he finds it impossible to account for it without introducing some "spiritual power which has planned and directed evolution." (90)
Yet at the same time, as we have already noted in several places, Simpson denies categorically that the appearance of man was anything more than an accident. So there is really no meaning to this kind of plan and purpose because the preparatory process itself, by not having man specifically in view, ceases to have any meaning for him beyond that of being academically interesting. If one is persuaded that the stage has been specifically prepared for oneself, then one's being on the stage has a quite different effect upon behavior than would the knowledge that no such preparations were made but that the stage just happened. In one view, man is fulfilling his destiny, but in the other he is merely taking over---and this quite by accident. By viewing the universe as a completely Creator-less phenomenon, man finds himself to be of no greater significance than the atoms out of which he is constructed. The answer to the question "What is man?" is not satisfying unless it has reference to the end for which he exists. If this end is merely to contribute to the acceleration of a hitherto blind process, it seems quite unrealistic to believe that such an end will provide a spring for action that requires sacrifice and devotion or calls forth the best in man.
It does not satisfy my mind, at any rate, because the super-man which Huxley envisages in the dim and distant future bears lit any relationship to me. This future creature is neither me in my children, nor me in my fellow man. Indeed, it will be a creature vastly superior and really quite unlike me. If it is not, then the "Huxley Plan" will have failed in its objective, which is to direct evolution deliberately into something higher. To provide me with the inspiration that is required to strive for something else than merely my selfish interests, I must have a goal that I can visualize and I must be convinced that the goal is worth sacrificing myself for. The "new revelation" makes no attempt to define the goal; it only seek assure us that there is one. This is not the stuff out of which convictions are made, and without convictions life is flat and dull indeed!
The displacement of the Medieval Synthesis in which "meaning" was achieved by relating man to God had led to a synthesis which men are no longer related to God nor even to one another, but only to the rest of the animal world at the best, and all other atoms in it at the worst. How is life to have any real significance in such an atmosphere?
In the old days, it is true that men were very tired because they had to work so hard. Today we are merely bored, which is far worse. We are bored because all real drama has gone out of life, so that we find ourselves searching frantically to alleviate our boredom---entering into drama synthetically in books, movies, theater, television, and even spectator sports. Lewis Mumford has vividly described how in Medieval times, in spite of what appears to us now; the even tenor and eventlessness of each day, man's life was really full of drama. He said: (91)
Every culture has its characteristic drama. It chooses from the sum total of human possibilities certain acts and interests, certain processes and values and endows them with special significance: provides them with a setting, organizes rites and ceremonies: excludes from the circle of dramatic response a thousand other daily acts which, though they remain part of the "real" world, are not active agents in the drama itself...
What was the essential drama of the Medieval Culture? It took place within the Church; it conceived the passage of sinning man through an evil and painful world, from which he might emerge through repentance into heaven, or sink through hardness of heart or confirmed mischief into hell. The earth itself was but a mean stopping place, a wayside tavern of ill fame, on the way to those other worlds. But nothing that concerned this drama was mean: on the contrary the Church, founded through an act of God, brought into the world constant reminders of the grace and beauty that was to come: though art and music might tempt men from a higher life, they also indicated its possibility, indeed its immanence. Life was a succession of episodes in man's pilgrimage to heaven: for each great moment the Church had its sacrament or its celebration. Beneath the active drama was the constant chant of prayer: in solitude or in company men communed with God and praised Him.
Even in Shakespeare's time, all the world was still a stage and all the men and women actors, each with his little part to play. Today man has been changed from an actor on a stage into an animal in a laboratory---and the laboratory has no Personal Director. Carl Becker ably summed up the situation when he wrote: (92)
It has taken eight centuries to replace the conception of existence as a divinely composed and purposeful drama to the conceptions of existence as a blindly running flux of disintegrating energy.
Admitting all its faults, this Medieval Synthesis must have more nearly satisfied man's spirit than our present one does, simply because the individual actors in the drama all had, and were sure they had, some place in the drama. The Modern Synthesis, by contrast, makes the individual virtually of no significance, and the drama in which he is acting out his little piece is essentially indifferent to whether he as an individual succeeds or fails in it. He even finds himself on the stage quite by accident. The common man in Medieval times must often have felt that he was little more than a puppet, but at least he had the assurance that there was a "Puppeteer" who was very much aware of his performance. The common man today often has the feeling of being merely a thing of circumstance, a feeling which is only heightened by the added suspicion that the puppeteer is "mindless chance."
Most of us are sufficiently aware of the wonders which are everywhere to be discovered in nature to feel that accident is not really adequate to account for them. We may give mental assent to a purely materialistic evolutionary philosophy, but emotionally we find it difficult to believe that the perfection of the eye or the ear or the hand, or the wing of a bird, or the mimicry of a butterfly or insect, or the radar of a bat arose purely by accident. Thus, to quote Medawar again: (93)
These are intelligible [doubts), but they are founded upon a misconception, namely, that evolution is a perfectionist process. The eye, for example, is beset by chromatic and spherical aberration, and is not correctly centered along its optical axis: Helmholtz, the grand master of physiological optics, said that an optician would be ashamed to make an instrument with such elementary physical faults.
Medawar then proceeds to a study of the imperfections of man, overlooking entirely the possibility that man became a fallen creature, defiled physiologically by generations of unnatural living. (94) As to the faults which may exist in the eye, for example, there are many authorities who would immediately challenge this statement as it stands. The fact is that, as in certain other organs, what may appear as "faults" can often be explained as necessary departures from a purely idealistically perfect form in order to gain certain advantages in operation which would have to be surrendered if the idealized form were to be adopted. In point of fact, perfection must always be defined not in some abstract mechanical terms, but in terms of suitability for function in the actual situation in which the mechanism must work. As an example, there are certain "faults" in the design of the human hand which make it uncommonly difficult to get the fingers warm again if they have once become severely chilled. But to meet this exceptional requirement, certain structural changes would be necessary which would almost certainly rob the fingers of some of their extraordinary powers of manipulation, as in playing a piano concerto. The Designer has to weigh the advantages of each gain and each loss. Sir Charles Bell wrote on the human hand in his famous contribution to the Bridgewater Treatises, and because of his reverent attitude, reading his essay can be almost an act of worship. (95) Modern essays on anatomy are apt to be very different, their main object being an excursion into a supposed evolutionary origin, which has quite another effect on the mind of the reader.
These two approaches to the study of an organ such as the hand may both be concerned among other things with the question of design in nature. But there is little doubt as to which of them will contribute most toward a philosophy which has the power of stirring men to action. The motive power in human affairs depends upon the goal which man sees for himself. Lewis Mumford rightly points out that "if society is paralyzed today, it is not for lack of means but lack of purpose." (96) Julian Huxley was very well aware of this and for some time busily underscored the idea that while everything in the past has occurred by accident, a creature has now emerged who can consciously direct the future. And this, he believed, is all that is needed to convert his Modern Synthesis into a proper substitute for the Medieval one. To this end he argued that (97)
man is enabled and, indeed, forced to view his destiny as the trustee, spearhead, or effective agent of any further evolutionary progress on this planet. He has been thrown up by the cosmic process as an instrument for the further carrying on of that process.
Huxley actually called this "the latest revelation" and appropriately (or otherwise) spoke of it all as part of the new "religion," adding: (98)
Further, insofar as an effective new belief system must have a religious aspect, it will doubtless need to await for the appearance of a prophet who can cast it into compelling form and shake the world with it.
We have spoken of the manner in which Medieval man because of his philosophy of life had a map upon which he could pinpoint his own position and relate himself to everything around him. With such a map he might be lost, for the map might be faulty, but he never suffered from the lost feelings which plague our own generation. Elsewhere, Huxley acknowledged man's need in this sense, for he said in his closing words: (99)
In the long run, our actions are related to our over-all picture, our map of reality.
Even an insect like a bee has to build up a three-dimensional map of the country round its hive to find its way about. It is in relation to the total picture of its surroundings that it steers itself in space.
But man's surroundings are enormously larger, and in them he has to steer himself in time as well as in space. That is why his map must be a four-dimensional one. A three-dimensional one will help him determine his position and chart his direction, but a four-dimensional one will also help him in choosing his destination.
In the volume from which this quotation is taken, Huxley set forth not only the "destiny" which he saw for man, but the means by which it is to be achieved. Evolutionary philosophy is summed up in the answer he gave to these two matters of great importance. As to the destiny, it is merely some higher animal form; as to the means, it is essentially eugenics. (100) It promises man the opportunity of being, in some remote descendant, a superior organism for a fleeting moment, after which he will cease to be. Huxley was persuaded that there can be no higher or more noble goal. (101) How strange that a man with intelligence and such tremendous learning should be so blind as not to see that his beloved theory has already been cast in the form of a religious faith and has indeed shaken the world, leading to a war and to barbarities and to the destruction of life and culture and property on a scale mankind hopes never to witness again. For Hitler was the child of Nietzsche, and Nietzsche was the child of Darwin, (102) and in Darwin this new faith was spelled out in a "scientific" form. But most of us will feel with Henry Margenau that although science has its vogue and its successes are impressive enough in its own field, "yet by itself it is powerless to mold the behaviour of men for good." (103)
In conclusion, we cannot do better than quote the words of E. T. Whittaker of the University of Edinburgh, who wrote: (104)
At the present time there is a movement in scientific circles aimed at securing for science a greater influence on human affairs and even calling for a re-founding of civilization on a scientific basis. But its advocates do not always understand that, as a necessary condition for the possibility of such a reform, Science must be re-integrated into a unity with philosophy and religion.
But does any religious view of the world accord sufficiently closely with reality that it is capable of providing the basic framework within which such a re-integration could be achieved? The question is, Can Christianity today succeed where Medieval Christianity failed?
References:
28. Drift of culture: a phrase coined, I think, by Edward Sapir.
29. This is clear from the fact that when Copernicus finally published his Book of Revelations in 543, it contained an introduction by Pope Clement VII, commending the work. This fact, underscored by Arthur Koestler in an article entitled, "The Greatest Scandal in Christendom," (Observer Weekend Review, London, 2 February 1964, p. 21), shows how unfounded is the common assumption that Galileo dared not at first publish his views openly for fear of Ecclesiastical censure. Koestler shows that Galileo's great fear was ridicule by his colleagues, professors of Bologna, Pisa, Padua, and elsewhere. Galileo admitted this in a letter to Kepler, from which Koestler quotes. The church did not see it initially as a challenge to its own beliefs.
30. Printing: a Chinese invention. See Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959, vol. IV, sect. 32.
Gunpowder: see also Needham, vol. I, p. 131 and elsewhere.
Black Death: 1348-50, causing the death of a third of the total population of Europe, according to Wallace K. Ferguson, A Survey of European Civilization, Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1943, p. 406.
31. Luther: as quoted by John H. Randall, ref. 10, p. 166.
32. Calvin: as quoted by John H. Randall, ref. 10, p. 166.
33. Walker, Kenneth, "Meaning and Purpose," Pelican Books, London, 1944, p. 28.
34. Coulson, C. A ., Science and Christian Belief, Oxford Univ. Press, 1955, p. 11.
35. Multi-versities: I believe I may be entitled to the claim of being the coiner of this word while at the University of Toronto in 1951. Among those of us who were at that time studying anthropology, it became an accepted term for the first time. I was interested to see it used so many years later by Claude Bissell in his report to the Governors and Senate of the U. of T., as reprinted in Varsity Grad., Annual Reports 1964, p. 18. And on page 39 of the same report, the situation which the term was designed to cover was summed up by a friend of very long ago, Prof. Roy Daniels of the University of British Columbia, when he said, "We...are committed to a great endeavor---the re-establishment of certainty amid doubts, of wholeness in the midst of fragmentation." Kenneth Boulding in the same connection wrote, "There is sting in the remark of a Roman Catholic friend of mine that a State University is a 'City of God' that is all suburbs; our innumerable specialties spread around the intellectual map in formless clusters, with only the most congested trickles of communication between them, and there seems to be no Centre which can relate one to the other" (Religious Perspectives of College Teaching: On Economics, Hazen Foundation, New Haven, 1952, p. 22). In Nature (7 February 1953, p. 244), reference is made to an institute specially designed to contribute to this integration.
36. Fragmentation for convenience: Conway Zirkle made this observation: "It is hardly feasible to list all the impediments to a proper integration of human knowledge. We have become so accustomed to viewing the universe in splintered bits that many of us really assume that it has a cellular structure and that each cell can be treated conveniently as if it were a pigeonhole. This view is widespread even if it is not held overtly. It is the view that college university administrators seem to favour, for it promises to simplify their always-too-complex problems. Whenever they can, they assign a single pigeonhole to the custody of the corresponding academic department. Thus, by increasing the number of departments, the large colleges and universities may, literally, cover the universe, neatly, completely, and without jurisdictional conflicts. And each savant on the faculty will know just where he stands. Well, the concept at least is orderly!" ("Our Splintered Learning and the Status of Scientists," Science, April 1955, p. 517).
37. Concerning the original ideal which led to the formation of universities, John H. Hallowell, professor of political science at Duke University, made this comment: "There is a great deal of talk among college and university teachers today about the importance of integrating our teaching, breaking across arbitrary departmental barriers and promoting interdisciplinary projects. But if we are to relate one subject to another it must be in terms of something which transcends them both. In religion, which is concerned with the whole of a man's life with the totality of his experience, we have a body of thought and of experience that sheds light on all aspects of human experience and, as a consequence, can integrate subjects, particularly among the humanities and the social sciences, as nothing else can. Indeed, the original universities lay in just such a conviction. And to the extent that universities have lost the faith that originally inspired them, they have progressively lost the unity of purpose that made one out of many. The first college in America, Harvard College, was founded In Christi Gloriam, in the conviction that there could be no true knowledge or wisdom without Christ. Those today who are urging the colleges and universities to put religion back into higher education are not urging something upon them that is alien to their nature but are suggesting only that they revive the faith that originally inspired their founding." See Religious Perspectives of College Teaching: in Political Science, published by the Hazen Foundation, New Haven, p. 33. Surprisingly, recent surveys have shown that colleges which have a theological bias have actually produced a remarkably large proportion of leading American scientists, a statement verified by John R. Sampey, "Training Leaders in Science and Religion" in section "Comments an Communications" Science 114 (1951):332. See further, C. A. Coulson, Science and Christian Belief, Oxford Univ. Press, 1955, p, 11; C. E. A. Turner, "Puritan Origins in Science" in Trans Vict. Instit. 81 (1949):85-105.
38. E. L. Mascall in his Importance of Being Human (Columbia Univ. Press, 1958) underscores the difficulty "which civilized western man in the world of today experiences in convincing himself that he has any special assigned status in the Universe...and the sense of instability which this uncertainty produces." He adds, "Many of the psychological disorders which are so common and distressing a feature of our times are, I believe, to be traced to this cause" (p.19).
39. Simpson, George Gaylord, The Meaning of Evolution, Yale Univ. Press, 1952, pp. 344-45.
40. Simpson: quoted by John Pfeiffer, "Some Comments on Popular Science Books" in Science, 117 (1953) 403.
41. As quoted by Jacques Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, Sheed and Ward, New York 1955, pp. 52, 54.
42. Russell: as quoted by J. W. N. Sullivan, Limitations of Science, Pelican Books, London, 1938, p. 175.
43. Halfour: quoted by John Custance, Wisdom, Madness, and Folly, Pellegrine and Cudal, New York, 1952, p. 128.
44. Paul, Leslie, The Annihilation of Man, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1945, p. 154.
45. Simpson, George Gaylord, This View of Life, Harcourt Brace and World, New York, 1963, chaps. 10 and 11. As a rest cure, I suggest a reading of F. Wood Jones's delightful and thoroughly rewarding Trends of Life, Arnold, London, 1953, especially chap. 2.
46. Becker, Howard, University of Wisconsin, in a lecture before the Anthropology Department of the University of Toronto, February 1952, entitled "Science, Culture and Society." Simpson himself puts it this way: "It is a necessary condition and indeed part of the definition of Science in the modern sense that only natural explanations of material phenomena are to be sought or can be considered scientifically tenable" (The Meaning of Evolution, Yale Univ. Press, 1952, p. 131).
47. Huxley, Aldous, Science, Liberty and Peace, Harper, New York, 1946, as reviewed in Science by R. T. Cox, who sums up Huxley's views as follows: "Even the fascination of power over the inanimate forces of nature has contributed to the world's trouble, by leading people to mistake for final reality the restricted aspects of experience by the study of which scientists have shown how to attain this power. Where scientists, properly for their own purposes, have ignored a part of experience, general opinion has gone farther and denied its existence altogether" (105 [1947]:134). Similarly Kenneth Walker observed, "When scientists have announced that they are not concerned with the significance or purpose of things, but only with certain relationships which exist between them, onlookers have often mistakenly assumed the absence of all purpose and meaning" (Meaning and Purpose, Pelican Books, London, 1944, p. 22).
48. In this connection, Schrodinger made this observation (in 1945): "We have inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge. The very name given the highest institutions of learning reminds us, that from antiquity and throughout many centuries the universal aspect has been the only one to be given full credit. But the spread, both in width and depth, of the multifarious branches of knowledge during the last hundred odd years has confronted us with a queer dilemma. We feel clearly that we are only now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole. But, on the other hand, it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of it.
"I can see no other escape from this dilemma (lest our true aim be lost forever) than that some of us should venture to embark on a synthesis of facts and theories, albeit with second-hand and incomplete knowledge of some of them---and at the risk of making fools of ourselves" (as quoted by S. H. and S. M. Cohn, "The Role of Cybernetics in Physiology," Scientific Mon., February 1953, p. 85).
49. Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744), an Italian philosopher whose chief work was published in France by Michelet in 1827 under the title Principiis de la Philosophie d'Histoire.
Sir William Petrie, Revolutions of History, Harper, New York, 1911.
Pitirim Sorokin, Contemporary Sociological Theories, Harper, New York, 1928.
Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West, Allen and Unwin, London, 1926.
Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, 6 vols., Oxford Univ. Press, 1946-57.
See also A. L. Kroeber, "The Superorganic" in Amer. Anthrop., 19 (1917):162-213; and R. C. Collingwood in two articles in Antiquity September and December 1927.
50. Deterministic views: Climatic: Ellsworth Huntington, Mainsprings of Civilization, Wiley, New York, 1945.
Cultural: Leslie A. White--see for example "Man's Control Over Civilization" in Science Mon., March 1948, pp. 24.
Biological and physical: Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell et al.
Economic: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Ward, Lock and Co., London, 1776. Contrast, however, C. W. M. Hart, "The Hawthorne Experiments" in Canad. Jour. Econ. and Pol. Sci. 9 (1943).
Geographic: Griffith Taylor, in various volumes, including Environment and Race, Oxford Univ. Press, 1927; Environment and Nations, Toronto, 1936; Environment, Race and Migration, Toronto and Chicago, 1944; and other works.
51. Fromm, Erich, Escape From Freedom, Rinehart, New York, 1941, p. 251.
52. Benjamin, A. Cornelius, "Science and the Pursuit of Value" in Science Mon., October 1946, p. 311.
53. Rader, Melvin, "Technology and Community" in Scientific Mon., June 1948; pp. 502.4. This is a most valuable paper.
54. Zimmern, Sir Alfred, ref. 18, p. 22. Zimmern adds, "We know today that these hopes were unwarranted. Acquired characteristics are not inherited---at least not in any form or degree which are relevant for sociologists and political scientists. For all practical purposes, the material of human nature, the stock of instincts and impulses, of qualities and attitudes, with which our statesmen have to contend is the same as that with which not merely Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar but the tribal leaders of the Stone Age had to deal. Every baby that is born, insofar as it has not been affected by pre-natal influences, is a Stone Age baby." So also Robert Briffault: "It may be doubted whether the modern civilized individual differs greatly as regards inherited capacities from his ancestors of the Stone Age: the difference between savagedom and civilization is not organic but cultural" ("Evolution of the Human Species" in The Making of Man, ed. V. F. Calverton, Modern Library, New York, 1931, p. 763).
55. Herbert Spencer: quoted by G. H. Clark, A Christian Philosophy of Education, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1946, p.54
56. Walker, Kenneth, ref. 33 p. 31.
57. Schlemmer, Andre, Crisis in the World of Thought, Inter-Varsity, London, 1940, pp. 15-16.
58. Ihde, Aaron .J., "The Inevitability of Scientific Discovery" in Scientific Monthly, December 1948, pp. 427-29.
59. Calverton, V. F., ref. 54, p. 2.
60. Kroeber, A. L., in his paper entitled "Evolution, History, and Culture" in Evolution After Darwin: The Evolution of Man, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960, vol. 2, p. 1.
61. Langer, Susanne, Philosophy in a New Key, Mentor Books, New York, 1948, p. 18: see especially chap. 5, pp. 83-116.
62. Lovejoy, Arthur J., The Great Chain of Being, Harvard Univ. Press, 1942.
63. On this see O. R. Frisch in a series of articles in The Listener 63, BBC, (21 January 1960):119f., "Exploring the Subatomic World"; (28 January 1960):l73ff., "The Strange Particles"; (4 February l960):217ff., "Strangeness and Parity."
64. Lovejoy, Arthur O., ref. 62, p. 233.
65. Hoyle, F., Nature of the Universe, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1950.
66. S. L. Miller, working in the laboratory of Harold Urey, in 1955, circulated a mixture of water vapor, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen through an apparatus in which they were exposed to a silent electric discharge. A week later, analysis showed it to contain glycine and aniline in a mixture of other amino acids--i.e., organic compounds previously thought to be produced only from living matter. J. Bronowuki, reviewing a book by Michael A. Arbib entitled, "Brains, Machines and Mathematics" in Sci. Amer., June 1964, p. 133, makes the following observation, "Nothing that has been discovered in the past ten years, or that has resisted discovery, has made us despair of the basic tenet that biological processes have the same mechanism as physical processes. No reputable investigator intends to abandon the search for such concrete mechanisms or to fall back on some mystic vitalism to relieve him of the ardors of the search."
67. For a summary of this evidence, see "Who Taught Adam to Speak?" in Genesis and Early Man, Volume II of the Doorway Papers.
68. Decerebrate animals: see H. C. Bazett and W. G. Penfield, "A Study of the Sherrington Decerebrate Animal in the Chronic As Well As the Acute Condition" in Brain (Jour. of Neurology) 45 (1922): 185-265. Also Sir Charles Sherrington, Man on his Nature, Anchor Books, Doubleday, New York, 1955, pp. 156-57.
69. Mascall, E. L., ref. 38, p. 35.
70. Huxley, Julian, Rationalist Annual, 1946, p. 87.
71. See J. Thorpe, "Progress and Purpose in Evolution" in Listener, BBC, 30 July 1953, p. 172.
72. Leake, Chauncey D., "Perspectives of Adaptation: Historical Background" in Handbook of Physiology, sect. 4, Amer. Physiol. Soc., Washington, 1964, pp. 5-6.
73. Russell, Bertrand, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, Allen and Unwin, London, 1961, p. 36.
74. Ponnamperuma, C., "Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life" in Nature 201 (1964):337.
75. Gerard, Ralph, "The Scope of Science" in Scientific Mon., June 1947, p. 496.
76. Langer, Susanne, ref. 61, p. 18. Some thoughts on the social responsibility of scientists will be found in Science:109(1949):637. Here M. F. Ashley Montagu, in a note entitled "The Conscience of the Past and the Practice of the Present," records some words by Father Francesco Lana (1631 - 1687), by some named the inventor of the first airship (though too poor actually to build one!): "Other difficulties I see not, which may be objected against this Invention, besides the one which seems to me greater than all the rest, and that is, that it may be thought that God will never suffer this Invention to take effect because of the man consequences which may disturb the civil government of men. For who sees not, that no City can be secure against attack...the same would happen to private Houses, and Ships on the sea...And this they may do...with such security that they which cast those things down from a height out of gun-shot. cannot on the other side be offended by those below." To the question, then, why has God allowed the answer is given by D. R. Davis, Down Peacock Feathers, Jeffrey Bles., London. 1942 pp. 21-26. See also Max Planck, "Meaning and Limitations of Exact Science in Science," 110 (1949) 319ff. A brief but useful article with special reference to Boyle and Newton in this connection will be found in the Journal of Science and Religion, I, no. 1 Paternoster Press, London (1947) 13ff. A striking example of the sense of responsibility of a scientist in earlier days will be found in Science 90 (1939) 180. So also Hugh Dryden wrote "The cold sharp tools of science have not been effective in penetrating the area of human emotions, purposes, and values. 'It is the Nemesis of the struggle for exactitude by the men of science,' remarked the biologist, H. S. Jennings, 'that leads him to present a mutilated, merely fictional account of the world as a true and complete picture.' 'You can no more analyze these imponderables by scientific methods,' said Eddington, than you can extract the square root of a sonnet," ("The Scientist in Contemporary Life" in Science 120 [1954]:1053). See also a review of Bertrand Russell's rationalist philosophy in Nature, 25 December 1954, p. 1162.
Conant in his On Understanding Science (Mentor Books, New York, 1951, p.25) argues that the methods of science are not necessarily applicable to matters of ordinary life. Maurice B. Visscher, in an article entitled "The Duty to Doubt and the Will to Believe" (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December, 1956. p. 357) observes, "It has been said recently that when scientists move into philosophic or sociological realms, they 'somehow divest themselves of the scientific method with which they live in the laboratory.'" This is only as it should be really. For the detachment which is proper in the laboratory must be replaced by identification in the human situation so that the scientific method is no longer strictly applicable. But they are still popularly credited with the supposed omnicompetence of scientists.
77. Bowman, Isaiah, "Science and Social Pioneering" in Science 90 (1939):312.
78. Thorpe, J., ref. 71, p. 171.
79. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man, Collins, London, 1959, 320 pages.
80. Huxley, Julian: quoted by Teilhard de Chardin, ref. 79, p. 21.
81. Lovejoy, Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1960, p. 276.
82. Lawden, D. F., "Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life" in Nature, 25 April 1964, p. 412.
83. Ibid.
84. Kety, S. S., "A Biologist Examines the Mind and Behaviour" in Science 132 (1960):1861, 1863.
85. P. W. Bridgman, "Science and Common Sense" in Scientific Mon., July 19 p. 35.
86. Simpson, George Gaylord, ref. 45, p. 187.
87. Ibid., p. 191.
88. Ibid., p. 203.
89. Medawar, Sir Peter B., The Uniqueness of the Individual, Basic Books, New York, 1957, p. 34.
90. Broom, R.: quoted by G. G. Simpson, ref. 45, p. 199. In Simpson's original paper in Scientific Monthly, (June 1947) on "The Problem of Plan and Purpose in Nature," he attributes this statement to Broom but without documentation. In his Meaning of Evolution, (Yale, 1952, p. 325), he refers to Broom's original article, "Evolution as the Paleontologist Sees It" (South Afr. Jour. Sci. 29 [l932l:5-7 I), but I cannot find this exact statement in it. Even science itself---not merely evolutionary biology---has come to take the form of a kind of religion. In his Gifford Lecture, published as "The Relevance of Science, Creation and Cosmogony" (Harper and Row, New York, 1964), C. F. Von Weizsacker concludes that "today's faith in Science plays the role of a dominating religion, differing little in its mythical ('theoretical') components from the universal myths of the past." It even has its "priestly caste, the technologist and expert." See a review by H. L. Nieburg in Science 147 (1965):1434. And in von Weizaacker's book, pages 15, 18, 23, and 160.
91. Mumford, Lewis, The Culture of Cities, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1938, pp. 60-61.
92. Becker, Carl, "The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers": quoted by C. I. Glickuberg in "Science and the Literary Mind" in Scientific Mon., June 1950, p. 353.
93. Medawar, Sir Peter B., ref. 89, p. 122.
94. Ibid., pp. 122-33 (chap. 6). A good illustration of the fact that "fitness" must be defined in terms of "application" is human skin. W. Montagna, an authority, after speaking of the things human skin has to do, says it "has achieved a remarkably effective compromise" (see "The Skin" in Sci. Amer., February 1965, p. 56f.). F. Wood Jones has some pointed words in this connection. He wrote, "All the great naturalists of the pre-Darwinian period had a profound realization of the harmony effected by the various structural developments begot in response to functional demands. Great emphasis was laid upon the fitness of the creature to fulfill its life's role in the surroundings in which it happened to find itself. There was admiration for the development of parts and organs and for the perfections of the adaptation of structure to function.
"But after the advent of Charles Darwin's theory, a profound change of thought concerning all this became apparent in biological literature; and a morbid enthusiasm was displayed in seeking for atavistic, rudimentary and apparently useless structures. Disharmonies were sought for and discovered.
"The harmonies that had so much appealed to the naturalists and anatomists of the 18th century were ignored. The phase of pessimism is well expressed by Eli Metchnikoff (1845 - 1916) in his work, The Nature of Man, in which he sought to prove that most living things, when examined critically, could be demonstrated to be made up of a series of misfits and disharmonies, structural, physiological and psychological" (Trends of Life, Arnold, London, 1953, p. 86).
95. Bell, Sir Charles, "The Hand: Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design" in Bridgewater Treatises, Pickering, London, 1837.
96. Mumford, Lewis, ref. 91, p. 229. On the need for an effective motivation, Edmund Sinnott has written with characteristic lucidity in a paper entitled "Ten Million Scientists" in Science Ill (1950):123ff.
97. Huxley, Julian, "New Bottles for New Wine: Ideology and Scientific Knowledge" in Jour. Royal Anthrop. Instit. 80, parts I and II (1950):20.
98. Ibid.
99. Huxley, Julian, Evolution in Action, Chatto and Windus, London, 1953, p. 153. It seems odd, perhaps, to hear a scientist of Huxley's stamp acknowledging that any kind of religious value has had any kind of significance. He is not alone in this however. Andrew Ivy in a paper on medical research pointed out that there are plenty of goals toward which the energies of men may be religiously directed-the conquest of hunger and disease, for example. But science and technology in themselves are not enough. They have little value unless used as tools for the attainment of something worthwhile beyond themselves. As he put it, "We have reached the point in the development of science and civilization where it is clear that they cannot survive without a sound moral philosophy" ("Medical Research: Operation Humanity" in Scientific Mon., February 1949, pp. 120-21).
100. Ibid., p.152. In the light of our knowledge of what went on in Germany during the last great war, where a "scientific" program for the breeding of a super-race was undertaken, eugenics has come to he viewed with distrust. For who is to define the eu-? A rather helpful summary in brief form of the problems involved in this definition will be found in the March 1965 issue of the Scientific American, under Letters to the Editor, pages 8-10. This very useful magazine is readily obtainable in most large libraries. My own teacher in human genetics at the University of Toronto (Dr. Norma Ford Walker) used to remind us that it may be difficult from the point of view of the community as a whole to justify breeding intellectual giants and to discourage the breeding of simpletons. The former can quite easily become an extremely self-seeking or even crooked individual, the latter are apt to be amicable and less dangerous---and indeed, often useful to society in performing simple tasks unacceptable to most of us. Moreover, they help to keep alive in us some of those finer feelings of pity and kindness. On this side of the Atlantic, geneticists are not on the whole very sympathetic toward eugenics, and we publish no eugenics journals in America. Huxley, with his usual bombast, is oversimplifying the problem.
101. Ibid., p. 152.
102. Statement made by Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1926, p. 435.
103. Margenau, Henry, "Ethical Science" in Scientific Mon., November 1949, p. 290.
104. Whittaker, E. T., "Aristotle, Newton and Einstein" in Science 98 (1943):270.
Corrections, June 21, 1997.