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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37513-8.txt b/37513-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..23d2eae --- /dev/null +++ b/37513-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2055 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Spencer's Philosophy of Science, by C. Lloyd +Morgan + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Spencer's Philosophy of Science + The Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered at the Museum 7 November, 1913 + + +Author: C. Lloyd Morgan + + + +Release Date: September 23, 2011 [eBook #37513] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE*** + + +E-text prepared by Adrian Mastronardi, David E. Brown, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/spencersphilosop00morgrich + + +Transcriber's note: + + Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). + + Text enclosed by curly brackets is subscripted (example: + H{2}O) unless preceded by a carat character, in which + case it is superscripted (example: ^{2}). + + + + + +SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE + +The Herbert Spencer Lecture +Delivered at the Museum +7 November, 1913 + +by + +C. LLOYD MORGAN, F.R.S. + + + + + + + +Price Two Shillings net + +Oxford +At the Clarendon Press +MCMXIII + +Oxford University Press +London Edinburgh Glasgow New York +Toronto Melbourne Bombay +Humphrey Milford M.A. +Publisher to the University + + + + +SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE + + +Towards the close of 1870, while I was still in my teens, my youthful +enthusiasm was fired by reading Tyndall's Discourse on _The Scientific +Use of the Imagination_. The vision of the conquest of nature by +physical science--a vision which had but lately begun to open up to my +wondering gaze--was rendered clearer and more extensive. Of the theory +of evolution I knew but little; but I none the less felt assured that it +had come to stay and to prevail. Was it not accepted by all of _us_--the +enlightened and emancipated men of science whose ranks I had joined as a +raw recruit? Believing that I was independently breaking free of all +authority, to the authority that appealed to my fancy, and to a new +loyalty, I was a willing slave. And here in one glowing sentence the +inner core of evolution lay revealed. + + 'Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that + not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular and animal life, + not alone the nobler forms of the horse and the lion, not alone + the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that + the human mind itself--emotion, intellect and all their + phenomena--were once latent in a fiery cloud.'[1] + +With sparkling eyes I quoted these brave words to a friend of my +father's, whose comments were often as caustic as his sympathy in my +interests was kindly. With a grave smile he asked whether the notion was +not perhaps stripped too naked to preserve the decencies of modest +thought; he inquired whether I had not learnt from _Sartor Resartus_ +that the philosophy of nature is a Philosophy of Clothes; and he bade me +devote a little time to quiet and careful consideration of what Tyndall +really meant--meant in terms of the exact science he professed--by the +phrase 'latent in a fiery cloud'. I dimly suspected that the old +gentleman--old in the sense of being my father's contemporary--was +ignorant of those recent developments of modern science with which I had +been acquainted for weeks, nay more for months. Perhaps he had never +even heard of the nebular hypothesis! But I felt that I had done him an +injustice when, next morning, he sent round a volume of the _Westminster +Review_ with a slip of paper indicating an article on 'Progress: its Law +and Cause'. + +Such was my introduction to Herbert Spencer, some of whose works I read +with admiration during the next few years. + +I have no very distinct recollection of the impression produced on my +mind by the germinal essay of 1857, save that it served to quicken that +craving, which is, I suppose, characteristic of those who have some +natural bent towards philosophy--the imperative craving to seek and, if +it may be, to find the one in the many. In any case Tyndall's suggestive +sentence was here amplified and the underlying law was disclosed. + + 'Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development + of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of + Government, of Manufacture, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, + Science, Art, the same evolution of the simple into the complex, + through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the + earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of + civilisation, we shall find that the transformation of the + homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress + essentially consists.'[2] + +Here was just what I wanted--on the one hand the whole wide universe of +existence; and on the other hand a brief formula with which to label its +potted essence. How breathlessly one was led on, with only such breaches +of continuity as separate paragraphs inevitably impose, right away from +the primitive fire-mist to one of Bach's fugues or the critical +doctrines of Mr. Ruskin, guided throughout by the magic of +differentiation. What if the modes of existence, dealt with in +successive sections, were somewhat startlingly diverse! Was not this +itself a supreme example of the evolution of that diversity which the +formula enables us to interpret? For if there were a passage from the +homogeneous to the heterogeneous, the more heterogeneous the +products--inorganic, organic, and superorganic, as I learnt to call +them--the stronger the evidence for the law. Only by shutting one's eyes +to the light that had been shed on the world by evolution could one fail +to see how simple and yet how inevitable was the whole business. + +If then differentiation be the cardinal law of evolution--for the +correlative concept of integration receives no emphasis in this early +essay--does not the universality of the law imply a universal cause? +Just as gravitation was assignable as a _cause_ of each of the groups of +phenomena which Kepler formulated; so might some equally simple +attribute of things be assignable as the cause of each of the groups of +phenomena formulated in terms of differentiation. Now the only obvious +respect in which all kinds of Progress are alike, is, that they are +modes of change; and hence in some characteristic of changes in general, +the desired solution must be found. Thus we are led up to the statement +of the all-pervading principle which determines the all-pervading +process of differentiation. It is this: _Every active force produces +more than one change--every cause produces more than one effect._[3] + +In the first part of the Essay many and varied facts are adduced to show +that every kind of progress is from the simple to the complex. The aim +of the second part is to show why this is so: it is 'because each change +is followed by many changes'. From the beginning, the decomposition of +every expended force into several forces has been perpetually producing +a higher complication, and thus Progress is not an accident but a +beneficent necessity. In a brief third part we are bidden to remember +that + + 'after all that has been said the ultimate mystery remains just as + it was. The explanation of that which is explicable does but bring + out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which + remains behind.... The sincere man of science, content to follow + wherever the evidence leads him becomes by each new enquiry more + profoundly convinced that the Universe is an insoluble problem.... + In all directions his investigations bring him face to face with + the unknowable; and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the + unknowable'.[4] + +There is I think a growing consensus of opinion that the first of +these three parts, subsequently expanded and illustrated with +astonishing wealth of detail in the volumes of the _Synthetic +Philosophy_, contains the germ of all that is best in the teaching of +Herbert Spencer; and that it was amid phenomena which admitted of +interpretation from the biological, or quasi-biological, point of view +that he found his most congenial sphere of work and the one in which his +method was most effectively employed. The story of evolution is the +story of inter-related changes. In any organic whole there are certain +salient features of the historical sequence.[5] The parts get more +different from each other, and they also get more effectively connected +with each other; the individual whole gets more different from its +environment, and it also preserves and extends its connexion with the +environment; the several individuals get more different from others, +while their connexion with others is retained and new connexions are +established. Nowadays these central ideas may seem familiar enough; but +that is just because Spencer's thought has been so completely +assimilated. And then we must remember that these main principles are +supplemented by a great number of ancillary generalizations, many of +which have been incorporated in the scientific doctrine which is current +to-day. We must bear in mind that of the _Biology_ Charles Darwin +wrote:[6] 'I am astonished at its prodigality of original thought.' Of +the _Psychology_ William James says[7] that of the systematic treatises +it will rank as the most original. These are the opinions of experts. No +discussion of sociology or ethics is complete if it ignores Spencer's +contributions to these subjects. The _Ethics_, says James[8] is a most +vital and original piece of attitude-taking in the world of ideals. It +was his firm and often inflexible 'attitude' which was a source of +strength in Spencer, though it was the strength of rigidity rather than +that of sinewy suppleness. This was part of a certain 'narrowness of +intent and vastness of extent' which characterized his mental vision. He +was so obsessed with the paramount importance of biological +relationships that in his _Sociology_, his _Ethics_, his _Psychology_, +he failed to do justice to, or even to realize the presence of, other +and higher relationships--higher, that is, in the evolutionary scale. +But it was his signal merit to work biological interpretation for all, +and perhaps more than, it was worth. It was on these lines that he was +led to find a clue to those social and political developments, the +discussion of which, in the _Nonconformist_ of 1842, constituted the +first step from the life of an engineer to that other kind of life which +led to the elaboration of the _Synthetic Philosophy_.[9] In his later +years he was saddened to see that many of the social and political +doctrines, for the establishment of which he had striven so strenuously, +were not accepted by a newer generation of thinkers. Still, to have +taken a definite and, for all his detractors may say, an honoured +position in the line of those who make history in the philosophy of life +and mind--that could never be taken away from him. + +It will perhaps be said that this emphasis on the philosophy of life +and mind does scant justice to the range and sweep of Spencer's +philosophy as a whole; and no doubt others will contend that the +emphasis should be laid elsewhere; on the mechanical foundations; on +evolution as a universal principle. It will be urged that Spencer +widened to men's view the scope of scientific explanation. He proclaimed +'the gradual growth of all things by natural processes out of natural +antecedents'.[10] Even in the _Nonconformist_ letters 'there is', he +himself says,[11] 'definitely expressed a belief in the universality of +law--law in the realm of mind as in that of matter--law throughout the +life of society as throughout the individual life. So, too, is it with +the correlative idea of universal causation.' And if there be law it +must at bottom be one law. Thus in _First Principles_ Spencer propounded +a sweeping and sonorous formula, which every disciple knows by heart, +embodying the fundamental traits of that unceasing redistribution of +matter and motion which characterizes evolution as contrasted with +dissolution. Was it not this that he himself regarded as his main +contribution to philosophy? Did he not himself provide a summary, +setting forth the sixteen articles of the Spencerian creed; and is not +this summary given a prominent position in the Preface he wrote to +Howard Collins's _Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy_? Do not these +fundamental articles of his faith deal with ubiquitous causes, with the +instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects, with +segregation and equilibration, and with the basal conception of the +persistence of force? There is here, it may be said, no special +reference to the organic and the superorganic. And why? Just because +Spencer's interpretation is all-inclusive; because biology, psychology, +sociology, ethics are, broadly considered, concerned only with incidents +of the later scenes of the great mechanical drama of evolution. Are we +not again and again bidden, now in forecast, now in retrospect, to look +below the surface, and constantly to bear in mind that the aim of +philosophy, as completely unified knowledge, is 'the interpretation of +all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force'?[12] It is true +that the affairs of the mind give pause and seem to present something of +a difficulty. But even here 'specifically stated, the problem is to +interpret mental evolution in terms of the redistribution of matter and +motion'.[13] An adequate explanation of nervous evolution involves an +adequate explanation of the concomitant evolution of mind. It is true +that the antithesis of subject and object is never to be transcended +'while consciousness lasts'.[14] But if all existence, distinguishable +as subjective, is resolvable into units of consciousness, which in their +obverse or objective aspect are oscillations of molecules,[15] what more +is required to round off the explanation of every thing, save the +Unknowable--save the Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are +united? In the end we are baffled by mystery; let us, therefore, make +the best of it and rejoice. + + 'We can think of Matter only in terms of Mind. We can think of + Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have pushed our explorations + of the first to its uttermost limit we are referred to the second + for a final answer; and when we have got the final answer to the + second we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of + it.'[14] + +And so neither answer is final. Finality is only reached when both are +swallowed up, not in victory, but in defeat. Shall we not then glory in +defeat and sing its praises often? + +I must leave to some future Herbert Spencer lecturer the discussion of +his doctrine of the Unknowable and the critical consideration of its +place and value in philosophy. I would fain leave it altogether on one +side; but that is impossible. Although the _First Principles_ is divided +into two Parts, dealing respectively with the Unknowable and the +Knowable, we have not by any means done with the former when we turn +from the First Part to the Second. With Spencer we have never done with +the Unknowable, the Unconditioned Reality and the other aliases by which +it goes. His persistence of force is the persistence of Unknowable +Force. In a leading passage, at any rate, it is avowedly 'the +persistence of some Cause which transcends our knowledge and conception. +In asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality without beginning or +end'.[16] There must, he holds, be something at the back of the +evolutionary drama which we study--something that is both a principle of +activity and a permanent _nexus_.[17] The pity of it is that we know +not, and can never know, what on earth (or in heaven!) it is. We only +know that it exists, and somehow produces the whole show. Now it would +much conduce to clearness of thought and of statement if we could agree +to eliminate those terribly ambiguous words 'force' and 'cause' when we +are dealing with the fundamental postulate (if such it be) that there +must be something at the back of evolution to make it what it is; and +the word Source seems ready to our hand and might well be given this +special significance. But Spencer uses Agency, Power, Cause, Force, in +this connexion. In how many senses he uses the word 'force' I am not +prepared to say. It is often a synonym for cause; it stands alike for +matter and energy;[18] it is the objective correlate of our subjective +sense of effort.[19] There is a 'correlation and equivalence between +external forces and the mental forces generated by them under the form +of sensations'.[20] And when we pass to human life in society, whatever +in any way facilitates or impedes social, political, or economic change, +is spoken of in terms of force.[21] With an apparent vagueness and +laxity almost unparalleled, force is used in wellnigh every conceivable +sense of this ambiguous word--except, perhaps, that which is now +sanctioned by definition in mathematical physics. I say apparent +vagueness and laxity because, subtly underlying all this varied usage, +is the unifying conception of Source as the ultimate basis of all +enforcement. From this flows all necessity whether in things or thoughts +or any combination of the two. Thus persistence of force is Spencer's +favourite expression for uniform determinism at or near its Source. + +Now, as I understand the position, science has nothing whatever to do +with the Source or Sources of phenomena. By a wise self-denying +ordinance it rules all questions of ultimate origin out of court. It +regards them as beyond its special sphere of jurisdiction. It deals with +phenomena in terms of connexion within an orderly scheme, and it does +not profess to explain _why_ the connexions are such as they are found +to be. In any discussion of this or that sequence of events which may +fall under the wide and rather vague heading of evolution, it is just a +consistent story of the events in their total relatedness that science +endeavours to tell. The question: But what evolves the evolved? is for +science (or should I say for those who accept this delimitation of the +province of science?) not so much unanswerable in any terms, as +unanswerable in scientific terms. For the terms in which an answer must +be given are incommensurable with the concepts with which science has +elected to carry on its business as interpreter of nature. To this +question therefore the man of science, speaking for his order, simply +replies: We do not know. Is this, then, Spencer's answer? Far from it. +The man of science here makes, or should make, no positive assertion, +save in respect of the limits of his field of inquiry. If you beg him to +tell you what that which he knows not is, or does, he regards such a +question as meaningless. But Spencer's Unknowable, notwithstanding its +negative prefix, is the Ultimate Reality, and does all that is in any +way done. We may not know _what_ it is; but _that_ it is, is the most +assured of all assured certainties. And when it comes to doing, what can +be more dramatically positive than that which bears a name of negation? +Whatever it may not be, it is the Power that drives all the machinery in +this workshop of a world; it is the Power which lies at the back of such +wit as man has to interpret it, and, in some measure, to utilize its +mechanism. + +It seems plain enough that Spencer distinguishes, or seeks to +distinguish, between those knowable effects which we call natural +phenomena and their Unknowable Cause or Source. And this seems to be in +line with the distinction which his critic, M. Bergson, draws between +'the evolved which is a result' and 'evolution itself, which is the act +by which the result is obtained'.[22] An act implies an agent, and the +agency of which the evolved is a manifestation is for M. Bergson Life, +while for Spencer it is that very vigorous agency--the Unknowable. Now +in criticizing Spencer, M. Bergson says: + + 'The usual device of the Spencerian method consists in + reconstructing evolution with the fragments of the evolved.... It + is not however by dividing the evolved that we shall reach the + principle of that which evolves. It is not by recomposing the + evolved with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which + it is the term.'[23] + +But does Spencer ever suggest that we shall thus reach the principle of +that which evolves--by which, if I mistake not, M. Bergson means the +Source of evolution? Does he not urge that we can neither reach it in +this way, nor in any other way? For M. Bergson, as for Spencer, it is +unknowable by the intellect--it can only be known by what M. Bergson +calls intuition. For both thinkers, the intellect provides only a world +of symbols; and Spencer's transfigured realism may be matched by what +Dr. Wildon Carr calls M. Bergson's transformed realism.[24] So long as +we are dealing with the evolved--which is that with which alone science +attempts to deal--Spencer, M. Bergson, and the rest of us are in like +case. We must stumble on intellectually with our symbols as best we may. +'Whether we posit the present structure of mind or the present +subdivision of matter in either case we remain in the evolved: we are +told nothing of what evolves, nothing of evolution.'[25] _Nothing of +what evolves!_ Spencer might exclaim with a groan. Have I then written +all those pages and pages on the Unknowable for nought? Is it not a +fundamental tenet of my philosophy that there must be, and therefore is, +a Source of the evolved--of the phenomenal world which is merely an +expression in terms of intellectual symbolism, of that ultimate Power +which, though its nature may baffle the intellect, is none the less the +most real of all realities? + +It would take us too far from the line of Spencer's thought to consider +M. Bergson's doctrine that it is the intellect that portions the world +into lots;[26] that cuts the facts out of the interpenetrating whole of +reality, and renders them artificially distinct within the continuity of +becoming. It suffices to note that on such a presupposition 'the +cardinal error of Spencer is to take experience already allotted as +given, whereas the true problem is to know how the allotment was +worked'.[27] I am not prepared to give--indeed I have been unable to +find--M. Bergson's own solution of the problem. I gather that it was +Life itself that somehow allotted concepts and objects in such +correspondence as should be practically useful though metaphysically +false and illusory. But just how it was done I have still to learn. 'The +original activity was', we are told, 'a simple thing which became +diversified through the very construction of mechanisms such as those of +the brain,'[28] which, as Life's tool, has facilitated the chopping up +of a continuous interpenetrating reality into mince-meat for +intellectual assimilation. Such a conception was foreign to Spencer's +thought. But some of us may find it hard to distinguish M. Bergson's +'original activity' from Spencer's Unknowable, which, so far as one can +make out, somehow produced precisely the same results. As a matter of +fact, M. Bergson seems to put into Life, as Spencer put into the +Unknowable, the potentiality of producing all that actually exists. + +For Spencer, as for M. Bergson, we live in a world of change. But +neither is content to accept changes as facts to be linked up within a +scheme of scientific interpretation. Both must seek their Source. Now to +inquire into the Source or Sources of phenomena is characteristic of man +as thinker. And if, in common with those whom I follow, I regard this +quest as beyond the limits of science, I am well aware that such +delimitation of fields of inquiry is by no means universally accepted. +M. Bergson, for example, regards metaphysics as the _Science_[29] which +claims to dispense with symbols, which turns its back on analysis, which +eschews logic, which dispenses with relativity and pierces to the +absolute, which, apparently, uses the intellect only to establish its +utter incompetence in this department of 'science'. Merely saying that +this, whatever else it may be, is not what I, for one, understand by +science--and not, by the way, what M. Bergson in other passages seems to +mean by science[30]--I pass on to Spencer's treatment of the philosophy +of science which, for him, is 'completely unified knowledge', 'the +truths of philosophy bearing the same relation to the highest scientific +truths that each of these bears to lower scientific truths.' + +I suppose one of the basal truths in his philosophy of science is for +Spencer the universality of connexion between cause and effect. Now let +us eliminate Source as the Ultimate Cause (so far as that is possible in +Spencer); let us restrict our attention to cause and effect in the realm +of the knowable. When we try to do this we find his statements +concerning them scarcely less puzzling than those that refer to force, +with which cause is so often identified. Thus we are told[31] that +'motion set up in any direction is itself a cause of further motion in +that direction since it is a manifestation of a surplus force in that +direction'; and elsewhere[32] that 'the momentum of a body causes it to +move in a straight line and at a uniform velocity'. A distinction is +drawn between cause and conditions. But both produce effects, and only +on these terms can there be that 'proportionality or equivalence between +cause and effect' on which Spencer insists.[33] There is, however, +scarcely a hint of what constitutes the difference between cause and +conditions, save in so far as he speaks[34] of 'those conspicuous +antecedents which we call the causes' and 'those accompanying +antecedents which we call the conditions'. Many of the details of his +treatment I find most perplexing; but to recite examples would be +wearisome. And then, in the ninth and tenth articles of the Spencerian +creed, cause plays a somewhat different part. For, there, the +instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects are +given as the chief causes which 'necessitate' that redistribution of +matter and motion of which evolution is one phase. Similarly, as I have +noted above, in 'Progress: its Law and Cause', the fundamental attribute +of all modes of change--that every cause produces more than one +effect--is itself spoken of as a cause, and likened to 'gravitation as +the cause of each of the groups of phenomena which Kepler formulated'. +In these cases a generalization is regarded as the cause of the +phenomena from which the generalization is drawn. But sometimes it is +spoken of as the reason for the phenomena.[35] Here again, however, as +throughout his work, reference to Source is close at hand. Hence, in +place of the words cause and force, the word agency[36] sometimes stands +for that which produces effects; or the word factor may be used. Thus we +are told[37] of phenomena continually complicating under the influence +of the same original factors'; and we meet with the argument (contra +Huxley) that states of consciousness are factors, that is, they 'have +the power of working changes in the nervous system and setting up +motions'.[38] Always close at hand, constantly underlying Spencer's +thought, is the notion of power which works changes. In his treatment of +the philosophy of science we are never far from the noumenal Source of +phenomena. + + 'For that interpretation of things which is alone possible for us + this is all we require to know--that the force or energy + manifested, now in one way now in another, persists or remains + unchanged in amount. But when we ask what this energy is, there is + no answer save that it is the noumenal Cause implied by the + phenomenal effect.'[39] + +Was it partly with Spencer in view that Mr. Bertrand Russell recently +urged[40] that the word cause 'is so inextricably bound up with +misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the +philosophical vocabulary desirable'? Professor Mach[41] had previously +expressed the hope 'that the science of the future will discard the use +of cause and effect as formally obscure'. And as long ago as 1870 W. K. +Clifford[42] tried to show in 'what sort of way an exact knowledge of +the facts would supersede an enquiry after the causes of them'; and +urged that the hypothesis of continuity 'involves such an +interdependence of the facts of the universe as forbids us to speak of +one fact or set of facts as the cause of another fact or set of facts'. +Such views may, perhaps, be regarded as extreme; and the word cause is +not likely to be extruded from the vocabulary of current speech, of the +less exact branches of science, or of general discussions of +world-processes. Still, a philosophy of science must take note of this +criticism of the use of a term which is, to say the least of it, +ambiguous. We must at any rate try to get rid of ambiguity. Now we live +in a world of what, in a very broad and inclusive sense, may be called +things; and these things are in varied ways related to each other. (I +must beg leave to assume, without discussion, that the relatedness of +things is no less constitutive of the world with which a philosophy of +science has to deal than the things which are in relation.) And when +things stand in certain kinds of relatedness to each other changes take +place. The trouble is that the kinds of relatedness are so many and the +kinds of change are also so many! Spencer tried to reduce all kinds of +relatedness to one quasi-mechanical type; and he signally failed--or +shall I say that he succeeded only by ignoring all the specific +differences on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by so smudgy an +extension of the meaning of mechanical and physical terms as to make +them do duty in every conceivable connexion? + +So long as we can deal with simple types of relatedness, such as that +which we call gravitative, in any given system of things regarded as +isolated, we can express in formulae not only the rate of change within +the system, but also the rate at which the rate of change itself +changes. And these formulae are found to be generally applicable where +like things are in a like field of relatedness. So that Spencer's +persistence of force (at least in one of its many meanings) is replaced +in such cases by sameness of differential equations. And in such cases +we have no need for the word cause. Of course the value of the constants +in any such formula depends upon the nature of the field of relatedness +and of the things therein; and only certain systems, in which the +relations are simple, or are susceptible of simplification, can be dealt +with, at present, in this manner. It is imperative to remember that not +only the rate of change but the kind of change differs in different +relational fields--a fact of which Spencer took too little cognizance, +so bent was he on some sort of unification at all hazards. Revert now to +a field of gravitative relatedness, in which the motion of things is the +kind of change, while the rate of change is expressible in a formula; +may we not say that the co-presence of things in this relationship does +imply certain motions and changes of motion within the system to which +the term gravitative applies? There seems little room for ambiguity if +we call what is thus implied the effect, and if we term those modes of +relatedness which carry this kind of implication, effective. It may, +however, be said that it sounds somewhat strange to speak of relations +as effective. How can mere relatedness as such _do_ anything? What is +implied by the effect is surely, it will be urged, a cause in the full +and rich sense of the word--a cause which produces the effect. For what +is here suggested is nothing more than a generalized statement of the +truth that the relational constitution of the system being what it is, +the changes are what they are! And so we come back to the conception of +an agency which in some way produces the observable change--of a power +which is active behind the phenomenal scene--of force and cause in the +Spencerian sense. But, so far as scientific interpretation is concerned, +this reference to Source--for such it really is--is useless. The +gravitative system can be dealt with scientifically just as well without +it as with it. + +What, then, becomes of the scientific conception of energy? Is not +energy that which produces observable change? Is it not active in the +sense required? And can we say that this conception is useless for +scientific interpretation? I suppose most of us, in our student days, +have passed through the phase of regarding energy as an active demon +which plays a notorious part in the physical drama. Spencer loved it +dearly. But some of us, under what we consider wiser guidance, hold that +what we should understand by kinetic energy is nothing of this sort. It +is a constant ratio of variables, conveniently expressed as 1/2_mv_^{2}. +That, however, it may be said, is absurd. Energy is not merely a ratio +or a formula; it is something much more real; perhaps the most real of +all the realities the being of which has been disclosed by physical +science. Granted in a sense, and a very true sense. But what is this +reality? It is the reality of the changes themselves in those fields of +relatedness to which the formula has reference. There is nothing, I +conceive, in the modern treatment of energy that affords any scientific +justification of the Spencerian view[43] that energy is an agent through +the activity of which the constant ratio of variables is maintained in +the physical world. + +I feel sure that it will still be said that change must inevitably +imply that which produces change, and that, even if energy be only a +ratio of variables within a changing field, there is still the +implication of Force as the real Cause of which the change itself, +however formulated, is the effect. No doubt this is one of the meanings +which the ambiguous words force and cause may carry. It is to remove +this ambiguity that I have suggested that the word Source should be +substituted for cause in this sense. And what about force? In one of its +meanings it now generally stands for a measure of change. For those who +accept Source as a scientific concept it may well stand for the measure +or degree of its activity gauged by the phenomenal effect; for those who +do not accept it, the measure or degree of the change itself[44]--to be +dealt with in mechanics in terms of mass and acceleration. This leaves +outstanding, however, the use of the word force in the phrase--the +forces of nature--gravitative force, cohesive force, electromotive +force, and so on. It was, I take it, with this usage in view that +Spencer spoke of vital, mental, and social forces. Now the reference in +each of these cases is to some specific mode of relatedness among the +things concerned. We need to name it in some way; and this is the way +that is, rather unfortunately, sanctioned by custom and long usage. When +we say that a thing is in a field of electromotive force we mean (do we +not?) that the relatedness is of that particular kind named +electromotive, and not of another kind. When Spencer spoke of social +forces he had in view changes which take place within a field of social +relationships. We do not really need the word force in this sense, since +the term relatedness would suffice, and has no misleading associations. +But there it is: our business should be to understand clearly what it +means. It does not, or should not, I think, mean more, in this +connexion, than a particular kind of relatedness in virtue of which an +observable kind of change occurs. + +We may now pass to cause and conditions. When Spencer distinguishes +between those conspicuous antecedents which we call the causes and those +accompanying antecedents which we call the conditions, he invites the +question: What, then, is the essential difference between them? If the +accompanying antecedents are distinguished as inconspicuous, we surely +need some criterion of the distinction. Furthermore, inconspicuous +conditions are, in science, every whit as important as those which are +conspicuous. Now we all know that Mill regarded the cause as 'the sum +total of the conditions positive and negative taken together.'[45] But +he expressly distinguishes between _events_ and _states_.[46] +Discussing, for example, the case of a man who eats of a particular dish +and dies in consequence, he says: + + 'The various conditions, except the single one of eating the food, + were not events but states possessing more or less of permanency, + and might therefore have preceded the effect by an indefinite + length of duration, for want of that event which was requisite to + complete the required concurrence of conditions.' + +Again he says: + + 'When sulphur, charcoal, and nitre are put together in certain + proportions and in a certain manner, the effect is, not an + explosion, but that the mixture acquires a property by which in + given circumstances it will explode. The ingredients of the + gunpowder have been brought into a state of preparedness for + exploding as soon as the other conditions of an explosion shall + have occurred.' + +And he tells us that physiological processes 'often have for the chief +part of their operation to predispose the constitution to some mode of +action'. + +This distinction may profitably be carried further and emphasized in +our terminology. Take any thing, or any integrated group of things, +regarded as that higher order of thing which we call a self-contained +system. Process occurs therein, and process involves change. In so far +as the system is self-contained its changes and states are inherent in +its constitution. We need a term by which to designate that which is +thus inherent and constitutional. The term _ground_ might be reserved +for this purpose. The word ground has its natural home in logic. It is +here extended (if it be an extension) to that to which the logic has +reference in the existing world. One is here following Spencer, who +claims[47] that 'Logic is a science pertaining to objective existence'. +On these terms the constitution of any system is the ground of the +properties, states, and happenings in that system regarded as isolated. +But the changes or properties will be also in relation to surrounding +things or systems. _These_ changes, or modifications of change, in +relation to external things or events, may properly be said to be +conditioned; and we may well restrict the term conditions to influences +_outside_ the constitution as ground. Of course, if we accept this +usage, we must not speak, with Mill, of the constitution of any system +as the condition of its inherent changes or properties. That is why we +need some such word and concept as ground. Now we may fix our attention +on any constituent part of some natural system and make that part the +centre of our interest. That part may be changing in virtue of its +constitution; and the rest of the system, regarded as external to this +selected part, must therefore be regarded as conditioning. It is a +matter of convenience for purposes of scientific interpretation whether +we select a larger or a smaller system-group and discuss its +constitutional character. Thus we may think of the constitution of the +solar system, or of that of the sun's corona; of the constitution of an +organism or of that of one of its cells; of the constitution of a +complex molecule or of that of an atom therein. We have here reached, or +nearly reached, the limiting case in one direction--that of restricting +our field of inquiry. The limiting case in the other direction is, I +suppose, the universe. But could we so expand our thought as to embrace, +if that were possible, the whole universe, then there are no conditions; +for _ex hypothesi_ there is nothing for science outside the universe. We +have reached the limiting concept. Hence, for science, the constitution +of nature is the ultimate ground of all that is or happens. + +Let us now see how we stand. Consider the following statements: + +1. The Unknowable is the cause of all the phenomena we observe. + +2. The constitution of gunpowder is the cause of its explosiveness.[48] + +3. The fall of a spark was the cause of the actual explosion of the +powder.[49] + +Or these: + +1. Life is the cause of all vital manifestations. + +2. The inherited nature of a hen's egg is the cause of its producing a +chick and not a duckling. + +3. The cause of the development of the chick embryo is the warmth +supplied by the incubating mother.[50] + +In each case the reference under (1) is to a transcendent cause which +produces the phenomena under consideration. I suggest that the word +Source should here be used instead of cause. In each case the reference +under (2) is to the nature or constitution of that within which some +process occurs. I suggest that the word ground should here be used +instead of cause. In each case the reference under (3) is to some +external influence. I suggest that the word condition should here be +used instead of cause. We thus eliminate the word cause altogether. But +since, in nine cases out of ten, the conditions, or some salient +condition, is what is meant by cause in popular speech, and in the less +exact sciences, the word cause may perhaps be there retained with this +particular meaning. These are of course merely suggestions towards the +avoidance of puzzling ambiguity. One could wish that Spencer could have +thought out some such distinctions to help his sorely perplexed readers. + +One could wish, too, that he had devoted his great powers of thought to +a searching discussion of the different types of relatedness which are +found in nature, and to a fuller consideration of a synthetic scheme of +their inter-relatedness. It is imperative that our thought of relations +should have a concrete backing. 'Every act of knowing', says Spencer, +'is the formation of a relation in consciousness answering to a relation +in the environment.' But the knowledge-relations are of so very special +a type; and the relations in the environment are so many and varied. +Much more analysis of natural relations is required than Spencer +provides. I do not mean, of course, that there is any lack of +analysis--and of very penetrating analysis--in the _Psychology_, the +_Biology_, the _Sociology_, and the _Ethics_. I mean that in _First +Principles_, which must be regarded as his general survey of the +philosophy of science, there is no searching analysis of the salient +types of relationship which enter into the texture of this very complex +world. Such omnibus words as differentiation, integration, segregation, +do duty in various connexions with convenient elasticity of meaning to +suit the occasion. But apart from qualifying adjectives,[51] such as +astronomic, geologic, and so on up to artistic and literary, there is +too little attempt at either a distinguishing of the types of +relatedness or at a relationing of the relations so distinguished. One +just jumps from one to another after a break in the text, and finds +oneself in a wholly new field of inquiry. Little but the omnibus +terminology remains the same. Nor does the _Essay on the Classification +of the Sciences_, with all its tabulation, furnish what is really +required. What one seeks to know is how those specific kinds of +relatedness which characterize the successive phases of evolutionary +progress, inorganic, organic, and superorganic, differ from one another +and how they are connected. This one does not find. The impression one +gets, here and elsewhere, is that all forms of relatedness must somehow, +by the omission of all other specific characters, be reduced to the +mechanical type. This, no doubt, is unification of a sort. But is it the +sort of unification with which a philosophy of science should rest +content? + +It may be said that unification can only be reached by digging down to +some ubiquitous type of relation which is common to all processes +throughout the universe at any stage of evolution. But what, on these +terms, becomes of evolution itself as a problem to be solved? Surely any +solution of that problem must render an account of just those specific +modes of relatedness which have been ignored in digging down to the +foundations. Surely there must be unification of the superstructure as +well as of the substructure. Here and now is our world, within the +texture of which things stand to each other in such varied relations, +though they may be reducible to a few main types. There, in the faraway +part, was the primitive fire-mist, dear to Spencer's imagination, in +which the modes of relationship were so few and so simple, and all +seemingly of one main type. How do we get in scientific interpretation +from the one to the other? Will it suffice to breathe over the scene the +magic words differentiation and integration? Spencer appears to think +so. Of course he did exceptionally fine work in elucidating the modes of +differentiation and integration within certain relational fields--though +he sometimes uses the latter word for mere shrinkage in size.[52] But +what one asks, and asks of him in vain, is just how, within a connected +scheme, the several relational fields in the domain of nature are +themselves related, and how they were themselves differentiated. How, +for instance, did the specific relationships exhibited in the fabric of +crystals arise out of the primitive fire-mist relations? At some stage +of evolution this specific form of relatedness came into being, whereas +before that stage was reached it was not in being. No doubt we may say +that the properties of the pre-existing molecules were such that these +molecules could in due course become thus related, and enter into the +latticed architecture of the crystal. They already possessed the +potentiality of so doing. And if we have resort to potentialities, all +subsequently developed types and modes of relatedness were potentially +in existence _ab initio_--they were, as Tyndall said, 'once latent in a +fiery cloud.' But it is difficult to see how the specific modes of +relatedness which obtain within the crystal, can be said to exist prior +to the existence of the crystal within which they so obtain. + +Preserving the spirit of Spencer's teaching we must regard all modes +of relatedness which are disclosed by scientific research as part and +parcel of the constitution of nature, from whatever Source, knowable or +unknowable, that constitution be derived. Of these modes there are many; +indeed, if we deal with all concrete cases, their number is legion. For +purposes of illustration, however, we may reduce them, rather +drastically, to three main types. There are relations of the +physico-chemical type,[53] which we may provisionally follow Spencer in +regarding as ubiquitous; there are those of the vital type, which are +restricted to living organisms; there are those of the cognitive type, +which seem to be much more narrowly restricted. How we deal with these +is of crucial importance. Denoting them by the letters A, B, C we find +that there are progressively ascending modes of relatedness within any +given type. There is evolution within each type. Within the +physico-chemical type A, for example, atoms, molecules, and synthetic +groups of molecules follow in logical order of evolution. Now the +successive products, in which this physico-chemical type of relatedness +obtains, have certain _new and distinctive properties_ which are not +merely the algebraic sum of the properties of the component things prior +to synthesis. We may speak of them as constitutive of the products in a +higher stage of relatedness, thus distinguishing constitutive from +additive properties.[54] Similarly when B, the vital relations, are +evolved, the living products, in which these specific relations obtain, +have new constitutive properties, on the importance of which vitalists +are right in insisting, though I emphatically dissent from some of the +conclusions they draw from their presence. For if, beyond the +physico-chemical, a special agency be invoked to account for the +presence of new constitutive properties, then, in the name of logical +consistency, let us invoke special agencies to account for the +constitutive properties within the physico-chemical--for radio-active +properties for example. If a Source of phenomena be postulated, why not +postulate One Source of all phenomena from the very meanest to the very +highest? There remains the case of C--the synthetic whole in which +cognitive relatedness obtains. This is unquestionably more difficult of +scientific interpretation. But I believe that like statements may be +made in this case also. What we have, I conceive, is just a new and +higher type of relatedness with specific characters of its own. But of +this more in the sequel. + +It must be remembered that A, B, C stand for _relationships_ and that +the related things are progressively more complex within more complex +relational wholes. Relationships are every whit as real as are the terms +they hold in their grasp. I do not say more real; but I say emphatically +as real. And if this be so, then they ought somehow to be introduced +into our formulae, instead of being taken for granted. We give H{2}O as +the formula for a molecule of water. But that molecule is something very +much more than two atoms of hydrogen + one atom of oxygen. The +absolutely distinctive feature of the molecule is the specific +relatedness of these atoms. This constitutive mode of relatedness is, +however, just taken for granted. And it is scarcely matter for surprise +that, when we find not less specific modes of vital relatedness in the +living organism, they are too apt to be just ignored! + +Revert now to the empirical outcome of scientific research, for as such +I regard it, that new constitutive properties emerge when new modes and +types of relatedness occur, and when new products are successively +formed in evolutional synthesis. This, it will be said, involves the +acceptance of what is now commonly called creative evolution. I am far +from denying that, in the universe of discourse where Source is under +consideration, the adjective is justifiable. But, in the universe of +discourse of science, I regard it as inappropriate. What we have is just +plain evolution; and we must simply accept the truth--if, as I conceive, +it be a truth--that in all true evolution there is more in the +conclusion than is given in the premises; which is only a logical way of +saying that there is more in the world to-day than there was in the +primitive fire-mist. Not more 'matter and energy', but more varied +relationships and new properties, quite unpredictable from what one may +perhaps speak of as the fire-mist's point of view. This is no new +doctrine, though it has received of late a new emphasis. Mill, dealing +with causation,[55] speaks of a 'radical and important distinction'. +There are, he says in substance, some cases in which the joint effect of +the several causes is the algebraical sum of their separate effects. He +speaks of this as the 'composition of causes', and illustrates it from +the 'composition of forces' in dynamics. 'But in the other description +of cases', he says, 'the agencies which are brought together cease +entirely, and a totally different set of phenomena arise.' In these +cases 'a concurrence of causes takes place which calls into action new +laws bearing no analogy to any that we can trace in the separate +operation of the causes'. They might, he suggests, be termed +'heteropathic laws'. G. H. Lewes, too,[56] in his _Problems of Life and +Mind_, drew the distinction between properties which are _resultant_ and +those which are _emergent_. These suggestions were open to Spencer's +consideration long before the last edition of _First Principles_ +appeared. They were, however, too foreign to the established lines of +his thought to call for serious consideration. + +But if new relationships and new properties appear in the course of +evolutionary progress, where is the opportunity for that unification of +scientific knowledge which, according to Spencer, is the goal of +philosophy? To be frank, I am by no means sure that this question can be +answered in a manner that is other than tentative. Perhaps we have not +yet reached the stage at which more than provisional unification is +possible. Such provisional unification as is suggested by a survey of +the facts is that of seemingly uniform correlation in a hierarchy of +logical implication. There are certain modes of relatedness which belong +to the cognitive type. It would seem that whenever these obtain they may +be correlated with other modes of relatedness which are of the vital or +physiological type; and that these, in turn, may be correlated with +those that are physico-chemical. Thus C implies B, and B implies A. The +order cannot be reversed. Physico-chemical relations, _as a class_, do +not imply those that are physiological.[57] The implication is not +symmetrical. Spencer was within sight of this when he spoke[58] of the +abstract-concrete sciences as 'instrumental' with respect to the +concrete sciences, though the latter are not 'instrumental' in the same +sense with respect to the former. But unfortunately he regarded the +'chasm' between the two groups as 'absolute'. And for him the proper +home of properties--of all properties it would appear--is the +abstract-concrete group--mechanics, physics, and chemistry. This +seemingly leaves no place for a specific type of properties connected +with vital relatedness as such. In fact Spencer's method of treatment +reduces all modes of relatedness to the A type, the laws of which are, +for him, the primary 'causes' of all kinds of differentiation and +integration. Hence the laws of biology and psychology can ultimately be +expressed and explained, he thinks, in mechanical or mechanistic terms. +But in the doctrine of implication they are just the laws of B and C +respectively, though laws of A may underlie them in a logical sense. And +as we ascend the evolutionary plane from A to AB and thence to ABC--from +the physico-chemical to the vital and thence to the cognitive--we find +new modes of relatedness, new forms of more complex integration and +synthesis, new properties successively appearing in serial order. This +seems to me simply to express, in outline, the net result of +interpretation based on empirical observation--though much, very much, +requires to be filled in by future research. And the new properties are +not merely additive of preceding properties; they are constitutive, and +characterize the higher evolutionary products as such. Why they are thus +constitutive, science is unable to say. Spencer, of course, calls in the +Unknowable to supply the required nexus.[59] Otherwise, in each case, he +confesses that 'we can learn nothing more than that here is one of the +uniformities in the order of phenomena'.[60] None the less we may be +able some day to establish an ordinal correlation[61] of cognitive +processes with physiological processes, and an ordinal correlation of +these physiological processes with those of the physico-chemical type. +That I conceive to be the ideal of strictly scientific interpretation if +it is to be raised progressively to a level approaching that of the +exact sciences. It certainly is not yet attained. But I see no reason +why we should not regard it as attainable. It will involve the very +difficult determination of many correlation coefficients and +constants--and for some of these our data are, it must be confessed, +both scanty and unreliable. + +We must here note a much-discussed departure on Spencer's part from his +earlier position. On the first page of the _Biology_ in the earlier +editions, and in the last, we are told: + + 'The properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by + combination are not destroyed in reality. It follows from the + persistence of force that the properties of a compound are + resultants of the properties of its components, resultants in + which the properties of the components are severally in full + action, though mutually obscured.' + +There is no hint here of Mill's heteropathic laws nor of Lewes's +emergents. But in the last edition a special chapter is inserted on the +Dynamic Element in Life. We here find a tardy recognition of the +presence of specific vital characters. + + 'The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible + as the results of any physical actions known to us.... In brief, + then, we are obliged to confess that Life in its essence cannot be + conceived in physico-chemical terms.'[62] + +I speak of this as a tardy recognition; but it is one that does honour +to the man; it is a frank admission that his previous treatment was in +some measure inadequate, which a smaller man would not have had the +honesty or the strength of character to make. Of course it is traced +down to the Unknowable. 'Life as a principle of activity is unknown and +unknowable; while phenomena are accessible to thought the implied +noumenon is inaccessible.'[63] Still, certain specific characteristics +of living organisms are explicitly recognized as among the accessible +phenomena; and these cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. But +did Spencer fully realize how big a hole this knocks in the bottom of +the purely mechanical interpretation of nature he had for so long +championed? + +There remains for consideration the place of the cognitive relation in +Spencer's philosophy of science. We need not here discuss his +transfigured realism. Apart from the customary references to the +Unknowable, of which what is knowable is said to be symbolic, it comes +to little more than laying special emphasis on the truism that what is +known in the so-called objective world involves the process of knowing; +from which it follows that, apart from knowing it the objective world +cannot be known. From this Spencer draws the conclusion that terms in +cognitive relatedness have their very nature determined in and through +that relatedness, and cannot _in themselves_ be what they are, and as +they are, in the field of cognitive symbolism. This may or may not be +true. I am one of those who question the validity of the arguments in +favour of this conclusion. Since, however, the philosophy of science +deals only with the knowable--of which the so-called appearances with +which we have direct acquaintance are the primary data--we need not here +trouble ourselves with the controversy between realists and symbolists. +Even on Spencer's view the world as symbolized is the real world _for +science_. + +Now one way of expressing the fact that the cognitive relation is +always present where knowledge is concerned is to proclaim 'the truth +that our states of consciousness are the only things we can know'.[64] +But it is a terribly ambiguous way of expressing the fact. What is here +meant by a state of consciousness? So far as cognition is concerned it +is, or at any rate it involves, a relationship between something known +and the organism, as knowing--for Spencer assuredly the organism, though +a so-called inner aspect therein. Of course it is a very complex +relationship. It comprises relations in what is known, and relations in +the organism as knowing. Hence Spencer defines life, psychical as well +as physical, as 'the continuous adjustment of internal relations to +external relations'.[65] + + 'That which distinguishes Psychology is that each of its + propositions takes account both of the connected internal + phenomena and of the connected external phenomena to which they + refer. It is not only the one, nor only the other, that + characterises cognition. It is the connexion between these two + connexions.'[66] + +So far well. Cognition is a very complex network of relatedness +involving many terms. What are these terms? For Spencer the internal +terms are ultimately nervous (=psychic) shocks in highly integrated +aggregates; and the external terms are, proximately at least, things in +the environment. But both alike are spoken of as states of +consciousness. There is surely an opening for ambiguity here. Sometimes, +too, the words subjective affections are used in place of states of +consciousness. 'Thus we are brought to the conclusion that what we are +conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and +resistance, are but subjective affections.'[67] Well, these states of +consciousness, these subjective affections, fall into two great +classes--the vivid and the faint. The former, which we know as +sensations, accompany direct and therefore strong excitations of the +nerve-centres; the latter, which we know as remembered sensations, or +ideas of sensations, accompany indirect and therefore weak excitations +of the same nerve-centres.[68] And then we are told that the aggregate +of the faint is what we call the mind, the subject, the _ego_; the +aggregate of the vivid is what we call the external world, the object, +the _non-ego_.[69] It would seem, then, that the aggregate of vivid +_subjective_ affections is the _objective_ world so far as knowable. To +say the least of it, this terminology is somewhat perplexing. + +No doubt our knowledge of the external world involves a subtle and +intricate inter-relation of what is experienced vividly and what is +experienced faintly--of what is actually presented and what is ideally +re-presented. The distinction between them is a valid one. But when +Spencer equates this distinction with that between the external world +and the mind, as he does in the passages to which I have referred, the +validity of his procedure is seriously open to question. + +It must be confessed that an adequate analysis of cognitive relatedness +on scientific lines is not to be found in Spencer's works. I am not sure +that it is yet to be found in the works of any other philosopher, though +there are many signs that the difficult problems it involves are +receiving serious attention. This much seems certain, for those who +accept the spirit, though not perhaps the letter, of Spencer's teaching: +that there it is as a constitutive mode of relatedness in the realm of +nature, and that, if it forms part of the evolutionary scheme, if it is +present in the conclusion, so far reached, though it was absent in the +physico-chemical premises, if it is to be included in a philosophy of +science it must be dealt with by that philosophy on lines strictly +analogous to those on which any other relational problem is treated. +Firmly as we may believe in the reality of Source, we must not call to +our aid some psychic entity, some entelechy, some _élan vital_, to help +us out of our difficulties; for one and all of these lie wholly outside +the universe of discourse of science; and not one of them affords the +smallest help in solving a single scientific problem in a manner that is +itself scientific. + +We have seen that Spencer believed that the task of psychology is to +investigate the correlation of external and internal relations, and, in +that sense, itself to correlate them within a scientific interpretation. +Now the outcome of the former correlation is some form of behaviour or +conduct on the part of the organism. No doubt such behaviour affords +data to be dealt with in subsequent cognition. But it implies the prior +cognition which leads up to it; and it is this prior cognition, +abstracted from the behaviour to which it leads, that we have to +consider. It is so terribly complex that it is difficult to deal with it +comprehensibly in a brief space. Let me, however, try to do so, at least +in tentative outline. There occurs, let us say, an external event in the +physical world, such as the motion of a billiard-ball across the table; +and when during its progress this stimulates the retina, there is an +internal physico-chemical process which runs its course in retina, optic +nerves, and the central nervous system. We may regard these two +processes, external and internal, as _so far_, of like physical order. +With adequate knowledge the two could, in some measure, be serially +correlated as such. But the physico-chemical processes in the organism +are not only of this physical type. They are vital or physiological as +well. And this makes a real difference. Of course this statement is open +to question. But I, for one, believe that there are specific relations +present in physiological processes, _qua_ vital, other than those of the +physico-chemical type--relations which are effective and which require a +distinctive name. So far I am a vitalist. At some stage of evolution +these new modes of effective relatedness came into being, whereas in the +fire-mist and for long afterwards they were not in being. None the less +when they did actually come into being, under conditions of which we are +at present ignorant--though not so ignorant as we were--they were +dependent upon, and, for our interpretation, they logically imply, the +physico-chemical relations which are also present. In any given case +they further imply, through heredity-relatedness, the evolutionary +history of the organism in which they obtain. This so-called historical +element in biology no doubt involves a characteristic vital +relationship. But, I take it, the physico-chemical constitution of any +inorganic compound, and of any molecule therein, has also its +history--has relationship to past occurrences within its type, which +have helped to make it what it is. Still, in the organism the relation +to past happenings has a quite distinctive form which we deal with in +terms of heredity. See, then, how we stand so far. The internal +physiological process implies a long chain of heredity-relationships +through which the organism is prepared for its occurrence. It also +implies a physico-chemical basis, an underlying[70] physico-chemical +process. And this implies as a condition of its occurrence, the external +event, the passage of the billiard-ball across the table. In a broad +sense we may say that the inner process knows the external event which +is a condition of its occurrence. But we have not yet reached cognition +of the psychological type. + +Before passing on to indicate, in tentative outline, the nature of this +higher mode of relatedness, I pause to note two points. The first is +that knowing in that extended sense which I have borrowed,[71] is +essentially selective in its nature. The physiological process, in the +case I have taken, knows only that external event which is directly +before the eyes and which is serially correlated with changes in the +retinal images through the stimulation of specialized receptors. Of +other external events it has no such knowledge. Compare this with the +gravitative knowledge--if a yet wider extension of the meaning of the +word be permitted--which the earth has of the sun and all the other +members of the solar system--nay more, in degrees perhaps infinitesimal, +of all other material bodies in the universe. The motion of the earth in +its orbit implies the whole of this vast field of gravitative +relatedness. The existing orbital motion at any moment implies, too, the +preceding motion which it has, in a sense, inherited from the past. +Abolish the rest of the universe at this moment and the earth's motion +would cease to be orbital. In virtue of its 'inheritance from the past', +it would continue at uniform velocity in one direction. The continuous +change of direction and velocity we observe, is a response which implies +gravitative knowledge. In a sense, then, the whole solar system is known +by the earth as it swings in its orbit. + +The second point may be introduced by a question. Granted that we may +say, in a very liberal sense, that the earth in its motion has this +gravitative knowledge--is such knowledge accompanied by awareness? We do +not know. But the point I have in mind is this, that the question itself +is vague. Awareness of what? There must be awareness of something; and a +definite question should be directed towards the nature of that +something. For example: is the earth aware of its own motion? Or is it +aware of the solar system? Or is it aware of the relation of the one to +the other? If it be said that the second of these is meant when we ask +whether the knowledge is accompanied by awareness, well and good. The +answer will serve to define the question. Take now a case of biological +knowledge. Are the plants in the cottager's window, when they grow +towards the light, aware of a process in their own tissues? Or are they +aware of the sunshine? Or are they in some measure aware of the +connexion between the one and the other? To all these questions we must +answer, I suppose, that we do not know. But it may have been worth while +to ask them in a definite way. + +We pass, then, to cognition in the usual acceptation of the term--to +what we speak of as knowledge in the proper and narrower sense. My +contention is that this is a mode of relatedness which science must +endeavour to treat on precisely the same lines as it deals with any +other natural kind of relatedness. At some stage of evolution it came +into being, whereas in the fire-mist, and for long afterwards, it was +not in being. None the less when it did come into being, it was +dependent on, and for our interpretation it logically implies, +underlying physiological processes, as they in turn imply +physico-chemical processes, in each case serially correlated. It is +pre-eminently selective. And just as any physiological process, however +externally conditioned, is grounded in[72] the constitution of the +organism, as such, so too is any cognitive process grounded in the +constitution of the organism as one in which this higher type of +relatedness has supervened. Again, just as the physiological +constitution implies a prolonged racial preparation, describable in +terms of that mode of relatedness we name heredity, so, too, does any +cognitive process imply, not only this racial preparation of the +biological kind, but also an individual preparation of the psychological +kind--implies relatedness to what we call, rather loosely, prior +experience--which itself implies a concurrent physiological preparation. + +Now there can be no doubt that awareness is a characteristic feature of +the knowledge of cognition, whether it be present or absent in knowledge +in the more extended sense. We must just accept this as what appears to +be a fact. In science we do not pretend to say why facts are what they +are and as they are. We take them as they are given, and endeavour to +trace their connexions and their implications. Accepting, then, +awareness as given, we must ask: Awareness of what? It is sometimes said +that cognition is aware of itself. I am not sure that I understand what +this means. If we are speaking of the cognitive relation, which is an +awareness relation, the question seems to be whether a relation of +awareness is related to itself. But of course if a field of cognitive +relatedness be regarded as a complex whole, any part may be related to +the rest, and the rest to any part. That kind of self-awareness--if we +must so call it!--is eminently characteristic of cognition in the higher +forms of its development. On these terms cognition is aware of +itself--though the mode of statement savours of ambiguity. + +Let us next ask whether there is awareness of the underlying cortical +process. If we are speaking of direct awareness, apparently not. The +correlation between the two is only discoverable through a very +elaborate and complex[73] application of further cognition in +interpretative knowledge. We only know the correlated cortical process +by description, as Mr. Bertrand Russell would say,[74] and never by +direct acquaintance. + +Parenthetic reference must here, I suppose, be made to psycho-physical +parallelism. But it shall be very brief. The sooner this cumbrous term +with its misleading suggestions is altogether eliminated from the +vocabulary of science the better. The locus of the so-called parallelism +is, we are told, the cortex of the brain. But the cortical process is +only an incident--no doubt a very important one, but still an +incident--in a much wider physiological process, the occurrence of +which, in what we may speak of as primary cognition, implies events in +the external world. It is of these events that there is direct physical, +physiological, and cognitive knowledge. Of course there are also +inter-cortical relations which underlie the relations of those ideal +cognita (Spencer's faint class) that supplement the primary cognita +which imply direct stimulation of sensory receptors (Spencer's vivid +class). It is questionable whether any form of cognition, properly so +called, is possible in their absence. Now I see no objection to +labelling the fact (if it be a fact) that the cognitive process implies +a physiological process in which, as in a larger whole, the cortex +plays its appropriate part, by the use of some such convenient +correlation-word as psycho-physical; but only so long as this does not +involve a doctrine of parallelism; so long as it merely means that +cognition implies, let us say, certain underlying cortical changes. Of +course it implies a great deal more than cortical process only; but this +may perhaps be taken for granted. My chief objection to the word +'parallelism' is that it suggests two separate orders of being, and not +two types of relationship within one order of being for scientific +study.[75] We do not speak of parallelism between physiological and +physico-chemical processes. We just say that scientific interpretation +proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a +kind that physiological process implies a physico-chemical basis. So +too, I urge, we should be content to say that scientific interpretation +proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a +kind that cognitive process implies a physiological basis. + +It may be said that Spencer accepted the so-called identity hypothesis +which does not lie open to the objection that it suggests two orders of +being. He believed[76] 'that mind and nervous action are the subjective +and objective faces of the same thing', though 'we remain utterly +incapable of seeing or even imagining how the two are related'. Well, we +may call them in one passage the same thing, we may speak, in another +passage, of the antithesis between them as never to be transcended, and +we may try to save the situation by reference to duality of aspect. But +this kind of treatment does not help as much towards a scientific +interpretation. It is true that, in yet another passage, speaking of the +correlation of the physical and the psychical, Spencer says:[77] 'We can +learn nothing more than that here is one of the uniformities in the +order of phenomena.' Then why not leave it at that? And if there be a +constant and uniform correlation which is 'in a certain indirect way +quantitive', it would seem that we _do_ see, as far as science ever +professes to see, 'how the two are related.' We see, or conceive, how +they are related in much the same way as we do in the case of the +connexion between the physiological and the physico-chemical, and in +numberless other cases. Both parallelism and identity will have to go by +the board in a philosophy of science. They must be replaced by the far +more modest hypothesis, which seems to express all that they really mean +for science, that cognition always implies certain physiological +processes in the organism. + +If we do speak of mind and nervous action as two faces of the same +thing, it seems pretty certain that the one face is not directly aware +of the other. When we speak of awareness in cognition we must therefore, +it appears, exclude any direct awareness of concurrent physiological +processes. Of what, then, is there awareness? Primarily perhaps of some +occurrence in the external world. But the difficulty here is that, in +the simplest case of human cognition there is awareness of so many +things and in such varying degrees. There may be primary awareness of +events in the external world (Spencer's vivid series), awareness of the +relations involved in these occurrences as such, of the relations of +these to ideal re-presentations of like kind (Spencer's faint series), +of the relations of any or all of these to behaviour as actually taking +place or as ideally re-presented; and all in different degrees within a +relational meshwork of bewildering complexity, which we have not, as +yet, adequately unravelled. The essential point to bear in mind is that +the cognitive relation always involves relatedness of _many terms_, and +that its discussion involves the analysis of what, in the higher phases +of its existence, is probably the most complex natural occurrence in +this complex world. + +I cannot here follow up further the difficult problem of +cognition[78]--save to add one or two supplementary remarks. First: it +is, I suppose, fairly obvious that any given field of cognitive +relatedness comprises _all_ that is then and there selectively cognized. +Just as, in the very extended sense of the word 'knowledge', the earth +knows, in gravitative fashion, the whole solar system, as does also any +one of the planets, so, in the restricted sense, is knowledge +co-extensive with all that is, selectively, in cognitive relationship +with the organism or that part of the organism which is the locus of +awareness. I speak here of the locus of awareness in just the same sense +as I might speak of the earth as a locus of gravitative knowledge of the +solar system. The locus of awareness is just a specialized portion of +the whole relational web. In other words, the relatedness is of the +part-whole kind, where whole means rest of the whole other than the +specific part. In any such integrated system the part implies the +whole--which, by the way, is quite a different matter from saying that +the part includes the whole, or, as I understand the words, is +equivalent to the whole. But, whereas gravitative knowledge is +reciprocal--the sun knowing the earth in the same fashion as the earth +knows the sun--cognitive knowledge is not reciprocal. My cognitive +awareness of a spinning-top does not imply that the spinning-top is in +like manner aware of me. The part knows the whole in a way that the +whole does not know the part. The relationship of the part to the rest +of the whole is not reciprocal or symmetrical. This we must just accept +as a given feature of cognitive relatedness.[79] + +Another very important point is that cognitive relatedness is +effective. By this I mean that just as, when the earth is in gravitative +relation to the sun and the other planets (the constitution of nature +being what it is), changes take place because the parts of the system as +a whole are in this field of effective relatedness; so too, when the +organism is in cognitive relation to its environment, changes in this +system also take place just because a part of the whole system is in +cognitive relatedness to the rest of the system. That means that the +cognitive relation really counts--that it is not merely an epiphenomenal +accompaniment of changes which would be precisely the same if it were +absent. The 'sum of energy' presumably remains constant. There is no +necessary interference with physical principles. But we know of so many +cases in which the direction of change may be changed without any +alteration of the 'amount of energy', as the phrase goes, that I see no +reason, based on physical science,[80] for denying this kind of +effectiveness, within a field of cognitive relatedness, if the facts +seem indubitably to point to its existence. To assert that the presence +or absence of cognitive relatedness makes absolutely no difference +appears to me, I confess, little short of preposterous; to urge that it +may be brought under the rubric of physico-chemical relatedness surely +involves the ignoring of differentiating features, which science should +not ignore. But, on the other hand, to invoke an immaterial psychic +entity[81]--unless this merely names the relatedness itself[82] as +gravitation names the gravitative relatedness--appears to me quite +unwarranted in the scientific universe of discourse.[83] + +I must, however, draw to a conclusion. I cannot but think that Spencer +failed to bring cognition and the conscious awareness it involves into +really close touch with the rest of his philosophy of science. No such +double-aspect theory as he accepted affords a satisfactory avenue of +scientific approach. But where Spencer failed, who has come within +measurable sight of success? We are only just beginning to see our way +to stating the problem in such a form as to bring it within the purview +of science. What we must insist on, as followers, at a distance, of +Herbert Spencer, is the treatment of this type of relatedness on lines +similar to our treatment of other types of relatedness within one order +of nature. + +Surveying his work as a whole, we may confidently assert that Spencer +brought to a conclusion a great task, and was himself great in its +execution. The present generation can, perhaps, hardly realize how +potent his influence was on the thought of the latter half of the last +century. Many of his conclusions ran counter to those which were, in his +day, widely accepted. If only they seemed to him to be true, however, he +held to them with a tenacity which his opponents branded as obstinacy. +But as he himself said: + + 'It is not for nothing that a man has in him sympathies with some + principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, + and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of + his time. While he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of + the future; and his thoughts are as children born to him, which he + may not carelessly let die. Not as adventitious therefore will the + wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he + sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of + it, he is thus playing his right part in the world.'[84] + + + + +NOTES + + +[1] _Fragments of Science_, vol. ii, p. 132. + +[2] _Essays_, vol. i (American reprint), p. 3. + +[3] _Op. cit._, p. 32. + +[4] _Op. cit._, p. 58. + +[5] Cf. W. K. Clifford, _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 95. + +[6] _More Letters_, vol. ii, p. 235. + +[7] _Memories and Studies_, p. 139. + +[8] _Ibid._, p. 140. + +[9] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 212. + +[10] James, _op. cit._, p. 124. + +[11] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 211. + +[12] _First Principles_, Sixth (Popular) Edition, p. 446 (hereafter F. +P.). + +[13] _Principles of Psychology_, Third Edition, vol. i, p. 508 +(hereafter Ps.). + +[14] Ps., vol. i, p. 627. + +[15] _Ibid._, p. 158. + +[16] F. P., p. 155. + +[17] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484. + +[18] There is '_intrinsic_ force by which a body manifests itself as +occupying space, and that _extrinsic_ force distinguished as energy'. F. +P., p. 150. + +[19] 'Divest the conceived unit of matter of the objective correlate to +our subjective sense of effort and the entire fabric of physical +conceptions disappears.' F. P., p. 151 note. Cf. Ps., vol. ii, pp. 237, +239. + +[20] F. P., p. 171. + +[21] e.g. 'Social changes take directions that are due to the joint +actions of citizens determined as are those of all other changes wrought +by the composition of forces.' 'The flow of capital into business +yielding the largest returns, the buying in the cheapest market and +selling in the dearest, the introduction of more economical modes of +manufacture, the development of better agencies for distribution, +exhibit movements taking place in directions where they are met by the +smallest totals of opposing forces.' F. P., pp. 193-6. + +[22] _Creative Evolution_, English translation, p. 53. + +[23] _Op. cit._, pp. 385, 6. + +[24] According to Dr. Carr's interpretation of M. Bergson, 'The whole +world, as it is presented to us and thought of by us, is an illusion. +Our science is not unreal, but it is a transformed reality. The +illusions may be useful, may, indeed, be necessary and indispensable, +but nevertheless it is illusion.' _Problem of Truth_, p. 66. + +[25] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389. + +[26] 'But, when I posit the facts with the shape they have for me +to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception and intellection such as +they are in me to-day; for it is they that portion the real into lots, +they that cut the facts out of the whole of reality.' C. E., p. 389. + +[27] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389. + +[28] _Op. cit._, p. 387. + +[29] _Introduction to Metaphysics_, English translation, p. 8 and +_passim_. + +[30] e.g. 'Organisation can only be studied scientifically if the +organised body has first been likened to a machine.' C. E., p. 98. +Science is, I think, generally used by M. Bergson for _intellectual_ +knowledge in contradistinction to intuitional knowledge. + +[31] F. P., p. 184. + +[32] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 14. + +[33] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 366. + +[34] F. P., p. 156. + +[35] 'There remained to assign a reason for that increasingly-distinct +demarkation of parts, &c.... This reason we discovered to be the +segregation, &c.... This cause of the definiteness of local +integrations, &c.' F. P., p. 440. + +[36] F. P., p. 43. + +[37] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 47. + +[38] F. P., p. 176. + +[39] F. P., p. 154. + +[40] _Proceedings Aristotelian Society_, 1912-13, p. 1. + +[41] _Popular Scientific Lectures_, English translation, p. 254. + +[42] _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 111. + +[43] 'But when we ask what this energy is, there is no answer save that +it is the noumenal cause implied by the phenomenal effect.' F. P., p. +154. It is towards this and like statements that my criticism is +directed. There can be no objection to the treatment, by physicists, of +energy as an entity in the sense given below in note 82. Those phenomena +to which 1/2 _mv_^{2} has reference are fundamental realities for +physical science. + +[44] In a statement of the law of gravitation we may substitute the +words 'in a degree' for 'with a force'; we may speak of 'the measure of +attraction' instead of 'the force of attraction'. + +[45] _System of Logic_, Bk. III, ch. v, § 3, Eighth Edition, vol. i, p. +383. + +[46] _Ibid._, § 3 and § 5, pp. 379 and 389. + +[47] Ps., vol. ii, p. 93; cf. p. 97. One has now, however, to add the +realm of subsistence. + +[48] As a more technical example the following may be given:--The +difference in properties of isomers is caused by difference of internal +molecular structure notwithstanding identity of chemical composition. + +[49] If we take spark as cause and explosion as effect there is +obviously no proportionality between the cause and its effect. Thus M. +Bergson speaks of the spark as 'a cause that acts by releasing'; and he +adds that 'neither quality nor quantity of effect varies with quality or +quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable'. _Creative Evolution_, +p. 77. Compare what Spencer introduced into the Sixth edition of F. P. +(pp. 172-3), concerning 'trigger action which does not produce the power +but liberates it'. According to the treatment in the text there can be +no 'proportionality' unless both ground and conditions are taken into +account. + +[50] Spencer says (F. P., pp. 169-70) that 'the transformation of the +unorganised contents of an egg into the organised chick is a question of +heat' ['altogether a question of heat', in the Third Edition], and tells +us that 'the germination of plants presents like relations of cause and +effect as every season shows'. But he also says that 'the proclivities +of the molecules determine the typical structure assumed'. Obviously +here the 'heat supplied' falls under (3) of the text, and 'the +proclivities of the molecules' is his notion of what should fall under +(2). + +[51] See Index to F. P., _sub verbo_ 'integration'. + +[52] e. g. 'Diminish the velocities of the planets and their orbits will +lessen--the solar system will contract, or become more integrated.' +_Essays_, vol. iii, p. 28. Mere condensation is often spoken of as +integration. But then the term is used with bewildering laxity. Cf. +James, _Memories and Studies_, p. 134. + +[53] I retain in this connexion the current term physico-chemical. It +seems that the basal type of relatedness here is electrical. It may be +said that when we come down to the atom the _things in_ relation are +electrical, are electrons, are positive and negative charges. So be it. +But is it not the _electrical relatedness_ that is constitutive of the +atom as such? + +[54] 'A large number of physical properties', says Nernst, 'have been +shown to be clearly additive; that is, the value of the property in +question can be calculated as though the compound were such a mixture of +its elements that they experience no change in their properties.' But +other properties are not additive. 'The kind of influence of the atom in +a compound is primarily dependent on the mode of its union, that is, +upon the constitution and configuration of the compound. Such +non-additive properties may be called constitutive.' Quoted by E. G. +Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 238. + +[55] _System of Logic_, vol. i, Bk. III, ch. vi. + +[56] _Problems of Life and Mind_, Series II, p. 212. + +[57] Of course if a particular physico-chemical change (_a_) is +correlated with a particular physiological or vital change (_b_), then +(_b_) implies (_a_) as (_a_) implies (_b_). The statement in the text +refers to the implications of classes of change. There may be +physico-chemical relatedness without any correlated vital relatedness; +but there does not appear to be any vital relatedness which is not +correlated with physico-chemical relatedness. + +[58] _Essays_, vol. iii, pp. 31, 55. + +[59] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484. + +[60] F. P., p. 178. + +[61] An ordinal correlation is one that couples every term of a series +(_a_) with a specific term of another series (_b_) and _vice versa_ in +the same order in each. Cf. Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 175. I +shall sometimes speak of such correlation as serial. + +[62] _Principles of Biology_, Edition of 1898, pp. 117, 120. + +[63] _Op. cit._, p. 122. + +[64] Ps., vol. i, p. 208. + +[65] F. P., p. 61. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 134. + +[66] Ps., vol. i, p. 132. James well says 'Spencer broke new ground here +in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved together, +they must be studied together. He gave to the study of mind in isolation +a definite quietus, and that certainly is a great thing to have +achieved'. _Memories and Studies_, p. 140. + +[67] Ps., vol. i, p. 206. + +[68] Ps., vol. i, p. 124. + +[69] F. P., p. 120. Ps., vol. ii, p. 472. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 98. + +[70] The word underlying is used in the sense of occupying a lower +position in the logical hierarchy above indicated. If any one likes to +speak of the physico-chemical and the vital as two aspects of one +process, he is free to do so. And if he likes to say that the vital is +caused by the physico-chemical, let him do so; but he must define the +exact sense in which he uses the ambiguous word cause. The word inner in +the text means within the organism. + +[71] See S. Alexander, 'On Relations: and in particular the Cognitive +Relation.' _Mind._, vol. xxi, N. S., No. 83, p. 318. + +[72] I have avoided the use of the word determine. It would be well to +distinguish between that which is _determined_ from without, that is, +conditioned, and that which is _determinate_, that is, grounded in the +constitution. I am here, I think, in line with Bosanquet. (See +_Principle of Individuality and Value_, e. g. pp. 341, 352.) I have also +avoided all reference to teleology. Without committing myself to the +acceptance of all that Mr. Bosanquet says in the fourth lecture of the +series to which reference has just been made, his treatment, there, +appears to be on right lines. There is no opposition in teleology, so +treated, to what is determinate. Indeed, such teleology is the +expression of the logical structure of the world, or, as Spencer would +say, the universality of law. For just as higher types of relatedness +imply a substratum of physico-chemical processes, so do all events imply +the underlying logic of events. Cf. W. T. Marvin, _A First Book of +Metaphysics_, ch. xiii, 'On the logical strata of reality.' + +[73] Cf. Ps., vol. i, pp. 99 and 140. + +[74] _Problems of Philosophy_, ch. v; cf. _Proc. Aristotelian Soc._, +1910-11, p. 108. + +[75] It should be distinctly understood that I here speak of one order +of being in reference to the phenomena dealt with by science, including +the cognitive phenomena discussed in the text. Whether we should speak +of the Source of phenomena as constituting a separate order of being is +a question I cannot discuss in a note. Does the logic of events imply a +Logos? That is the question in brief. But, since the implication in +question is not of the scientific kind, I may leave it on one side in +considering a philosophy of science. + +[76] Ps., vol. i, p. 140. + +[77] F. P., p. 178. + +[78] I have confined my attention to the cognitive type of relatedness. +Other higher modes supervene when the course of evolution is traced +further upwards. Indeed, cognition is only part of the underlying basis +implied by the richer forms of distinctively human relational life. +Spencer has much to say of them in his _Sociology_ and his _Ethics_, +though he fails to realize that the phenomena he is dealing with involve +essentially new constitutive features in man and in society. Can music +or any form of art be discussed in terms of cognition only? I merely add +this note to show that I am not unaware of the patent fact that when we +have reached the cognitive type of relatedness, we are nowhere near the +top of the evolutional tree. + +[79] The part which is the centre of awareness, may be spoken of as +experienc_ing_, in contradistinction to what is experienc_ed_. It is +clear that such experiencing is always correlative to what is +experienced actually or ideally (Spencer's vividly or faintly). The +centre of awareness is either the cortex, or some specific part of the +cortex, or (more generally) the organism as owning the cortex, in each +case in accordance with the universe of discourse. + +[80] Few physicists would, I think, be prepared to deny that, within a +field of effective relatedness, there may be, and very often is, +guidance without work done or any change in the 'amount of energy'. What +physicists are concerned to insist on is their cardinal principle that +every physical change involves physical terms in physical relatedness. +This can be fully and freely accepted in accordance with the doctrine of +implication sketched in the text. It is when Life or Consciousness is +invoked to play the part of a non-physical term, or thing, which acts +and reacts as if it were a physical term or thing, that physicists enter +an emphatic protest. Cognitive relatedness among physical things may +well be effective in guidance. To claim its presence must not, however, +be regarded as in any sense equivalent to a denial of underlying +physico-chemical relatedness. + +[81] Until those who seek to furnish evidence of the existence of +discarnate spirits can make some plausible suggestions as to the nature +of a comprehensible scheme of correlation which shall serve to link the +discarnate with the incarnate, one is forced to enter their results in a +suspense account. It is of little use to proclaim the existence of +'facts scorned by orthodox science'. The so-called facts must be +incorporated within a consistent scheme, before they can claim a place +in the fabric of scientific truth. + +[82] As the word entity is now often used, for example by Mr. G. E. +Moore, cognitive relatedness may be termed an entity. 'When I speak of +an entity I shall mean to imply absolutely nothing more with regard to +that which I so call, than that it _is_ or _was_--that it is or was +contained in the Universe; and of anything whatever which _is_ or _was_, +I shall take the liberty to say that it is an entity.' G. E. Moore, +_Proc. Aristotelian Soc._, 1909-10, p. 36. + +[83] I have no space to discuss the physiological differentiation which +is implied by the effectiveness of the cognitive relation. It involves, +I believe, the differentiation of a superior cortical system from an +inferior system of nervous arcs. I have dealt with it in some detail +elsewhere. See _Instinct and Experience_. + +[84] F. P., pp. 91-2. + + + OXFORD: HORACE HART M.A. + PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE*** + + +******* This file should be named 37513-8.txt or 37513-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/5/1/37513 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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Lloyd Morgan</title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + +p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + +hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + +a {text-decoration: none;} + +.pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} + +.blockquot {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.big {font-size: 125%;} +.huge {font-size: 150%;} +.giant {font-size: 200%;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.fnanchor {font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + hr.full { width: 100%; + margin-top: 3em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + height: 4px; + border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ + border-style: solid; + border-color: #000000; + clear: both; } + pre {font-size: 85%;} + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1 class="center">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Spencer's Philosophy of Science, by C. Lloyd +Morgan</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Spencer's Philosophy of Science</p> +<p> The Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered at the Museum 7 November, 1913</p> +<p>Author: C. Lloyd Morgan</p> +<p>Release Date: September 23, 2011 [eBook #37513]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4 class="center">E-text prepared by Adrian Mastronardi, David E. Brown,<br /> + and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Internet Archive/American Libraries<br /> + (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/americana">http://www.archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/spencersphilosop00morgrich"> + http://www.archive.org/details/spencersphilosop00morgrich</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center"><span class="giant">SPENCER'S<br/> +PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE HERBERT SPENCER LECTURE</span></p> + +<p class="center"><span class="big">DELIVERED AT THE MUSEUM<br/> +7 NOVEMBER, 1913</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">BY</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="huge">C. LLOYD MORGAN, F.R.S.</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">Price Two Shillings net</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="big">OXFORD<br/> +AT THE CLARENDON PRESS<br/> +MCMXIII</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="big">OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS</span><br /> +LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK<br /> +TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY<br /> +<span class="big">HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A.</span><br /> +PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE</span></p> + +<p> </p> +<p>Towards the close of 1870, while I was still in my teens, my youthful +enthusiasm was fired by reading Tyndall's Discourse on <i>The Scientific +Use of the Imagination</i>. The vision of the conquest of nature by +physical science—a vision which had but lately begun to open up to my +wondering gaze—was rendered clearer and more extensive. Of the theory +of evolution I knew but little; but I none the less felt assured that it +had come to stay and to prevail. Was it not accepted by all of <i>us</i>—the +enlightened and emancipated men of science whose ranks I had joined as a +raw recruit? Believing that I was independently breaking free of all +authority, to the authority that appealed to my fancy, and to a new +loyalty, I was a willing slave. And here in one glowing sentence the +inner core of evolution lay revealed.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">'Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not +alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular and animal life, not +alone the nobler forms of the horse and the lion, not alone the +exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the +human mind itself—emotion, intellect and all their phenomena—were +once latent in a fiery cloud.'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>With sparkling eyes I quoted these brave words to a friend of my +father's, whose comments were often as caustic as his sympathy in my +interests was kindly. With a grave smile he asked whether the notion was +not perhaps stripped too naked to preserve the decencies of modest +thought; he inquired whether I had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> learnt from <i>Sartor Resartus</i> +that the philosophy of nature is a Philosophy of Clothes; and he bade me +devote a little time to quiet and careful consideration of what Tyndall +really meant—meant in terms of the exact science he professed—by the +phrase 'latent in a fiery cloud'. I dimly suspected that the old +gentleman—old in the sense of being my father's contemporary—was +ignorant of those recent developments of modern science with which I had +been acquainted for weeks, nay more for months. Perhaps he had never +even heard of the nebular hypothesis! But I felt that I had done him an +injustice when, next morning, he sent round a volume of the <i>Westminster +Review</i> with a slip of paper indicating an article on 'Progress: its Law +and Cause'.</p> + +<p>Such was my introduction to Herbert Spencer, some of whose works I read +with admiration during the next few years.</p> + +<p>I have no very distinct recollection of the impression produced on my +mind by the germinal essay of 1857, save that it served to quicken that +craving, which is, I suppose, characteristic of those who have some +natural bent towards philosophy—the imperative craving to seek and, if +it may be, to find the one in the many. In any case Tyndall's suggestive +sentence was here amplified and the underlying law was disclosed.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">'Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development +of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of +Government, of Manufacture, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, +Science, Art, the same evolution of the simple into the complex, +through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the +earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of +civilisation, we shall find that the transformation of the +homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress +essentially consists.'<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>Here was just what I wanted—on the one hand the whole wide universe of +existence; and on the other hand a brief formula with which to label its +potted essence. How breathlessly one was led on, with only such breaches +of continuity as separate paragraphs inevitably impose, right away from +the primitive fire-mist to one of Bach's fugues or the critical +doctrines of Mr. Ruskin, guided throughout by the magic of +differentiation. What if the modes of existence, dealt with in +successive sections, were somewhat startlingly diverse! Was not this +itself a supreme example of the evolution of that diversity which the +formula enables us to interpret? For if there were a passage from the +homogeneous to the heterogeneous, the more heterogeneous the +products—inorganic, organic, and superorganic, as I learnt to call +them—the stronger the evidence for the law. Only by shutting one's eyes +to the light that had been shed on the world by evolution could one fail +to see how simple and yet how inevitable was the whole business.</p> + +<p>If then differentiation be the cardinal law of evolution—for the +correlative concept of integration receives no emphasis in this early +essay—does not the universality of the law imply a universal cause? +Just as gravitation was assignable as a <i>cause</i> of each of the groups of +phenomena which Kepler formulated; so might some equally simple +attribute of things be assignable as the cause of each of the groups of +phenomena formulated in terms of differentiation. Now the only obvious +respect in which all kinds of Progress are alike, is, that they are +modes of change; and hence in some characteristic of changes in general, +the desired solution must be found. Thus we are led up to the statement +of the all-pervading principle which determines the all-pervading +process of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> differentiation. It is this: <i>Every active force produces +more than one change—every cause produces more than one effect.</i><a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<p>In the first part of the Essay many and varied facts are adduced to show +that every kind of progress is from the simple to the complex. The aim +of the second part is to show why this is so: it is 'because each change +is followed by many changes'. From the beginning, the decomposition of +every expended force into several forces has been perpetually producing +a higher complication, and thus Progress is not an accident but a +beneficent necessity. In a brief third part we are bidden to remember +that</p> + +<p class="blockquot">'after all that has been said the ultimate mystery remains just as +it was. The explanation of that which is explicable does but bring +out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which +remains behind.... The sincere man of science, content to follow +wherever the evidence leads him becomes by each new enquiry more +profoundly convinced that the Universe is an insoluble problem.... +In all directions his investigations bring him face to face with the +unknowable; and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the +unknowable'.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<p>There is I think a growing consensus of opinion that the first of these +three parts, subsequently expanded and illustrated with astonishing +wealth of detail in the volumes of the <i>Synthetic Philosophy</i>, contains +the germ of all that is best in the teaching of Herbert Spencer; and +that it was amid phenomena which admitted of interpretation from the +biological, or quasi-biological, point of view that he found his most +congenial sphere of work and the one in which his method was most +effectively employed. The story of evolution is the story of +inter-related changes. In any organic whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> there are certain salient +features of the historical sequence.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The parts get more different +from each other, and they also get more effectively connected with each +other; the individual whole gets more different from its environment, +and it also preserves and extends its connexion with the environment; +the several individuals get more different from others, while their +connexion with others is retained and new connexions are established. +Nowadays these central ideas may seem familiar enough; but that is just +because Spencer's thought has been so completely assimilated. And then +we must remember that these main principles are supplemented by a great +number of ancillary generalizations, many of which have been +incorporated in the scientific doctrine which is current to-day. We must +bear in mind that of the <i>Biology</i> Charles Darwin wrote:<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> 'I am +astonished at its prodigality of original thought.' Of the <i>Psychology</i> +William James says<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> that of the systematic treatises it will rank as +the most original. These are the opinions of experts. No discussion of +sociology or ethics is complete if it ignores Spencer's contributions to +these subjects. The <i>Ethics</i>, says James<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> is a most vital and original +piece of attitude-taking in the world of ideals. It was his firm and +often inflexible 'attitude' which was a source of strength in Spencer, +though it was the strength of rigidity rather than that of sinewy +suppleness. This was part of a certain 'narrowness of intent and +vastness of extent' which characterized his mental vision. He was so +obsessed with the paramount importance of biological relationships that +in his <i>Sociology</i>, his <i>Ethics</i>, his <i>Psychology</i>, he failed to do +justice to, or even to realize the presence of, other and higher +relationships—higher, that is, in the evolutionary scale. But it was +his signal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> merit to work biological interpretation for all, and perhaps +more than, it was worth. It was on these lines that he was led to find a +clue to those social and political developments, the discussion of +which, in the <i>Nonconformist</i> of 1842, constituted the first step from +the life of an engineer to that other kind of life which led to the +elaboration of the <i>Synthetic Philosophy</i>.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> In his later years he was +saddened to see that many of the social and political doctrines, for the +establishment of which he had striven so strenuously, were not accepted +by a newer generation of thinkers. Still, to have taken a definite and, +for all his detractors may say, an honoured position in the line of +those who make history in the philosophy of life and mind—that could +never be taken away from him.</p> + +<p>It will perhaps be said that this emphasis on the philosophy of life and +mind does scant justice to the range and sweep of Spencer's philosophy +as a whole; and no doubt others will contend that the emphasis should be +laid elsewhere; on the mechanical foundations; on evolution as a +universal principle. It will be urged that Spencer widened to men's view +the scope of scientific explanation. He proclaimed 'the gradual growth +of all things by natural processes out of natural antecedents'.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> Even +in the <i>Nonconformist</i> letters 'there is', he himself says,<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> +'definitely expressed a belief in the universality of law—law in the +realm of mind as in that of matter—law throughout the life of society +as throughout the individual life. So, too, is it with the correlative +idea of universal causation.' And if there be law it must at bottom be +one law. Thus in <i>First Principles</i> Spencer propounded a sweeping and +sonorous formula, which every disciple knows by heart, embodying the +fundamental traits of that unceasing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> redistribution of matter and +motion which characterizes evolution as contrasted with dissolution. Was +it not this that he himself regarded as his main contribution to +philosophy? Did he not himself provide a summary, setting forth the +sixteen articles of the Spencerian creed; and is not this summary given +a prominent position in the Preface he wrote to Howard Collins's +<i>Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy</i>? Do not these fundamental articles +of his faith deal with ubiquitous causes, with the instability of the +homogeneous and the multiplication of effects, with segregation and +equilibration, and with the basal conception of the persistence of +force? There is here, it may be said, no special reference to the +organic and the superorganic. And why? Just because Spencer's +interpretation is all-inclusive; because biology, psychology, sociology, +ethics are, broadly considered, concerned only with incidents of the +later scenes of the great mechanical drama of evolution. Are we not +again and again bidden, now in forecast, now in retrospect, to look +below the surface, and constantly to bear in mind that the aim of +philosophy, as completely unified knowledge, is 'the interpretation of +all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force'?<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> It is true +that the affairs of the mind give pause and seem to present something of +a difficulty. But even here 'specifically stated, the problem is to +interpret mental evolution in terms of the redistribution of matter and +motion'.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> An adequate explanation of nervous evolution involves an +adequate explanation of the concomitant evolution of mind. It is true +that the antithesis of subject and object is never to be transcended +'while consciousness lasts'.[14] But if all existence, distinguishable +as subjective, is resolvable into units of consciousness, which in their +obverse or objective aspect are oscillations of molecules,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> what +more is required to round off the explanation of every thing, save the +Unknowable—save the Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are +united? In the end we are baffled by mystery; let us, therefore, make +the best of it and rejoice.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">'We can think of Matter only in terms of Mind. We can think of Mind +only in terms of Matter. When we have pushed our explorations of the +first to its uttermost limit we are referred to the second for a +final answer; and when we have got the final answer to the second we +are referred back to the first for an interpretation of it.'<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p> + +<p>And so neither answer is final. Finality is only reached when both are +swallowed up, not in victory, but in defeat. Shall we not then glory in +defeat and sing its praises often?</p> + +<p>I must leave to some future Herbert Spencer lecturer the discussion of +his doctrine of the Unknowable and the critical consideration of its +place and value in philosophy. I would fain leave it altogether on one +side; but that is impossible. Although the <i>First Principles</i> is divided +into two Parts, dealing respectively with the Unknowable and the +Knowable, we have not by any means done with the former when we turn +from the First Part to the Second. With Spencer we have never done with +the Unknowable, the Unconditioned Reality and the other aliases by which +it goes. His persistence of force is the persistence of Unknowable +Force. In a leading passage, at any rate, it is avowedly 'the +persistence of some Cause which transcends our knowledge and conception. +In asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality without beginning or +end'.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> There must, he holds, be something at the back of the +evolutionary drama which we study—something that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> is both a principle +of activity and a permanent <i>nexus</i>.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> The pity of it is that we know +not, and can never know, what on earth (or in heaven!) it is. We only +know that it exists, and somehow produces the whole show. Now it would +much conduce to clearness of thought and of statement if we could agree +to eliminate those terribly ambiguous words 'force' and 'cause' when we +are dealing with the fundamental postulate (if such it be) that there +must be something at the back of evolution to make it what it is; and +the word Source seems ready to our hand and might well be given this +special significance. But Spencer uses Agency, Power, Cause, Force, in +this connexion. In how many senses he uses the word 'force' I am not +prepared to say. It is often a synonym for cause; it stands alike for +matter and energy;<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> it is the objective correlate of our subjective +sense of effort.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> There is a 'correlation and equivalence between +external forces and the mental forces generated by them under the form +of sensations'.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> And when we pass to human life in society, whatever +in any way facilitates or impedes social, political, or economic change, +is spoken of in terms of force.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> With an apparent vagueness and +laxity almost unparalleled, force is used in wellnigh every conceivable +sense of this ambiguous word—except, perhaps, that which is now +sanctioned by definition in mathematical physics. I say apparent +vagueness and laxity because, subtly underlying all this varied usage, +is the unifying conception of Source as the ultimate basis of all +enforcement. From this flows all necessity whether in things or thoughts +or any combination of the two. Thus persistence of force is Spencer's +favourite expression for uniform determinism at or near its Source.</p> + +<p>Now, as I understand the position, science has nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> whatever to do +with the Source or Sources of phenomena. By a wise self-denying +ordinance it rules all questions of ultimate origin out of court. It +regards them as beyond its special sphere of jurisdiction. It deals with +phenomena in terms of connexion within an orderly scheme, and it does +not profess to explain <i>why</i> the connexions are such as they are found +to be. In any discussion of this or that sequence of events which may +fall under the wide and rather vague heading of evolution, it is just a +consistent story of the events in their total relatedness that science +endeavours to tell. The question: But what evolves the evolved? is for +science (or should I say for those who accept this delimitation of the +province of science?) not so much unanswerable in any terms, as +unanswerable in scientific terms. For the terms in which an answer must +be given are incommensurable with the concepts with which science has +elected to carry on its business as interpreter of nature. To this +question therefore the man of science, speaking for his order, simply +replies: We do not know. Is this, then, Spencer's answer? Far from it. +The man of science here makes, or should make, no positive assertion, +save in respect of the limits of his field of inquiry. If you beg him to +tell you what that which he knows not is, or does, he regards such a +question as meaningless. But Spencer's Unknowable, notwithstanding its +negative prefix, is the Ultimate Reality, and does all that is in any +way done. We may not know <i>what</i> it is; but <i>that</i> it is, is the most +assured of all assured certainties. And when it comes to doing, what can +be more dramatically positive than that which bears a name of negation? +Whatever it may not be, it is the Power that drives all the machinery in +this workshop of a world; it is the Power which lies at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> the back of +such wit as man has to interpret it, and, in some measure, to utilize +its mechanism.</p> + +<p>It seems plain enough that Spencer distinguishes, or seeks to +distinguish, between those knowable effects which we call natural +phenomena and their Unknowable Cause or Source. And this seems to be in +line with the distinction which his critic, M. Bergson, draws between +'the evolved which is a result' and 'evolution itself, which is the act +by which the result is obtained'.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> An act implies an agent, and the +agency of which the evolved is a manifestation is for M. Bergson Life, +while for Spencer it is that very vigorous agency—the Unknowable. Now +in criticizing Spencer, M. Bergson says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">'The usual device of the Spencerian method consists in +reconstructing evolution with the fragments of the evolved.... It is +not however by dividing the evolved that we shall reach the +principle of that which evolves. It is not by recomposing the +evolved with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which +it is the term.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p> + +<p>But does Spencer ever suggest that we shall thus reach the principle of +that which evolves—by which, if I mistake not, M. Bergson means the +Source of evolution? Does he not urge that we can neither reach it in +this way, nor in any other way? For M. Bergson, as for Spencer, it is +unknowable by the intellect—it can only be known by what M. Bergson +calls intuition. For both thinkers, the intellect provides only a world +of symbols; and Spencer's transfigured realism may be matched by what +Dr. Wildon Carr calls M. Bergson's transformed realism.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> So long as +we are dealing with the evolved—which is that with which alone science +attempts to deal—Spencer, M. Bergson, and the rest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> of us are in like +case. We must stumble on intellectually with our symbols as best we may. +'Whether we posit the present structure of mind or the present +subdivision of matter in either case we remain in the evolved: we are +told nothing of what evolves, nothing of evolution.'<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> <i>Nothing of +what evolves!</i> Spencer might exclaim with a groan. Have I then written +all those pages and pages on the Unknowable for nought? Is it not a +fundamental tenet of my philosophy that there must be, and therefore is, +a Source of the evolved—of the phenomenal world which is merely an +expression in terms of intellectual symbolism, of that ultimate Power +which, though its nature may baffle the intellect, is none the less the +most real of all realities?</p> + +<p>It would take us too far from the line of Spencer's thought to consider +M. Bergson's doctrine that it is the intellect that portions the world +into lots;<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> that cuts the facts out of the interpenetrating whole of +reality, and renders them artificially distinct within the continuity of +becoming. It suffices to note that on such a presupposition 'the +cardinal error of Spencer is to take experience already allotted as +given, whereas the true problem is to know how the allotment was +worked'.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> I am not prepared to give—indeed I have been unable to +find—M. Bergson's own solution of the problem. I gather that it was +Life itself that somehow allotted concepts and objects in such +correspondence as should be practically useful though metaphysically +false and illusory. But just how it was done I have still to learn. 'The +original activity was', we are told, 'a simple thing which became +diversified through the very construction of mechanisms such as those of +the brain,'<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> which, as Life's tool, has facilitated the chopping up +of a continuous interpenetrating reality into mince-meat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> for +intellectual assimilation. Such a conception was foreign to Spencer's +thought. But some of us may find it hard to distinguish M. Bergson's +'original activity' from Spencer's Unknowable, which, so far as one can +make out, somehow produced precisely the same results. As a matter of +fact, M. Bergson seems to put into Life, as Spencer put into the +Unknowable, the potentiality of producing all that actually exists.</p> + +<p>For Spencer, as for M. Bergson, we live in a world of change. But +neither is content to accept changes as facts to be linked up within a +scheme of scientific interpretation. Both must seek their Source. Now to +inquire into the Source or Sources of phenomena is characteristic of man +as thinker. And if, in common with those whom I follow, I regard this +quest as beyond the limits of science, I am well aware that such +delimitation of fields of inquiry is by no means universally accepted. +M. Bergson, for example, regards metaphysics as the <i>Science</i><a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> which +claims to dispense with symbols, which turns its back on analysis, which +eschews logic, which dispenses with relativity and pierces to the +absolute, which, apparently, uses the intellect only to establish its +utter incompetence in this department of 'science'. Merely saying that +this, whatever else it may be, is not what I, for one, understand by +science—and not, by the way, what M. Bergson in other passages seems to +mean by science<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>—I pass on to Spencer's treatment of the philosophy +of science which, for him, is 'completely unified knowledge', 'the +truths of philosophy bearing the same relation to the highest scientific +truths that each of these bears to lower scientific truths.'</p> + +<p>I suppose one of the basal truths in his philosophy of science is for +Spencer the universality of connexion between cause and effect. Now let +us eliminate Source<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> as the Ultimate Cause (so far as that is possible +in Spencer); let us restrict our attention to cause and effect in the +realm of the knowable. When we try to do this we find his statements +concerning them scarcely less puzzling than those that refer to force, +with which cause is so often identified. Thus we are told<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> that +'motion set up in any direction is itself a cause of further motion in +that direction since it is a manifestation of a surplus force in that +direction'; and elsewhere<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> that 'the momentum of a body causes it to +move in a straight line and at a uniform velocity'. A distinction is +drawn between cause and conditions. But both produce effects, and only +on these terms can there be that 'proportionality or equivalence between +cause and effect' on which Spencer insists.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> There is, however, +scarcely a hint of what constitutes the difference between cause and +conditions, save in so far as he speaks<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> of 'those conspicuous +antecedents which we call the causes' and 'those accompanying +antecedents which we call the conditions'. Many of the details of his +treatment I find most perplexing; but to recite examples would be +wearisome. And then, in the ninth and tenth articles of the Spencerian +creed, cause plays a somewhat different part. For, there, the +instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects are +given as the chief causes which 'necessitate' that redistribution of +matter and motion of which evolution is one phase. Similarly, as I have +noted above, in 'Progress: its Law and Cause', the fundamental attribute +of all modes of change—that every cause produces more than one +effect—is itself spoken of as a cause, and likened to 'gravitation as +the cause of each of the groups of phenomena which Kepler formulated'. +In these cases a generalization is regarded as the cause of the +phenomena<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> from which the generalization is drawn. But sometimes it is +spoken of as the reason for the phenomena.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> Here again, however, as +throughout his work, reference to Source is close at hand. Hence, in +place of the words cause and force, the word agency<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> sometimes stands +for that which produces effects; or the word factor may be used. Thus we +are told<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> of phenomena continually complicating under the influence +of the same original factors'; and we meet with the argument (contra +Huxley) that states of consciousness are factors, that is, they 'have +the power of working changes in the nervous system and setting up +motions'.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> Always close at hand, constantly underlying Spencer's +thought, is the notion of power which works changes. In his treatment of +the philosophy of science we are never far from the noumenal Source of +phenomena.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">'For that interpretation of things which is alone possible for us +this is all we require to know—that the force or energy manifested, +now in one way now in another, persists or remains unchanged in +amount. But when we ask what this energy is, there is no answer save +that it is the noumenal Cause implied by the phenomenal effect.'<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p> + +<p>Was it partly with Spencer in view that Mr. Bertrand Russell recently +urged<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> that the word cause 'is so inextricably bound up with +misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the +philosophical vocabulary desirable'? Professor Mach<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> had previously +expressed the hope 'that the science of the future will discard the use +of cause and effect as formally obscure'. And as long ago as 1870 W. K. +Clifford<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> tried to show in 'what sort of way an exact knowledge of +the facts would supersede an enquiry after the causes of them'; and +urged that the hypothesis of continuity 'involves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> such an +interdependence of the facts of the universe as forbids us to speak of +one fact or set of facts as the cause of another fact or set of facts'. +Such views may, perhaps, be regarded as extreme; and the word cause is +not likely to be extruded from the vocabulary of current speech, of the +less exact branches of science, or of general discussions of +world-processes. Still, a philosophy of science must take note of this +criticism of the use of a term which is, to say the least of it, +ambiguous. We must at any rate try to get rid of ambiguity. Now we live +in a world of what, in a very broad and inclusive sense, may be called +things; and these things are in varied ways related to each other. (I +must beg leave to assume, without discussion, that the relatedness of +things is no less constitutive of the world with which a philosophy of +science has to deal than the things which are in relation.) And when +things stand in certain kinds of relatedness to each other changes take +place. The trouble is that the kinds of relatedness are so many and the +kinds of change are also so many! Spencer tried to reduce all kinds of +relatedness to one quasi-mechanical type; and he signally failed—or +shall I say that he succeeded only by ignoring all the specific +differences on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by so smudgy an +extension of the meaning of mechanical and physical terms as to make +them do duty in every conceivable connexion?</p> + +<p>So long as we can deal with simple types of relatedness, such as that +which we call gravitative, in any given system of things regarded as +isolated, we can express in formulae not only the rate of change within +the system, but also the rate at which the rate of change itself +changes. And these formulae are found to be generally applicable where +like things are in a like field of relatedness. So that Spencer's +persistence of force (at least in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> one of its many meanings) is replaced +in such cases by sameness of differential equations. And in such cases +we have no need for the word cause. Of course the value of the constants +in any such formula depends upon the nature of the field of relatedness +and of the things therein; and only certain systems, in which the +relations are simple, or are susceptible of simplification, can be dealt +with, at present, in this manner. It is imperative to remember that not +only the rate of change but the kind of change differs in different +relational fields—a fact of which Spencer took too little cognizance, +so bent was he on some sort of unification at all hazards. Revert now to +a field of gravitative relatedness, in which the motion of things is the +kind of change, while the rate of change is expressible in a formula; +may we not say that the co-presence of things in this relationship does +imply certain motions and changes of motion within the system to which +the term gravitative applies? There seems little room for ambiguity if +we call what is thus implied the effect, and if we term those modes of +relatedness which carry this kind of implication, effective. It may, +however, be said that it sounds somewhat strange to speak of relations +as effective. How can mere relatedness as such <i>do</i> anything? What is +implied by the effect is surely, it will be urged, a cause in the full +and rich sense of the word—a cause which produces the effect. For what +is here suggested is nothing more than a generalized statement of the +truth that the relational constitution of the system being what it is, +the changes are what they are! And so we come back to the conception of +an agency which in some way produces the observable change—of a power +which is active behind the phenomenal scene—of force and cause in the +Spencerian sense. But, so far as scientific interpretation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> is +concerned, this reference to Source—for such it really is—is useless. +The gravitative system can be dealt with scientifically just as well +without it as with it.</p> + +<p>What, then, becomes of the scientific conception of energy? Is not +energy that which produces observable change? Is it not active in the +sense required? And can we say that this conception is useless for +scientific interpretation? I suppose most of us, in our student days, +have passed through the phase of regarding energy as an active demon +which plays a notorious part in the physical drama. Spencer loved it +dearly. But some of us, under what we consider wiser guidance, hold that +what we should understand by kinetic energy is nothing of this sort. It +is a constant ratio of variables, conveniently expressed as 1/2<i>mv</i><sup>2</sup>. +That, however, it may be said, is absurd. Energy is not merely a ratio +or a formula; it is something much more real; perhaps the most real of +all the realities the being of which has been disclosed by physical +science. Granted in a sense, and a very true sense. But what is this +reality? It is the reality of the changes themselves in those fields of +relatedness to which the formula has reference. There is nothing, I +conceive, in the modern treatment of energy that affords any scientific +justification of the Spencerian view<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> that energy is an agent through +the activity of which the constant ratio of variables is maintained in +the physical world.</p> + +<p>I feel sure that it will still be said that change must inevitably imply +that which produces change, and that, even if energy be only a ratio of +variables within a changing field, there is still the implication of +Force as the real Cause of which the change itself, however formulated, +is the effect. No doubt this is one of the meanings which the ambiguous +words force and cause<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> may carry. It is to remove this ambiguity that I +have suggested that the word Source should be substituted for cause in +this sense. And what about force? In one of its meanings it now +generally stands for a measure of change. For those who accept Source as +a scientific concept it may well stand for the measure or degree of its +activity gauged by the phenomenal effect; for those who do not accept +it, the measure or degree of the change itself<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a>—to be dealt with in +mechanics in terms of mass and acceleration. This leaves outstanding, +however, the use of the word force in the phrase—the forces of +nature—gravitative force, cohesive force, electromotive force, and so +on. It was, I take it, with this usage in view that Spencer spoke of +vital, mental, and social forces. Now the reference in each of these +cases is to some specific mode of relatedness among the things +concerned. We need to name it in some way; and this is the way that is, +rather unfortunately, sanctioned by custom and long usage. When we say +that a thing is in a field of electromotive force we mean (do we not?) +that the relatedness is of that particular kind named electromotive, and +not of another kind. When Spencer spoke of social forces he had in view +changes which take place within a field of social relationships. We do +not really need the word force in this sense, since the term relatedness +would suffice, and has no misleading associations. But there it is: our +business should be to understand clearly what it means. It does not, or +should not, I think, mean more, in this connexion, than a particular +kind of relatedness in virtue of which an observable kind of change +occurs.</p> + +<p>We may now pass to cause and conditions. When Spencer distinguishes +between those conspicuous antecedents which we call the causes and those +accompanying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> antecedents which we call the conditions, he invites the +question: What, then, is the essential difference between them? If the +accompanying antecedents are distinguished as inconspicuous, we surely +need some criterion of the distinction. Furthermore, inconspicuous +conditions are, in science, every whit as important as those which are +conspicuous. Now we all know that Mill regarded the cause as 'the sum +total of the conditions positive and negative taken together.'<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> But +he expressly distinguishes between <i>events</i> and <i>states</i>.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> +Discussing, for example, the case of a man who eats of a particular dish +and dies in consequence, he says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">'The various conditions, except the single one of eating the food, +were not events but states possessing more or less of permanency, +and might therefore have preceded the effect by an indefinite length +of duration, for want of that event which was requisite to complete +the required concurrence of conditions.'</p> + +<p>Again he says:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">'When sulphur, charcoal, and nitre are put together in certain +proportions and in a certain manner, the effect is, not an +explosion, but that the mixture acquires a property by which in +given circumstances it will explode. The ingredients of the +gunpowder have been brought into a state of preparedness for +exploding as soon as the other conditions of an explosion shall have +occurred.'</p> + +<p>And he tells us that physiological processes 'often have for the chief +part of their operation to predispose the constitution to some mode of +action'.</p> + +<p>This distinction may profitably be carried further and emphasized in our +terminology. Take any thing, or any integrated group of things, regarded +as that higher order of thing which we call a self-contained system.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +Process occurs therein, and process involves change. In so far as the +system is self-contained its changes and states are inherent in its +constitution. We need a term by which to designate that which is thus +inherent and constitutional. The term <i>ground</i> might be reserved for +this purpose. The word ground has its natural home in logic. It is here +extended (if it be an extension) to that to which the logic has +reference in the existing world. One is here following Spencer, who +claims<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> that 'Logic is a science pertaining to objective existence'. +On these terms the constitution of any system is the ground of the +properties, states, and happenings in that system regarded as isolated. +But the changes or properties will be also in relation to surrounding +things or systems. <i>These</i> changes, or modifications of change, in +relation to external things or events, may properly be said to be +conditioned; and we may well restrict the term conditions to influences +<i>outside</i> the constitution as ground. Of course, if we accept this +usage, we must not speak, with Mill, of the constitution of any system +as the condition of its inherent changes or properties. That is why we +need some such word and concept as ground. Now we may fix our attention +on any constituent part of some natural system and make that part the +centre of our interest. That part may be changing in virtue of its +constitution; and the rest of the system, regarded as external to this +selected part, must therefore be regarded as conditioning. It is a +matter of convenience for purposes of scientific interpretation whether +we select a larger or a smaller system-group and discuss its +constitutional character. Thus we may think of the constitution of the +solar system, or of that of the sun's corona; of the constitution of an +organism or of that of one of its cells; of the constitution of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> a +complex molecule or of that of an atom therein. We have here reached, or +nearly reached, the limiting case in one direction—that of restricting +our field of inquiry. The limiting case in the other direction is, I +suppose, the universe. But could we so expand our thought as to embrace, +if that were possible, the whole universe, then there are no conditions; +for <i>ex hypothesi</i> there is nothing for science outside the universe. We +have reached the limiting concept. Hence, for science, the constitution +of nature is the ultimate ground of all that is or happens.</p> + +<p>Let us now see how we stand. Consider the following statements:</p> + +<p>1. The Unknowable is the cause of all the phenomena we observe.</p> + +<p>2. The constitution of gunpowder is the cause of its explosiveness.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p> + +<p>3. The fall of a spark was the cause of the actual explosion of the +powder.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p> + +<p>Or these:</p> + +<p>1. Life is the cause of all vital manifestations.</p> + +<p>2. The inherited nature of a hen's egg is the cause of its producing a +chick and not a duckling.</p> + +<p>3. The cause of the development of the chick embryo is the warmth +supplied by the incubating mother.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p> + +<p>In each case the reference under (1) is to a transcendent cause which +produces the phenomena under consideration. I suggest that the word +Source should here be used instead of cause. In each case the reference +under (2) is to the nature or constitution of that within which some +process occurs. I suggest that the word ground should here be used +instead of cause. In each case the reference under (3) is to some +external influence. I suggest that the word condition should here be +used<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> instead of cause. We thus eliminate the word cause altogether. But +since, in nine cases out of ten, the conditions, or some salient +condition, is what is meant by cause in popular speech, and in the less +exact sciences, the word cause may perhaps be there retained with this +particular meaning. These are of course merely suggestions towards the +avoidance of puzzling ambiguity. One could wish that Spencer could have +thought out some such distinctions to help his sorely perplexed readers.</p> + +<p>One could wish, too, that he had devoted his great powers of thought to +a searching discussion of the different types of relatedness which are +found in nature, and to a fuller consideration of a synthetic scheme of +their inter-relatedness. It is imperative that our thought of relations +should have a concrete backing. 'Every act of knowing', says Spencer, +'is the formation of a relation in consciousness answering to a relation +in the environment.' But the knowledge-relations are of so very special +a type; and the relations in the environment are so many and varied. +Much more analysis of natural relations is required than Spencer +provides. I do not mean, of course, that there is any lack of +analysis—and of very penetrating analysis—in the <i>Psychology</i>, the +<i>Biology</i>, the <i>Sociology</i>, and the <i>Ethics</i>. I mean that in <i>First +Principles</i>, which must be regarded as his general survey of the +philosophy of science, there is no searching analysis of the salient +types of relationship which enter into the texture of this very complex +world. Such omnibus words as differentiation, integration, segregation, +do duty in various connexions with convenient elasticity of meaning to +suit the occasion. But apart from qualifying adjectives,<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> such as +astronomic, geologic, and so on up to artistic and literary, there is +too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> little attempt at either a distinguishing of the types of +relatedness or at a relationing of the relations so distinguished. One +just jumps from one to another after a break in the text, and finds +oneself in a wholly new field of inquiry. Little but the omnibus +terminology remains the same. Nor does the <i>Essay on the Classification +of the Sciences</i>, with all its tabulation, furnish what is really +required. What one seeks to know is how those specific kinds of +relatedness which characterize the successive phases of evolutionary +progress, inorganic, organic, and superorganic, differ from one another +and how they are connected. This one does not find. The impression one +gets, here and elsewhere, is that all forms of relatedness must somehow, +by the omission of all other specific characters, be reduced to the +mechanical type. This, no doubt, is unification of a sort. But is it the +sort of unification with which a philosophy of science should rest +content?</p> + +<p>It may be said that unification can only be reached by digging down to +some ubiquitous type of relation which is common to all processes +throughout the universe at any stage of evolution. But what, on these +terms, becomes of evolution itself as a problem to be solved? Surely any +solution of that problem must render an account of just those specific +modes of relatedness which have been ignored in digging down to the +foundations. Surely there must be unification of the superstructure as +well as of the substructure. Here and now is our world, within the +texture of which things stand to each other in such varied relations, +though they may be reducible to a few main types. There, in the faraway +part, was the primitive fire-mist, dear to Spencer's imagination, in +which the modes of relationship were so few and so simple, and all +seemingly of one main<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> type. How do we get in scientific interpretation +from the one to the other? Will it suffice to breathe over the scene the +magic words differentiation and integration? Spencer appears to think +so. Of course he did exceptionally fine work in elucidating the modes of +differentiation and integration within certain relational fields—though +he sometimes uses the latter word for mere shrinkage in size.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> But +what one asks, and asks of him in vain, is just how, within a connected +scheme, the several relational fields in the domain of nature are +themselves related, and how they were themselves differentiated. How, +for instance, did the specific relationships exhibited in the fabric of +crystals arise out of the primitive fire-mist relations? At some stage +of evolution this specific form of relatedness came into being, whereas +before that stage was reached it was not in being. No doubt we may say +that the properties of the pre-existing molecules were such that these +molecules could in due course become thus related, and enter into the +latticed architecture of the crystal. They already possessed the +potentiality of so doing. And if we have resort to potentialities, all +subsequently developed types and modes of relatedness were potentially +in existence <i>ab initio</i>—they were, as Tyndall said, 'once latent in a +fiery cloud.' But it is difficult to see how the specific modes of +relatedness which obtain within the crystal, can be said to exist prior +to the existence of the crystal within which they so obtain.</p> + +<p>Preserving the spirit of Spencer's teaching we must regard all modes of +relatedness which are disclosed by scientific research as part and +parcel of the constitution of nature, from whatever Source, knowable or +unknowable, that constitution be derived. Of these modes there are many; +indeed, if we deal with all concrete cases,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> their number is legion. For +purposes of illustration, however, we may reduce them, rather +drastically, to three main types. There are relations of the +physico-chemical type,<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> which we may provisionally follow Spencer in +regarding as ubiquitous; there are those of the vital type, which are +restricted to living organisms; there are those of the cognitive type, +which seem to be much more narrowly restricted. How we deal with these +is of crucial importance. Denoting them by the letters A, B, C we find +that there are progressively ascending modes of relatedness within any +given type. There is evolution within each type. Within the +physico-chemical type A, for example, atoms, molecules, and synthetic +groups of molecules follow in logical order of evolution. Now the +successive products, in which this physico-chemical type of relatedness +obtains, have certain <i>new and distinctive properties</i> which are not +merely the algebraic sum of the properties of the component things prior +to synthesis. We may speak of them as constitutive of the products in a +higher stage of relatedness, thus distinguishing constitutive from +additive properties.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> Similarly when B, the vital relations, are +evolved, the living products, in which these specific relations obtain, +have new constitutive properties, on the importance of which vitalists +are right in insisting, though I emphatically dissent from some of the +conclusions they draw from their presence. For if, beyond the +physico-chemical, a special agency be invoked to account for the +presence of new constitutive properties, then, in the name of logical +consistency, let us invoke special agencies to account for the +constitutive properties within the physico-chemical—for radio-active +properties for example. If a Source of phenomena be postulated, why not +postulate One Source of all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> phenomena from the very meanest to the very +highest? There remains the case of C—the synthetic whole in which +cognitive relatedness obtains. This is unquestionably more difficult of +scientific interpretation. But I believe that like statements may be +made in this case also. What we have, I conceive, is just a new and +higher type of relatedness with specific characters of its own. But of +this more in the sequel.</p> + +<p>It must be remembered that A, B, C stand for <i>relationships</i> and that +the related things are progressively more complex within more complex +relational wholes. Relationships are every whit as real as are the terms +they hold in their grasp. I do not say more real; but I say emphatically +as real. And if this be so, then they ought somehow to be introduced +into our formulae, instead of being taken for granted. We give H<sub>2</sub>O as +the formula for a molecule of water. But that molecule is something very +much more than two atoms of hydrogen + one atom of oxygen. The +absolutely distinctive feature of the molecule is the specific +relatedness of these atoms. This constitutive mode of relatedness is, +however, just taken for granted. And it is scarcely matter for surprise +that, when we find not less specific modes of vital relatedness in the +living organism, they are too apt to be just ignored!</p> + +<p>Revert now to the empirical outcome of scientific research, for as such +I regard it, that new constitutive properties emerge when new modes and +types of relatedness occur, and when new products are successively +formed in evolutional synthesis. This, it will be said, involves the +acceptance of what is now commonly called creative evolution. I am far +from denying that, in the universe of discourse where Source is under +consideration, the adjective is justifiable. But, in the universe of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +discourse of science, I regard it as inappropriate. What we have is just +plain evolution; and we must simply accept the truth—if, as I conceive, +it be a truth—that in all true evolution there is more in the +conclusion than is given in the premises; which is only a logical way of +saying that there is more in the world to-day than there was in the +primitive fire-mist. Not more 'matter and energy', but more varied +relationships and new properties, quite unpredictable from what one may +perhaps speak of as the fire-mist's point of view. This is no new +doctrine, though it has received of late a new emphasis. Mill, dealing +with causation,<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> speaks of a 'radical and important distinction'. +There are, he says in substance, some cases in which the joint effect of +the several causes is the algebraical sum of their separate effects. He +speaks of this as the 'composition of causes', and illustrates it from +the 'composition of forces' in dynamics. 'But in the other description +of cases', he says, 'the agencies which are brought together cease +entirely, and a totally different set of phenomena arise.' In these +cases 'a concurrence of causes takes place which calls into action new +laws bearing no analogy to any that we can trace in the separate +operation of the causes'. They might, he suggests, be termed +'heteropathic laws'. G. H. Lewes, too,<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> in his <i>Problems of Life and +Mind</i>, drew the distinction between properties which are <i>resultant</i> and +those which are <i>emergent</i>. These suggestions were open to Spencer's +consideration long before the last edition of <i>First Principles</i> +appeared. They were, however, too foreign to the established lines of +his thought to call for serious consideration.</p> + +<p>But if new relationships and new properties appear in the course of +evolutionary progress, where is the opportunity for that unification of +scientific knowledge which,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> according to Spencer, is the goal of +philosophy? To be frank, I am by no means sure that this question can be +answered in a manner that is other than tentative. Perhaps we have not +yet reached the stage at which more than provisional unification is +possible. Such provisional unification as is suggested by a survey of +the facts is that of seemingly uniform correlation in a hierarchy of +logical implication. There are certain modes of relatedness which belong +to the cognitive type. It would seem that whenever these obtain they may +be correlated with other modes of relatedness which are of the vital or +physiological type; and that these, in turn, may be correlated with +those that are physico-chemical. Thus C implies B, and B implies A. The +order cannot be reversed. Physico-chemical relations, <i>as a class</i>, do +not imply those that are physiological.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> The implication is not +symmetrical. Spencer was within sight of this when he spoke<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> of the +abstract-concrete sciences as 'instrumental' with respect to the +concrete sciences, though the latter are not 'instrumental' in the same +sense with respect to the former. But unfortunately he regarded the +'chasm' between the two groups as 'absolute'. And for him the proper +home of properties—of all properties it would appear—is the +abstract-concrete group—mechanics, physics, and chemistry. This +seemingly leaves no place for a specific type of properties connected +with vital relatedness as such. In fact Spencer's method of treatment +reduces all modes of relatedness to the A type, the laws of which are, +for him, the primary 'causes' of all kinds of differentiation and +integration. Hence the laws of biology and psychology can ultimately be +expressed and explained, he thinks, in mechanical or mechanistic terms. +But in the doctrine of implication they are just the laws of B and C<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +respectively, though laws of A may underlie them in a logical sense. And +as we ascend the evolutionary plane from A to AB and thence to ABC—from +the physico-chemical to the vital and thence to the cognitive—we find +new modes of relatedness, new forms of more complex integration and +synthesis, new properties successively appearing in serial order. This +seems to me simply to express, in outline, the net result of +interpretation based on empirical observation—though much, very much, +requires to be filled in by future research. And the new properties are +not merely additive of preceding properties; they are constitutive, and +characterize the higher evolutionary products as such. Why they are thus +constitutive, science is unable to say. Spencer, of course, calls in the +Unknowable to supply the required nexus.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> Otherwise, in each case, he +confesses that 'we can learn nothing more than that here is one of the +uniformities in the order of phenomena'.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> None the less we may be +able some day to establish an ordinal correlation<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> of cognitive +processes with physiological processes, and an ordinal correlation of +these physiological processes with those of the physico-chemical type. +That I conceive to be the ideal of strictly scientific interpretation if +it is to be raised progressively to a level approaching that of the +exact sciences. It certainly is not yet attained. But I see no reason +why we should not regard it as attainable. It will involve the very +difficult determination of many correlation coefficients and +constants—and for some of these our data are, it must be confessed, +both scanty and unreliable.</p> + +<p>We must here note a much-discussed departure on Spencer's part from his +earlier position. On the first page of the <i>Biology</i> in the earlier +editions, and in the last, we are told:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p> +<p class="blockquot">'The properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by +combination are not destroyed in reality. It follows from the +persistence of force that the properties of a compound are +resultants of the properties of its components, resultants in which +the properties of the components are severally in full action, +though mutually obscured.'</p> + +<p>There is no hint here of Mill's heteropathic laws nor of Lewes's +emergents. But in the last edition a special chapter is inserted on the +Dynamic Element in Life. We here find a tardy recognition of the +presence of specific vital characters.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">'The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible as +the results of any physical actions known to us.... In brief, then, +we are obliged to confess that Life in its essence cannot be +conceived in physico-chemical terms.'<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p> + +<p>I speak of this as a tardy recognition; but it is one that does honour +to the man; it is a frank admission that his previous treatment was in +some measure inadequate, which a smaller man would not have had the +honesty or the strength of character to make. Of course it is traced +down to the Unknowable. 'Life as a principle of activity is unknown and +unknowable; while phenomena are accessible to thought the implied +noumenon is inaccessible.'<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> Still, certain specific characteristics +of living organisms are explicitly recognized as among the accessible +phenomena; and these cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. But +did Spencer fully realize how big a hole this knocks in the bottom of +the purely mechanical interpretation of nature he had for so long +championed?</p> + +<p>There remains for consideration the place of the cognitive relation in +Spencer's philosophy of science. We need not here discuss his +transfigured realism. Apart from the customary references to the +Unknowable,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> of which what is knowable is said to be symbolic, it comes +to little more than laying special emphasis on the truism that what is +known in the so-called objective world involves the process of knowing; +from which it follows that, apart from knowing it the objective world +cannot be known. From this Spencer draws the conclusion that terms in +cognitive relatedness have their very nature determined in and through +that relatedness, and cannot <i>in themselves</i> be what they are, and as +they are, in the field of cognitive symbolism. This may or may not be +true. I am one of those who question the validity of the arguments in +favour of this conclusion. Since, however, the philosophy of science +deals only with the knowable—of which the so-called appearances with +which we have direct acquaintance are the primary data—we need not here +trouble ourselves with the controversy between realists and symbolists. +Even on Spencer's view the world as symbolized is the real world <i>for +science</i>.</p> + +<p>Now one way of expressing the fact that the cognitive relation is always +present where knowledge is concerned is to proclaim 'the truth that our +states of consciousness are the only things we can know'.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> But it is +a terribly ambiguous way of expressing the fact. What is here meant by a +state of consciousness? So far as cognition is concerned it is, or at +any rate it involves, a relationship between something known and the +organism, as knowing—for Spencer assuredly the organism, though a +so-called inner aspect therein. Of course it is a very complex +relationship. It comprises relations in what is known, and relations in +the organism as knowing. Hence Spencer defines life, psychical as well +as physical, as 'the continuous adjustment of internal relations to +external relations'.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> +<p class="blockquot">'That which distinguishes Psychology is that each of its +propositions takes account both of the connected internal phenomena +and of the connected external phenomena to which they refer. It is +not only the one, nor only the other, that characterises cognition. +It is the connexion between these two connexions.'<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p> + +<p>So far well. Cognition is a very complex network of relatedness +involving many terms. What are these terms? For Spencer the internal +terms are ultimately nervous (= psychic) shocks in highly integrated +aggregates; and the external terms are, proximately at least, things in +the environment. But both alike are spoken of as states of +consciousness. There is surely an opening for ambiguity here. Sometimes, +too, the words subjective affections are used in place of states of +consciousness. 'Thus we are brought to the conclusion that what we are +conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and +resistance, are but subjective affections.'<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> Well, these states of +consciousness, these subjective affections, fall into two great +classes—the vivid and the faint. The former, which we know as +sensations, accompany direct and therefore strong excitations of the +nerve-centres; the latter, which we know as remembered sensations, or +ideas of sensations, accompany indirect and therefore weak excitations +of the same nerve-centres.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> And then we are told that the aggregate +of the faint is what we call the mind, the subject, the <i>ego</i>; the +aggregate of the vivid is what we call the external world, the object, +the <i>non-ego</i>.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> It would seem, then, that the aggregate of vivid +<i>subjective</i> affections is the <i>objective</i> world so far as knowable. To +say the least of it, this terminology is somewhat perplexing.</p> + +<p>No doubt our knowledge of the external world involves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> a subtle and +intricate inter-relation of what is experienced vividly and what is +experienced faintly—of what is actually presented and what is ideally +re-presented. The distinction between them is a valid one. But when +Spencer equates this distinction with that between the external world +and the mind, as he does in the passages to which I have referred, the +validity of his procedure is seriously open to question.</p> + +<p>It must be confessed that an adequate analysis of cognitive relatedness +on scientific lines is not to be found in Spencer's works. I am not sure +that it is yet to be found in the works of any other philosopher, though +there are many signs that the difficult problems it involves are +receiving serious attention. This much seems certain, for those who +accept the spirit, though not perhaps the letter, of Spencer's teaching: +that there it is as a constitutive mode of relatedness in the realm of +nature, and that, if it forms part of the evolutionary scheme, if it is +present in the conclusion, so far reached, though it was absent in the +physico-chemical premises, if it is to be included in a philosophy of +science it must be dealt with by that philosophy on lines strictly +analogous to those on which any other relational problem is treated. +Firmly as we may believe in the reality of Source, we must not call to +our aid some psychic entity, some entelechy, some <i>élan vital</i>, to help +us out of our difficulties; for one and all of these lie wholly outside +the universe of discourse of science; and not one of them affords the +smallest help in solving a single scientific problem in a manner that is +itself scientific.</p> + +<p>We have seen that Spencer believed that the task of psychology is to +investigate the correlation of external and internal relations, and, in +that sense, itself to correlate them within a scientific interpretation. +Now the out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>come of the former correlation is some form of behaviour or +conduct on the part of the organism. No doubt such behaviour affords +data to be dealt with in subsequent cognition. But it implies the prior +cognition which leads up to it; and it is this prior cognition, +abstracted from the behaviour to which it leads, that we have to +consider. It is so terribly complex that it is difficult to deal with it +comprehensibly in a brief space. Let me, however, try to do so, at least +in tentative outline. There occurs, let us say, an external event in the +physical world, such as the motion of a billiard-ball across the table; +and when during its progress this stimulates the retina, there is an +internal physico-chemical process which runs its course in retina, optic +nerves, and the central nervous system. We may regard these two +processes, external and internal, as <i>so far</i>, of like physical order. +With adequate knowledge the two could, in some measure, be serially +correlated as such. But the physico-chemical processes in the organism +are not only of this physical type. They are vital or physiological as +well. And this makes a real difference. Of course this statement is open +to question. But I, for one, believe that there are specific relations +present in physiological processes, <i>qua</i> vital, other than those of the +physico-chemical type—relations which are effective and which require a +distinctive name. So far I am a vitalist. At some stage of evolution +these new modes of effective relatedness came into being, whereas in the +fire-mist and for long afterwards they were not in being. None the less +when they did actually come into being, under conditions of which we are +at present ignorant—though not so ignorant as we were—they were +dependent upon, and, for our interpretation, they logically imply, the +physico-chemical relations which are also present. In any given case +they further imply, through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> heredity-relatedness, the evolutionary +history of the organism in which they obtain. This so-called historical +element in biology no doubt involves a characteristic vital +relationship. But, I take it, the physico-chemical constitution of any +inorganic compound, and of any molecule therein, has also its +history—has relationship to past occurrences within its type, which +have helped to make it what it is. Still, in the organism the relation +to past happenings has a quite distinctive form which we deal with in +terms of heredity. See, then, how we stand so far. The internal +physiological process implies a long chain of heredity-relationships +through which the organism is prepared for its occurrence. It also +implies a physico-chemical basis, an underlying<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> physico-chemical +process. And this implies as a condition of its occurrence, the external +event, the passage of the billiard-ball across the table. In a broad +sense we may say that the inner process knows the external event which +is a condition of its occurrence. But we have not yet reached cognition +of the psychological type.</p> + +<p>Before passing on to indicate, in tentative outline, the nature of this +higher mode of relatedness, I pause to note two points. The first is +that knowing in that extended sense which I have borrowed,<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> is +essentially selective in its nature. The physiological process, in the +case I have taken, knows only that external event which is directly +before the eyes and which is serially correlated with changes in the +retinal images through the stimulation of specialized receptors. Of +other external events it has no such knowledge. Compare this with the +gravitative knowledge—if a yet wider extension of the meaning of the +word be permitted—which the earth has of the sun and all the other +members of the solar system—nay more, in degrees<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> perhaps +infinitesimal, of all other material bodies in the universe. The motion +of the earth in its orbit implies the whole of this vast field of +gravitative relatedness. The existing orbital motion at any moment +implies, too, the preceding motion which it has, in a sense, inherited +from the past. Abolish the rest of the universe at this moment and the +earth's motion would cease to be orbital. In virtue of its 'inheritance +from the past', it would continue at uniform velocity in one direction. +The continuous change of direction and velocity we observe, is a +response which implies gravitative knowledge. In a sense, then, the +whole solar system is known by the earth as it swings in its orbit.</p> + +<p>The second point may be introduced by a question. Granted that we may +say, in a very liberal sense, that the earth in its motion has this +gravitative knowledge—is such knowledge accompanied by awareness? We do +not know. But the point I have in mind is this, that the question itself +is vague. Awareness of what? There must be awareness of something; and a +definite question should be directed towards the nature of that +something. For example: is the earth aware of its own motion? Or is it +aware of the solar system? Or is it aware of the relation of the one to +the other? If it be said that the second of these is meant when we ask +whether the knowledge is accompanied by awareness, well and good. The +answer will serve to define the question. Take now a case of biological +knowledge. Are the plants in the cottager's window, when they grow +towards the light, aware of a process in their own tissues? Or are they +aware of the sunshine? Or are they in some measure aware of the +connexion between the one and the other? To all these questions we must +answer, I suppose, that we do not know. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> it may have been worth +while to ask them in a definite way.</p> + +<p>We pass, then, to cognition in the usual acceptation of the term—to +what we speak of as knowledge in the proper and narrower sense. My +contention is that this is a mode of relatedness which science must +endeavour to treat on precisely the same lines as it deals with any +other natural kind of relatedness. At some stage of evolution it came +into being, whereas in the fire-mist, and for long afterwards, it was +not in being. None the less when it did come into being, it was +dependent on, and for our interpretation it logically implies, +underlying physiological processes, as they in turn imply +physico-chemical processes, in each case serially correlated. It is +pre-eminently selective. And just as any physiological process, however +externally conditioned, is grounded in<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> the constitution of the +organism, as such, so too is any cognitive process grounded in the +constitution of the organism as one in which this higher type of +relatedness has supervened. Again, just as the physiological +constitution implies a prolonged racial preparation, describable in +terms of that mode of relatedness we name heredity, so, too, does any +cognitive process imply, not only this racial preparation of the +biological kind, but also an individual preparation of the psychological +kind—implies relatedness to what we call, rather loosely, prior +experience—which itself implies a concurrent physiological preparation.</p> + +<p>Now there can be no doubt that awareness is a characteristic feature of +the knowledge of cognition, whether it be present or absent in knowledge +in the more extended sense. We must just accept this as what appears to +be a fact. In science we do not pretend to say why facts are what they +are and as they are. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> take them as they are given, and endeavour to +trace their connexions and their implications. Accepting, then, +awareness as given, we must ask: Awareness of what? It is sometimes said +that cognition is aware of itself. I am not sure that I understand what +this means. If we are speaking of the cognitive relation, which is an +awareness relation, the question seems to be whether a relation of +awareness is related to itself. But of course if a field of cognitive +relatedness be regarded as a complex whole, any part may be related to +the rest, and the rest to any part. That kind of self-awareness—if we +must so call it!—is eminently characteristic of cognition in the higher +forms of its development. On these terms cognition is aware of +itself—though the mode of statement savours of ambiguity.</p> + +<p>Let us next ask whether there is awareness of the underlying cortical +process. If we are speaking of direct awareness, apparently not. The +correlation between the two is only discoverable through a very +elaborate and complex<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> application of further cognition in +interpretative knowledge. We only know the correlated cortical process +by description, as Mr. Bertrand Russell would say,<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> and never by +direct acquaintance.</p> + +<p>Parenthetic reference must here, I suppose, be made to psycho-physical +parallelism. But it shall be very brief. The sooner this cumbrous term +with its misleading suggestions is altogether eliminated from the +vocabulary of science the better. The locus of the so-called parallelism +is, we are told, the cortex of the brain. But the cortical process is +only an incident—no doubt a very important one, but still an +incident—in a much wider physiological process, the occurrence of +which, in what we may speak of as primary cognition, implies events in +the external world. It is of these events that there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> is direct +physical, physiological, and cognitive knowledge. Of course there are +also inter-cortical relations which underlie the relations of those +ideal cognita (Spencer's faint class) that supplement the primary +cognita which imply direct stimulation of sensory receptors (Spencer's +vivid class). It is questionable whether any form of cognition, properly +so called, is possible in their absence. Now I see no objection to +labelling the fact (if it be a fact) that the cognitive process implies +a physiological process in which, as in a larger whole, the cortex plays +its appropriate part, by the use of some such convenient +correlation-word as psycho-physical; but only so long as this does not +involve a doctrine of parallelism; so long as it merely means that +cognition implies, let us say, certain underlying cortical changes. Of +course it implies a great deal more than cortical process only; but this +may perhaps be taken for granted. My chief objection to the word +'parallelism' is that it suggests two separate orders of being, and not +two types of relationship within one order of being for scientific +study.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> We do not speak of parallelism between physiological and +physico-chemical processes. We just say that scientific interpretation +proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a +kind that physiological process implies a physico-chemical basis. So +too, I urge, we should be content to say that scientific interpretation +proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a +kind that cognitive process implies a physiological basis.</p> + +<p>It may be said that Spencer accepted the so-called identity hypothesis +which does not lie open to the objection that it suggests two orders of +being. He believed<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> 'that mind and nervous action are the subjective +and objective faces of the same thing', though 'we remain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> utterly +incapable of seeing or even imagining how the two are related'. Well, we +may call them in one passage the same thing, we may speak, in another +passage, of the antithesis between them as never to be transcended, and +we may try to save the situation by reference to duality of aspect. But +this kind of treatment does not help as much towards a scientific +interpretation. It is true that, in yet another passage, speaking of the +correlation of the physical and the psychical, Spencer says:<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> 'We can +learn nothing more than that here is one of the uniformities in the +order of phenomena.' Then why not leave it at that? And if there be a +constant and uniform correlation which is 'in a certain indirect way +quantitive', it would seem that we <i>do</i> see, as far as science ever +professes to see, 'how the two are related.' We see, or conceive, how +they are related in much the same way as we do in the case of the +connexion between the physiological and the physico-chemical, and in +numberless other cases. Both parallelism and identity will have to go by +the board in a philosophy of science. They must be replaced by the far +more modest hypothesis, which seems to express all that they really mean +for science, that cognition always implies certain physiological +processes in the organism.</p> + +<p>If we do speak of mind and nervous action as two faces of the same +thing, it seems pretty certain that the one face is not directly aware +of the other. When we speak of awareness in cognition we must therefore, +it appears, exclude any direct awareness of concurrent physiological +processes. Of what, then, is there awareness? Primarily perhaps of some +occurrence in the external world. But the difficulty here is that, in +the simplest case of human cognition there is awareness of so many +things and in such varying degrees. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> may be primary awareness of +events in the external world (Spencer's vivid series), awareness of the +relations involved in these occurrences as such, of the relations of +these to ideal re-presentations of like kind (Spencer's faint series), +of the relations of any or all of these to behaviour as actually taking +place or as ideally re-presented; and all in different degrees within a +relational meshwork of bewildering complexity, which we have not, as +yet, adequately unravelled. The essential point to bear in mind is that +the cognitive relation always involves relatedness of <i>many terms</i>, and +that its discussion involves the analysis of what, in the higher phases +of its existence, is probably the most complex natural occurrence in +this complex world.</p> + +<p>I cannot here follow up further the difficult problem of +cognition<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a>—save to add one or two supplementary remarks. First: it +is, I suppose, fairly obvious that any given field of cognitive +relatedness comprises <i>all</i> that is then and there selectively cognized. +Just as, in the very extended sense of the word 'knowledge', the earth +knows, in gravitative fashion, the whole solar system, as does also any +one of the planets, so, in the restricted sense, is knowledge +co-extensive with all that is, selectively, in cognitive relationship +with the organism or that part of the organism which is the locus of +awareness. I speak here of the locus of awareness in just the same sense +as I might speak of the earth as a locus of gravitative knowledge of the +solar system. The locus of awareness is just a specialized portion of +the whole relational web. In other words, the relatedness is of the +part-whole kind, where whole means rest of the whole other than the +specific part. In any such integrated system the part implies the +whole—which, by the way, is quite a different matter from saying that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> +the part includes the whole, or, as I understand the words, is +equivalent to the whole. But, whereas gravitative knowledge is +reciprocal—the sun knowing the earth in the same fashion as the earth +knows the sun—cognitive knowledge is not reciprocal. My cognitive +awareness of a spinning-top does not imply that the spinning-top is in +like manner aware of me. The part knows the whole in a way that the +whole does not know the part. The relationship of the part to the rest +of the whole is not reciprocal or symmetrical. This we must just accept +as a given feature of cognitive relatedness.<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a></p> + +<p>Another very important point is that cognitive relatedness is effective. +By this I mean that just as, when the earth is in gravitative relation +to the sun and the other planets (the constitution of nature being what +it is), changes take place because the parts of the system as a whole +are in this field of effective relatedness; so too, when the organism is +in cognitive relation to its environment, changes in this system also +take place just because a part of the whole system is in cognitive +relatedness to the rest of the system. That means that the cognitive +relation really counts—that it is not merely an epiphenomenal +accompaniment of changes which would be precisely the same if it were +absent. The 'sum of energy' presumably remains constant. There is no +necessary interference with physical principles. But we know of so many +cases in which the direction of change may be changed without any +alteration of the 'amount of energy', as the phrase goes, that I see no +reason, based on physical science,<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> for denying this kind of +effectiveness, within a field of cognitive relatedness, if the facts +seem indubitably to point to its existence. To assert that the presence +or absence of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> cognitive relatedness makes absolutely no difference +appears to me, I confess, little short of preposterous; to urge that it +may be brought under the rubric of physico-chemical relatedness surely +involves the ignoring of differentiating features, which science should +not ignore. But, on the other hand, to invoke an immaterial psychic +entity<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a>—unless this merely names the relatedness itself<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> as +gravitation names the gravitative relatedness—appears to me quite +unwarranted in the scientific universe of discourse.<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p> + +<p>I must, however, draw to a conclusion. I cannot but think that Spencer +failed to bring cognition and the conscious awareness it involves into +really close touch with the rest of his philosophy of science. No such +double-aspect theory as he accepted affords a satisfactory avenue of +scientific approach. But where Spencer failed, who has come within +measurable sight of success? We are only just beginning to see our way +to stating the problem in such a form as to bring it within the purview +of science. What we must insist on, as followers, at a distance, of +Herbert Spencer, is the treatment of this type of relatedness on lines +similar to our treatment of other types of relatedness within one order +of nature.</p> + +<p>Surveying his work as a whole, we may confidently assert that Spencer +brought to a conclusion a great task, and was himself great in its +execution. The present generation can, perhaps, hardly realize how +potent his influence was on the thought of the latter half of the last +century. Many of his conclusions ran counter to those which were, in his +day, widely accepted. If only they seemed to him to be true, however, he +held to them with a tenacity which his opponents branded as obstinacy. +But as he himself said:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p> +<p class="blockquot">'It is not for nothing that a man has in him sympathies with some +principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, +and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of +his time. While he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the +future; and his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may +not carelessly let die. Not as adventitious therefore will the wise +man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he sees he +will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is +thus playing his right part in the world.'<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">NOTES</span></p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Fragments of Science</i>, vol. ii, p. 132.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Essays</i>, vol. i (American reprint), p. 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 32.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 58.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Cf. W. K. Clifford, <i>Lectures and Essays</i>, vol. i, p. 95.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>More Letters</i>, vol. ii, p. 235.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Memories and Studies</i>, p. 139.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 140.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Autobiography</i>, vol. i, p. 212.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> James, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 124.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Autobiography</i>, vol. i, p. 211.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>First Principles</i>, Sixth (Popular) Edition, p. 446 +(hereafter F. P.).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Principles of Psychology</i>, Third Edition, vol. i, p. 508 +(hereafter Ps.).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Ps., vol. i, p. 627.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 158.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> F. P., p. 155.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> There is '<i>intrinsic</i> force by which a body manifests +itself as occupying space, and that <i>extrinsic</i> force distinguished as +energy'. F. P., p. 150.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> 'Divest the conceived unit of matter of the objective +correlate to our subjective sense of effort and the entire fabric of +physical conceptions disappears.' F. P., p. 151 note. Cf. Ps., vol. ii, +pp. 237, 239.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> F. P., p. 171.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> e.g. 'Social changes take directions that are due to the +joint actions of citizens determined as are those of all other changes +wrought by the composition of forces.' 'The flow of capital into +business yielding the largest returns, the buying in the cheapest market +and selling in the dearest, the introduction of more economical modes of +manufacture, the development of better agencies for distribution, +exhibit movements taking place in directions where they are met by the +smallest totals of opposing forces.' F. P., pp. 193-6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Creative Evolution</i>, English translation, p. 53.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, pp. 385, 6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> According to Dr. Carr's interpretation of M. Bergson, 'The +whole world, as it is presented to us and thought of by us, is an +illusion. Our science is not unreal, but it is a transformed reality. +The illusions may be useful, may, indeed, be necessary and +indispensable, but nevertheless it is illusion.' <i>Problem of Truth</i>, p. +66.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Creative Evolution</i>, p. 389.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> 'But, when I posit the facts with the shape they have for +me to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception and intellection such as +they are in me to-day; for it is they that portion the real into lots, +they that cut the facts out of the whole of reality.' C. E., p. 389.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Creative Evolution</i>, p. 389.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 387.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Introduction to Metaphysics</i>, English translation, p. 8 +and <i>passim</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> e.g. 'Organisation can only be studied scientifically if +the organised body has first been likened to a machine.' C. E., p. 98. +Science is, I think, generally used by M. Bergson for <i>intellectual</i> +knowledge in contradistinction to intuitional knowledge.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> F. P., p. 184.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Essays</i>, vol. iii, p. 14.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Essays</i>, vol. iii, p. 366.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> F. P., p. 156.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> 'There remained to assign a reason for that +increasingly-distinct demarkation of parts, &c.... This reason we +discovered to be the segregation, &c.... This cause of the definiteness +of local integrations, &c.' F. P., p. 440.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> F. P., p. 43.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Essays</i>, vol. iii, p. 47.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> F. P., p. 176.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> F. P., p. 154.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Proceedings Aristotelian Society</i>, 1912-13, p. 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Popular Scientific Lectures</i>, English translation, p. +254.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> <i>Lectures and Essays</i>, vol. i, p. 111.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> 'But when we ask what this energy is, there is no answer +save that it is the noumenal cause implied by the phenomenal effect.' F. +P., p. 154. It is towards this and like statements that my criticism is +directed. There can be no objection to the treatment, by physicists, of +energy as an entity in the sense given below in note 82. Those phenomena +to which 1/2 <i>mv</i><sup>2</sup> has reference are fundamental realities for +physical science.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> In a statement of the law of gravitation we may substitute +the words 'in a degree' for 'with a force'; we may speak of 'the measure +of attraction' instead of 'the force of attraction'.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> <i>System of Logic</i>, Bk. III, ch. v, § 3, Eighth Edition, +vol. i, p. 383.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, § 3 and § 5, pp. 379 and 389.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Ps., vol. ii, p. 93; cf. p. 97. One has now, however, to +add the realm of subsistence.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> As a more technical example the following may be +given:—The difference in properties of isomers is caused by difference +of internal molecular structure notwithstanding identity of chemical +composition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> If we take spark as cause and explosion as effect there +is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> obviously no proportionality between the cause and its effect. Thus +M. Bergson speaks of the spark as 'a cause that acts by releasing'; and +he adds that 'neither quality nor quantity of effect varies with quality +or quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable'. <i>Creative +Evolution</i>, p. 77. Compare what Spencer introduced into the Sixth +edition of F. P. (pp. 172-3), concerning 'trigger action which does not +produce the power but liberates it'. According to the treatment in the +text there can be no 'proportionality' unless both ground and conditions +are taken into account.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Spencer says (F. P., pp. 169-70) that 'the transformation +of the unorganised contents of an egg into the organised chick is a +question of heat' ['altogether a question of heat', in the Third +Edition], and tells us that 'the germination of plants presents like +relations of cause and effect as every season shows'. But he also says +that 'the proclivities of the molecules determine the typical structure +assumed'. Obviously here the 'heat supplied' falls under (3) of the +text, and 'the proclivities of the molecules' is his notion of what +should fall under (2).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> See Index to F. P., <i>sub verbo</i> 'integration'.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> e. g. 'Diminish the velocities of the planets and their +orbits will lessen—the solar system will contract, or become more +integrated.' <i>Essays</i>, vol. iii, p. 28. Mere condensation is often +spoken of as integration. But then the term is used with bewildering +laxity. Cf. James, <i>Memories and Studies</i>, p. 134.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> I retain in this connexion the current term +physico-chemical. It seems that the basal type of relatedness here is +electrical. It may be said that when we come down to the atom the +<i>things in</i> relation are electrical, are electrons, are positive and +negative charges. So be it. But is it not the <i>electrical relatedness</i> +that is constitutive of the atom as such?</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> 'A large number of physical properties', says Nernst, +'have been shown to be clearly additive; that is, the value of the +property in question can be calculated as though the compound were such +a mixture of its elements that they experience no change in their +properties.' But other properties are not additive. 'The kind of +influence of the atom in a compound is primarily dependent on the mode +of its union, that is, upon the constitution and configuration of the +compound. Such non-additive properties may be called constitutive.' +Quoted by E. G. Spaulding in <i>The New Realism</i>, p. 238.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <i>System of Logic</i>, vol. i, Bk. III, ch. vi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Problems of Life and Mind</i>, Series II, p. 212.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Of course if a particular physico-chemical change (<i>a</i>) is +correlated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> with a particular physiological or vital change (<i>b</i>), then +(<i>b</i>) implies (<i>a</i>) as (<i>a</i>) implies (<i>b</i>). The statement in the text +refers to the implications of classes of change. There may be +physico-chemical relatedness without any correlated vital relatedness; +but there does not appear to be any vital relatedness which is not +correlated with physico-chemical relatedness.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> <i>Essays</i>, vol. iii, pp. 31, 55.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> F. P., p. 178.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> An ordinal correlation is one that couples every term of a +series (<i>a</i>) with a specific term of another series (<i>b</i>) and <i>vice +versa</i> in the same order in each. Cf. Spaulding in <i>The New Realism</i>, p. +175. I shall sometimes speak of such correlation as serial.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <i>Principles of Biology</i>, Edition of 1898, pp. 117, 120.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 122.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Ps., vol. i, p. 208.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> F. P., p. 61. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 134.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Ps., vol. i, p. 132. James well says 'Spencer broke new +ground here in insisting that, since mind and its environment have +evolved together, they must be studied together. He gave to the study of +mind in isolation a definite quietus, and that certainly is a great +thing to have achieved'. <i>Memories and Studies</i>, p. 140.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Ps., vol. i, p. 206.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Ps., vol. i, p. 124.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> F. P., p. 120. Ps., vol. ii, p. 472. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. +98.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> The word underlying is used in the sense of occupying a +lower position in the logical hierarchy above indicated. If any one +likes to speak of the physico-chemical and the vital as two aspects of +one process, he is free to do so. And if he likes to say that the vital +is caused by the physico-chemical, let him do so; but he must define the +exact sense in which he uses the ambiguous word cause. The word inner in +the text means within the organism.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> See S. Alexander, 'On Relations: and in particular the +Cognitive Relation.' <i>Mind.</i>, vol. xxi, N. S., No. 83, p. 318.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> I have avoided the use of the word determine. It would be +well to distinguish between that which is <i>determined</i> from without, +that is, conditioned, and that which is <i>determinate</i>, that is, grounded +in the constitution. I am here, I think, in line with Bosanquet. (See +<i>Principle of Individuality and Value</i>, e. g. pp. 341, 352.) I have also +avoided all reference to teleology. Without committing myself to the +acceptance of all that Mr. Bosanquet says in the fourth lecture of the +series to which reference has just been made, his treatment, there, +appears to be on right lines. There is no opposition in teleology, so +treated, to what is determinate. Indeed, such teleology is the +expression of the logical structure of the world, or, as Spencer would +say, the universality of law. For just as higher<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> types of relatedness +imply a substratum of physico-chemical processes, so do all events imply +the underlying logic of events. Cf. W. T. Marvin, <i>A First Book of +Metaphysics</i>, ch. xiii, 'On the logical strata of reality.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Cf. Ps., vol. i, pp. 99 and 140.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> <i>Problems of Philosophy</i>, ch. v; cf. <i>Proc. Aristotelian +Soc.</i>, 1910-11, p. 108.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> It should be distinctly understood that I here speak of +one order of being in reference to the phenomena dealt with by science, +including the cognitive phenomena discussed in the text. Whether we +should speak of the Source of phenomena as constituting a separate order +of being is a question I cannot discuss in a note. Does the logic of +events imply a Logos? That is the question in brief. But, since the +implication in question is not of the scientific kind, I may leave it on +one side in considering a philosophy of science.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Ps., vol. i, p. 140.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> F. P., p. 178.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> I have confined my attention to the cognitive type of +relatedness. Other higher modes supervene when the course of evolution +is traced further upwards. Indeed, cognition is only part of the +underlying basis implied by the richer forms of distinctively human +relational life. Spencer has much to say of them in his <i>Sociology</i> and +his <i>Ethics</i>, though he fails to realize that the phenomena he is +dealing with involve essentially new constitutive features in man and in +society. Can music or any form of art be discussed in terms of cognition +only? I merely add this note to show that I am not unaware of the patent +fact that when we have reached the cognitive type of relatedness, we are +nowhere near the top of the evolutional tree.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> The part which is the centre of awareness, may be spoken +of as experienc<i>ing</i>, in contradistinction to what is experienc<i>ed</i>. It +is clear that such experiencing is always correlative to what is +experienced actually or ideally (Spencer's vividly or faintly). The +centre of awareness is either the cortex, or some specific part of the +cortex, or (more generally) the organism as owning the cortex, in each +case in accordance with the universe of discourse.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Few physicists would, I think, be prepared to deny that, +within a field of effective relatedness, there may be, and very often +is, guidance without work done or any change in the 'amount of energy'. +What physicists are concerned to insist on is their cardinal principle +that every physical change involves physical terms in physical +relatedness. This can be fully and freely accepted in accordance with +the doctrine of implication sketched in the text.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> It is when Life or +Consciousness is invoked to play the part of a non-physical term, or +thing, which acts and reacts as if it were a physical term or thing, +that physicists enter an emphatic protest. Cognitive relatedness among +physical things may well be effective in guidance. To claim its presence +must not, however, be regarded as in any sense equivalent to a denial of +underlying physico-chemical relatedness.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Until those who seek to furnish evidence of the existence +of discarnate spirits can make some plausible suggestions as to the +nature of a comprehensible scheme of correlation which shall serve to +link the discarnate with the incarnate, one is forced to enter their +results in a suspense account. It is of little use to proclaim the +existence of 'facts scorned by orthodox science'. The so-called facts +must be incorporated within a consistent scheme, before they can claim a +place in the fabric of scientific truth.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> As the word entity is now often used, for example by Mr. +G. E. Moore, cognitive relatedness may be termed an entity. 'When I +speak of an entity I shall mean to imply absolutely nothing more with +regard to that which I so call, than that it <i>is</i> or <i>was</i>—that it is +or was contained in the Universe; and of anything whatever which <i>is</i> or +<i>was</i>, I shall take the liberty to say that it is an entity.' G. E. +Moore, <i>Proc. Aristotelian Soc.</i>, 1909-10, p. 36.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> I have no space to discuss the physiological +differentiation which is implied by the effectiveness of the cognitive +relation. It involves, I believe, the differentiation of a superior +cortical system from an inferior system of nervous arcs. I have dealt +with it in some detail elsewhere. See <i>Instinct and Experience</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> F. P., pp. 91-2.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p> +<p class="center">OXFORD: HORACE HART M.A.<br /> +PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 37513-h.txt or 37513-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/5/1/37513">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/5/1/37513</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Lloyd Morgan + + + +Release Date: September 23, 2011 [eBook #37513] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE*** + + +E-text prepared by Adrian Mastronardi, David E. Brown, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/spencersphilosop00morgrich + + +Transcriber's note: + + Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). + + Text enclosed by curly brackets is subscripted (example: + H{2}O) unless preceded by a carat character, in which + case it is superscripted (example: ^{2}). + + + + + +SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE + +The Herbert Spencer Lecture +Delivered at the Museum +7 November, 1913 + +by + +C. LLOYD MORGAN, F.R.S. + + + + + + + +Price Two Shillings net + +Oxford +At the Clarendon Press +MCMXIII + +Oxford University Press +London Edinburgh Glasgow New York +Toronto Melbourne Bombay +Humphrey Milford M.A. +Publisher to the University + + + + +SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE + + +Towards the close of 1870, while I was still in my teens, my youthful +enthusiasm was fired by reading Tyndall's Discourse on _The Scientific +Use of the Imagination_. The vision of the conquest of nature by +physical science--a vision which had but lately begun to open up to my +wondering gaze--was rendered clearer and more extensive. Of the theory +of evolution I knew but little; but I none the less felt assured that it +had come to stay and to prevail. Was it not accepted by all of _us_--the +enlightened and emancipated men of science whose ranks I had joined as a +raw recruit? Believing that I was independently breaking free of all +authority, to the authority that appealed to my fancy, and to a new +loyalty, I was a willing slave. And here in one glowing sentence the +inner core of evolution lay revealed. + + 'Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that + not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular and animal life, + not alone the nobler forms of the horse and the lion, not alone + the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that + the human mind itself--emotion, intellect and all their + phenomena--were once latent in a fiery cloud.'[1] + +With sparkling eyes I quoted these brave words to a friend of my +father's, whose comments were often as caustic as his sympathy in my +interests was kindly. With a grave smile he asked whether the notion was +not perhaps stripped too naked to preserve the decencies of modest +thought; he inquired whether I had not learnt from _Sartor Resartus_ +that the philosophy of nature is a Philosophy of Clothes; and he bade me +devote a little time to quiet and careful consideration of what Tyndall +really meant--meant in terms of the exact science he professed--by the +phrase 'latent in a fiery cloud'. I dimly suspected that the old +gentleman--old in the sense of being my father's contemporary--was +ignorant of those recent developments of modern science with which I had +been acquainted for weeks, nay more for months. Perhaps he had never +even heard of the nebular hypothesis! But I felt that I had done him an +injustice when, next morning, he sent round a volume of the _Westminster +Review_ with a slip of paper indicating an article on 'Progress: its Law +and Cause'. + +Such was my introduction to Herbert Spencer, some of whose works I read +with admiration during the next few years. + +I have no very distinct recollection of the impression produced on my +mind by the germinal essay of 1857, save that it served to quicken that +craving, which is, I suppose, characteristic of those who have some +natural bent towards philosophy--the imperative craving to seek and, if +it may be, to find the one in the many. In any case Tyndall's suggestive +sentence was here amplified and the underlying law was disclosed. + + 'Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development + of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of + Government, of Manufacture, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, + Science, Art, the same evolution of the simple into the complex, + through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the + earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of + civilisation, we shall find that the transformation of the + homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress + essentially consists.'[2] + +Here was just what I wanted--on the one hand the whole wide universe of +existence; and on the other hand a brief formula with which to label its +potted essence. How breathlessly one was led on, with only such breaches +of continuity as separate paragraphs inevitably impose, right away from +the primitive fire-mist to one of Bach's fugues or the critical +doctrines of Mr. Ruskin, guided throughout by the magic of +differentiation. What if the modes of existence, dealt with in +successive sections, were somewhat startlingly diverse! Was not this +itself a supreme example of the evolution of that diversity which the +formula enables us to interpret? For if there were a passage from the +homogeneous to the heterogeneous, the more heterogeneous the +products--inorganic, organic, and superorganic, as I learnt to call +them--the stronger the evidence for the law. Only by shutting one's eyes +to the light that had been shed on the world by evolution could one fail +to see how simple and yet how inevitable was the whole business. + +If then differentiation be the cardinal law of evolution--for the +correlative concept of integration receives no emphasis in this early +essay--does not the universality of the law imply a universal cause? +Just as gravitation was assignable as a _cause_ of each of the groups of +phenomena which Kepler formulated; so might some equally simple +attribute of things be assignable as the cause of each of the groups of +phenomena formulated in terms of differentiation. Now the only obvious +respect in which all kinds of Progress are alike, is, that they are +modes of change; and hence in some characteristic of changes in general, +the desired solution must be found. Thus we are led up to the statement +of the all-pervading principle which determines the all-pervading +process of differentiation. It is this: _Every active force produces +more than one change--every cause produces more than one effect._[3] + +In the first part of the Essay many and varied facts are adduced to show +that every kind of progress is from the simple to the complex. The aim +of the second part is to show why this is so: it is 'because each change +is followed by many changes'. From the beginning, the decomposition of +every expended force into several forces has been perpetually producing +a higher complication, and thus Progress is not an accident but a +beneficent necessity. In a brief third part we are bidden to remember +that + + 'after all that has been said the ultimate mystery remains just as + it was. The explanation of that which is explicable does but bring + out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which + remains behind.... The sincere man of science, content to follow + wherever the evidence leads him becomes by each new enquiry more + profoundly convinced that the Universe is an insoluble problem.... + In all directions his investigations bring him face to face with + the unknowable; and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the + unknowable'.[4] + +There is I think a growing consensus of opinion that the first of +these three parts, subsequently expanded and illustrated with +astonishing wealth of detail in the volumes of the _Synthetic +Philosophy_, contains the germ of all that is best in the teaching of +Herbert Spencer; and that it was amid phenomena which admitted of +interpretation from the biological, or quasi-biological, point of view +that he found his most congenial sphere of work and the one in which his +method was most effectively employed. The story of evolution is the +story of inter-related changes. In any organic whole there are certain +salient features of the historical sequence.[5] The parts get more +different from each other, and they also get more effectively connected +with each other; the individual whole gets more different from its +environment, and it also preserves and extends its connexion with the +environment; the several individuals get more different from others, +while their connexion with others is retained and new connexions are +established. Nowadays these central ideas may seem familiar enough; but +that is just because Spencer's thought has been so completely +assimilated. And then we must remember that these main principles are +supplemented by a great number of ancillary generalizations, many of +which have been incorporated in the scientific doctrine which is current +to-day. We must bear in mind that of the _Biology_ Charles Darwin +wrote:[6] 'I am astonished at its prodigality of original thought.' Of +the _Psychology_ William James says[7] that of the systematic treatises +it will rank as the most original. These are the opinions of experts. No +discussion of sociology or ethics is complete if it ignores Spencer's +contributions to these subjects. The _Ethics_, says James[8] is a most +vital and original piece of attitude-taking in the world of ideals. It +was his firm and often inflexible 'attitude' which was a source of +strength in Spencer, though it was the strength of rigidity rather than +that of sinewy suppleness. This was part of a certain 'narrowness of +intent and vastness of extent' which characterized his mental vision. He +was so obsessed with the paramount importance of biological +relationships that in his _Sociology_, his _Ethics_, his _Psychology_, +he failed to do justice to, or even to realize the presence of, other +and higher relationships--higher, that is, in the evolutionary scale. +But it was his signal merit to work biological interpretation for all, +and perhaps more than, it was worth. It was on these lines that he was +led to find a clue to those social and political developments, the +discussion of which, in the _Nonconformist_ of 1842, constituted the +first step from the life of an engineer to that other kind of life which +led to the elaboration of the _Synthetic Philosophy_.[9] In his later +years he was saddened to see that many of the social and political +doctrines, for the establishment of which he had striven so strenuously, +were not accepted by a newer generation of thinkers. Still, to have +taken a definite and, for all his detractors may say, an honoured +position in the line of those who make history in the philosophy of life +and mind--that could never be taken away from him. + +It will perhaps be said that this emphasis on the philosophy of life +and mind does scant justice to the range and sweep of Spencer's +philosophy as a whole; and no doubt others will contend that the +emphasis should be laid elsewhere; on the mechanical foundations; on +evolution as a universal principle. It will be urged that Spencer +widened to men's view the scope of scientific explanation. He proclaimed +'the gradual growth of all things by natural processes out of natural +antecedents'.[10] Even in the _Nonconformist_ letters 'there is', he +himself says,[11] 'definitely expressed a belief in the universality of +law--law in the realm of mind as in that of matter--law throughout the +life of society as throughout the individual life. So, too, is it with +the correlative idea of universal causation.' And if there be law it +must at bottom be one law. Thus in _First Principles_ Spencer propounded +a sweeping and sonorous formula, which every disciple knows by heart, +embodying the fundamental traits of that unceasing redistribution of +matter and motion which characterizes evolution as contrasted with +dissolution. Was it not this that he himself regarded as his main +contribution to philosophy? Did he not himself provide a summary, +setting forth the sixteen articles of the Spencerian creed; and is not +this summary given a prominent position in the Preface he wrote to +Howard Collins's _Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy_? Do not these +fundamental articles of his faith deal with ubiquitous causes, with the +instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects, with +segregation and equilibration, and with the basal conception of the +persistence of force? There is here, it may be said, no special +reference to the organic and the superorganic. And why? Just because +Spencer's interpretation is all-inclusive; because biology, psychology, +sociology, ethics are, broadly considered, concerned only with incidents +of the later scenes of the great mechanical drama of evolution. Are we +not again and again bidden, now in forecast, now in retrospect, to look +below the surface, and constantly to bear in mind that the aim of +philosophy, as completely unified knowledge, is 'the interpretation of +all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force'?[12] It is true +that the affairs of the mind give pause and seem to present something of +a difficulty. But even here 'specifically stated, the problem is to +interpret mental evolution in terms of the redistribution of matter and +motion'.[13] An adequate explanation of nervous evolution involves an +adequate explanation of the concomitant evolution of mind. It is true +that the antithesis of subject and object is never to be transcended +'while consciousness lasts'.[14] But if all existence, distinguishable +as subjective, is resolvable into units of consciousness, which in their +obverse or objective aspect are oscillations of molecules,[15] what more +is required to round off the explanation of every thing, save the +Unknowable--save the Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are +united? In the end we are baffled by mystery; let us, therefore, make +the best of it and rejoice. + + 'We can think of Matter only in terms of Mind. We can think of + Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have pushed our explorations + of the first to its uttermost limit we are referred to the second + for a final answer; and when we have got the final answer to the + second we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of + it.'[14] + +And so neither answer is final. Finality is only reached when both are +swallowed up, not in victory, but in defeat. Shall we not then glory in +defeat and sing its praises often? + +I must leave to some future Herbert Spencer lecturer the discussion of +his doctrine of the Unknowable and the critical consideration of its +place and value in philosophy. I would fain leave it altogether on one +side; but that is impossible. Although the _First Principles_ is divided +into two Parts, dealing respectively with the Unknowable and the +Knowable, we have not by any means done with the former when we turn +from the First Part to the Second. With Spencer we have never done with +the Unknowable, the Unconditioned Reality and the other aliases by which +it goes. His persistence of force is the persistence of Unknowable +Force. In a leading passage, at any rate, it is avowedly 'the +persistence of some Cause which transcends our knowledge and conception. +In asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality without beginning or +end'.[16] There must, he holds, be something at the back of the +evolutionary drama which we study--something that is both a principle of +activity and a permanent _nexus_.[17] The pity of it is that we know +not, and can never know, what on earth (or in heaven!) it is. We only +know that it exists, and somehow produces the whole show. Now it would +much conduce to clearness of thought and of statement if we could agree +to eliminate those terribly ambiguous words 'force' and 'cause' when we +are dealing with the fundamental postulate (if such it be) that there +must be something at the back of evolution to make it what it is; and +the word Source seems ready to our hand and might well be given this +special significance. But Spencer uses Agency, Power, Cause, Force, in +this connexion. In how many senses he uses the word 'force' I am not +prepared to say. It is often a synonym for cause; it stands alike for +matter and energy;[18] it is the objective correlate of our subjective +sense of effort.[19] There is a 'correlation and equivalence between +external forces and the mental forces generated by them under the form +of sensations'.[20] And when we pass to human life in society, whatever +in any way facilitates or impedes social, political, or economic change, +is spoken of in terms of force.[21] With an apparent vagueness and +laxity almost unparalleled, force is used in wellnigh every conceivable +sense of this ambiguous word--except, perhaps, that which is now +sanctioned by definition in mathematical physics. I say apparent +vagueness and laxity because, subtly underlying all this varied usage, +is the unifying conception of Source as the ultimate basis of all +enforcement. From this flows all necessity whether in things or thoughts +or any combination of the two. Thus persistence of force is Spencer's +favourite expression for uniform determinism at or near its Source. + +Now, as I understand the position, science has nothing whatever to do +with the Source or Sources of phenomena. By a wise self-denying +ordinance it rules all questions of ultimate origin out of court. It +regards them as beyond its special sphere of jurisdiction. It deals with +phenomena in terms of connexion within an orderly scheme, and it does +not profess to explain _why_ the connexions are such as they are found +to be. In any discussion of this or that sequence of events which may +fall under the wide and rather vague heading of evolution, it is just a +consistent story of the events in their total relatedness that science +endeavours to tell. The question: But what evolves the evolved? is for +science (or should I say for those who accept this delimitation of the +province of science?) not so much unanswerable in any terms, as +unanswerable in scientific terms. For the terms in which an answer must +be given are incommensurable with the concepts with which science has +elected to carry on its business as interpreter of nature. To this +question therefore the man of science, speaking for his order, simply +replies: We do not know. Is this, then, Spencer's answer? Far from it. +The man of science here makes, or should make, no positive assertion, +save in respect of the limits of his field of inquiry. If you beg him to +tell you what that which he knows not is, or does, he regards such a +question as meaningless. But Spencer's Unknowable, notwithstanding its +negative prefix, is the Ultimate Reality, and does all that is in any +way done. We may not know _what_ it is; but _that_ it is, is the most +assured of all assured certainties. And when it comes to doing, what can +be more dramatically positive than that which bears a name of negation? +Whatever it may not be, it is the Power that drives all the machinery in +this workshop of a world; it is the Power which lies at the back of such +wit as man has to interpret it, and, in some measure, to utilize its +mechanism. + +It seems plain enough that Spencer distinguishes, or seeks to +distinguish, between those knowable effects which we call natural +phenomena and their Unknowable Cause or Source. And this seems to be in +line with the distinction which his critic, M. Bergson, draws between +'the evolved which is a result' and 'evolution itself, which is the act +by which the result is obtained'.[22] An act implies an agent, and the +agency of which the evolved is a manifestation is for M. Bergson Life, +while for Spencer it is that very vigorous agency--the Unknowable. Now +in criticizing Spencer, M. Bergson says: + + 'The usual device of the Spencerian method consists in + reconstructing evolution with the fragments of the evolved.... It + is not however by dividing the evolved that we shall reach the + principle of that which evolves. It is not by recomposing the + evolved with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which + it is the term.'[23] + +But does Spencer ever suggest that we shall thus reach the principle of +that which evolves--by which, if I mistake not, M. Bergson means the +Source of evolution? Does he not urge that we can neither reach it in +this way, nor in any other way? For M. Bergson, as for Spencer, it is +unknowable by the intellect--it can only be known by what M. Bergson +calls intuition. For both thinkers, the intellect provides only a world +of symbols; and Spencer's transfigured realism may be matched by what +Dr. Wildon Carr calls M. Bergson's transformed realism.[24] So long as +we are dealing with the evolved--which is that with which alone science +attempts to deal--Spencer, M. Bergson, and the rest of us are in like +case. We must stumble on intellectually with our symbols as best we may. +'Whether we posit the present structure of mind or the present +subdivision of matter in either case we remain in the evolved: we are +told nothing of what evolves, nothing of evolution.'[25] _Nothing of +what evolves!_ Spencer might exclaim with a groan. Have I then written +all those pages and pages on the Unknowable for nought? Is it not a +fundamental tenet of my philosophy that there must be, and therefore is, +a Source of the evolved--of the phenomenal world which is merely an +expression in terms of intellectual symbolism, of that ultimate Power +which, though its nature may baffle the intellect, is none the less the +most real of all realities? + +It would take us too far from the line of Spencer's thought to consider +M. Bergson's doctrine that it is the intellect that portions the world +into lots;[26] that cuts the facts out of the interpenetrating whole of +reality, and renders them artificially distinct within the continuity of +becoming. It suffices to note that on such a presupposition 'the +cardinal error of Spencer is to take experience already allotted as +given, whereas the true problem is to know how the allotment was +worked'.[27] I am not prepared to give--indeed I have been unable to +find--M. Bergson's own solution of the problem. I gather that it was +Life itself that somehow allotted concepts and objects in such +correspondence as should be practically useful though metaphysically +false and illusory. But just how it was done I have still to learn. 'The +original activity was', we are told, 'a simple thing which became +diversified through the very construction of mechanisms such as those of +the brain,'[28] which, as Life's tool, has facilitated the chopping up +of a continuous interpenetrating reality into mince-meat for +intellectual assimilation. Such a conception was foreign to Spencer's +thought. But some of us may find it hard to distinguish M. Bergson's +'original activity' from Spencer's Unknowable, which, so far as one can +make out, somehow produced precisely the same results. As a matter of +fact, M. Bergson seems to put into Life, as Spencer put into the +Unknowable, the potentiality of producing all that actually exists. + +For Spencer, as for M. Bergson, we live in a world of change. But +neither is content to accept changes as facts to be linked up within a +scheme of scientific interpretation. Both must seek their Source. Now to +inquire into the Source or Sources of phenomena is characteristic of man +as thinker. And if, in common with those whom I follow, I regard this +quest as beyond the limits of science, I am well aware that such +delimitation of fields of inquiry is by no means universally accepted. +M. Bergson, for example, regards metaphysics as the _Science_[29] which +claims to dispense with symbols, which turns its back on analysis, which +eschews logic, which dispenses with relativity and pierces to the +absolute, which, apparently, uses the intellect only to establish its +utter incompetence in this department of 'science'. Merely saying that +this, whatever else it may be, is not what I, for one, understand by +science--and not, by the way, what M. Bergson in other passages seems to +mean by science[30]--I pass on to Spencer's treatment of the philosophy +of science which, for him, is 'completely unified knowledge', 'the +truths of philosophy bearing the same relation to the highest scientific +truths that each of these bears to lower scientific truths.' + +I suppose one of the basal truths in his philosophy of science is for +Spencer the universality of connexion between cause and effect. Now let +us eliminate Source as the Ultimate Cause (so far as that is possible in +Spencer); let us restrict our attention to cause and effect in the realm +of the knowable. When we try to do this we find his statements +concerning them scarcely less puzzling than those that refer to force, +with which cause is so often identified. Thus we are told[31] that +'motion set up in any direction is itself a cause of further motion in +that direction since it is a manifestation of a surplus force in that +direction'; and elsewhere[32] that 'the momentum of a body causes it to +move in a straight line and at a uniform velocity'. A distinction is +drawn between cause and conditions. But both produce effects, and only +on these terms can there be that 'proportionality or equivalence between +cause and effect' on which Spencer insists.[33] There is, however, +scarcely a hint of what constitutes the difference between cause and +conditions, save in so far as he speaks[34] of 'those conspicuous +antecedents which we call the causes' and 'those accompanying +antecedents which we call the conditions'. Many of the details of his +treatment I find most perplexing; but to recite examples would be +wearisome. And then, in the ninth and tenth articles of the Spencerian +creed, cause plays a somewhat different part. For, there, the +instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects are +given as the chief causes which 'necessitate' that redistribution of +matter and motion of which evolution is one phase. Similarly, as I have +noted above, in 'Progress: its Law and Cause', the fundamental attribute +of all modes of change--that every cause produces more than one +effect--is itself spoken of as a cause, and likened to 'gravitation as +the cause of each of the groups of phenomena which Kepler formulated'. +In these cases a generalization is regarded as the cause of the +phenomena from which the generalization is drawn. But sometimes it is +spoken of as the reason for the phenomena.[35] Here again, however, as +throughout his work, reference to Source is close at hand. Hence, in +place of the words cause and force, the word agency[36] sometimes stands +for that which produces effects; or the word factor may be used. Thus we +are told[37] of phenomena continually complicating under the influence +of the same original factors'; and we meet with the argument (contra +Huxley) that states of consciousness are factors, that is, they 'have +the power of working changes in the nervous system and setting up +motions'.[38] Always close at hand, constantly underlying Spencer's +thought, is the notion of power which works changes. In his treatment of +the philosophy of science we are never far from the noumenal Source of +phenomena. + + 'For that interpretation of things which is alone possible for us + this is all we require to know--that the force or energy + manifested, now in one way now in another, persists or remains + unchanged in amount. But when we ask what this energy is, there is + no answer save that it is the noumenal Cause implied by the + phenomenal effect.'[39] + +Was it partly with Spencer in view that Mr. Bertrand Russell recently +urged[40] that the word cause 'is so inextricably bound up with +misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the +philosophical vocabulary desirable'? Professor Mach[41] had previously +expressed the hope 'that the science of the future will discard the use +of cause and effect as formally obscure'. And as long ago as 1870 W. K. +Clifford[42] tried to show in 'what sort of way an exact knowledge of +the facts would supersede an enquiry after the causes of them'; and +urged that the hypothesis of continuity 'involves such an +interdependence of the facts of the universe as forbids us to speak of +one fact or set of facts as the cause of another fact or set of facts'. +Such views may, perhaps, be regarded as extreme; and the word cause is +not likely to be extruded from the vocabulary of current speech, of the +less exact branches of science, or of general discussions of +world-processes. Still, a philosophy of science must take note of this +criticism of the use of a term which is, to say the least of it, +ambiguous. We must at any rate try to get rid of ambiguity. Now we live +in a world of what, in a very broad and inclusive sense, may be called +things; and these things are in varied ways related to each other. (I +must beg leave to assume, without discussion, that the relatedness of +things is no less constitutive of the world with which a philosophy of +science has to deal than the things which are in relation.) And when +things stand in certain kinds of relatedness to each other changes take +place. The trouble is that the kinds of relatedness are so many and the +kinds of change are also so many! Spencer tried to reduce all kinds of +relatedness to one quasi-mechanical type; and he signally failed--or +shall I say that he succeeded only by ignoring all the specific +differences on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by so smudgy an +extension of the meaning of mechanical and physical terms as to make +them do duty in every conceivable connexion? + +So long as we can deal with simple types of relatedness, such as that +which we call gravitative, in any given system of things regarded as +isolated, we can express in formulae not only the rate of change within +the system, but also the rate at which the rate of change itself +changes. And these formulae are found to be generally applicable where +like things are in a like field of relatedness. So that Spencer's +persistence of force (at least in one of its many meanings) is replaced +in such cases by sameness of differential equations. And in such cases +we have no need for the word cause. Of course the value of the constants +in any such formula depends upon the nature of the field of relatedness +and of the things therein; and only certain systems, in which the +relations are simple, or are susceptible of simplification, can be dealt +with, at present, in this manner. It is imperative to remember that not +only the rate of change but the kind of change differs in different +relational fields--a fact of which Spencer took too little cognizance, +so bent was he on some sort of unification at all hazards. Revert now to +a field of gravitative relatedness, in which the motion of things is the +kind of change, while the rate of change is expressible in a formula; +may we not say that the co-presence of things in this relationship does +imply certain motions and changes of motion within the system to which +the term gravitative applies? There seems little room for ambiguity if +we call what is thus implied the effect, and if we term those modes of +relatedness which carry this kind of implication, effective. It may, +however, be said that it sounds somewhat strange to speak of relations +as effective. How can mere relatedness as such _do_ anything? What is +implied by the effect is surely, it will be urged, a cause in the full +and rich sense of the word--a cause which produces the effect. For what +is here suggested is nothing more than a generalized statement of the +truth that the relational constitution of the system being what it is, +the changes are what they are! And so we come back to the conception of +an agency which in some way produces the observable change--of a power +which is active behind the phenomenal scene--of force and cause in the +Spencerian sense. But, so far as scientific interpretation is concerned, +this reference to Source--for such it really is--is useless. The +gravitative system can be dealt with scientifically just as well without +it as with it. + +What, then, becomes of the scientific conception of energy? Is not +energy that which produces observable change? Is it not active in the +sense required? And can we say that this conception is useless for +scientific interpretation? I suppose most of us, in our student days, +have passed through the phase of regarding energy as an active demon +which plays a notorious part in the physical drama. Spencer loved it +dearly. But some of us, under what we consider wiser guidance, hold that +what we should understand by kinetic energy is nothing of this sort. It +is a constant ratio of variables, conveniently expressed as 1/2_mv_^{2}. +That, however, it may be said, is absurd. Energy is not merely a ratio +or a formula; it is something much more real; perhaps the most real of +all the realities the being of which has been disclosed by physical +science. Granted in a sense, and a very true sense. But what is this +reality? It is the reality of the changes themselves in those fields of +relatedness to which the formula has reference. There is nothing, I +conceive, in the modern treatment of energy that affords any scientific +justification of the Spencerian view[43] that energy is an agent through +the activity of which the constant ratio of variables is maintained in +the physical world. + +I feel sure that it will still be said that change must inevitably +imply that which produces change, and that, even if energy be only a +ratio of variables within a changing field, there is still the +implication of Force as the real Cause of which the change itself, +however formulated, is the effect. No doubt this is one of the meanings +which the ambiguous words force and cause may carry. It is to remove +this ambiguity that I have suggested that the word Source should be +substituted for cause in this sense. And what about force? In one of its +meanings it now generally stands for a measure of change. For those who +accept Source as a scientific concept it may well stand for the measure +or degree of its activity gauged by the phenomenal effect; for those who +do not accept it, the measure or degree of the change itself[44]--to be +dealt with in mechanics in terms of mass and acceleration. This leaves +outstanding, however, the use of the word force in the phrase--the +forces of nature--gravitative force, cohesive force, electromotive +force, and so on. It was, I take it, with this usage in view that +Spencer spoke of vital, mental, and social forces. Now the reference in +each of these cases is to some specific mode of relatedness among the +things concerned. We need to name it in some way; and this is the way +that is, rather unfortunately, sanctioned by custom and long usage. When +we say that a thing is in a field of electromotive force we mean (do we +not?) that the relatedness is of that particular kind named +electromotive, and not of another kind. When Spencer spoke of social +forces he had in view changes which take place within a field of social +relationships. We do not really need the word force in this sense, since +the term relatedness would suffice, and has no misleading associations. +But there it is: our business should be to understand clearly what it +means. It does not, or should not, I think, mean more, in this +connexion, than a particular kind of relatedness in virtue of which an +observable kind of change occurs. + +We may now pass to cause and conditions. When Spencer distinguishes +between those conspicuous antecedents which we call the causes and those +accompanying antecedents which we call the conditions, he invites the +question: What, then, is the essential difference between them? If the +accompanying antecedents are distinguished as inconspicuous, we surely +need some criterion of the distinction. Furthermore, inconspicuous +conditions are, in science, every whit as important as those which are +conspicuous. Now we all know that Mill regarded the cause as 'the sum +total of the conditions positive and negative taken together.'[45] But +he expressly distinguishes between _events_ and _states_.[46] +Discussing, for example, the case of a man who eats of a particular dish +and dies in consequence, he says: + + 'The various conditions, except the single one of eating the food, + were not events but states possessing more or less of permanency, + and might therefore have preceded the effect by an indefinite + length of duration, for want of that event which was requisite to + complete the required concurrence of conditions.' + +Again he says: + + 'When sulphur, charcoal, and nitre are put together in certain + proportions and in a certain manner, the effect is, not an + explosion, but that the mixture acquires a property by which in + given circumstances it will explode. The ingredients of the + gunpowder have been brought into a state of preparedness for + exploding as soon as the other conditions of an explosion shall + have occurred.' + +And he tells us that physiological processes 'often have for the chief +part of their operation to predispose the constitution to some mode of +action'. + +This distinction may profitably be carried further and emphasized in +our terminology. Take any thing, or any integrated group of things, +regarded as that higher order of thing which we call a self-contained +system. Process occurs therein, and process involves change. In so far +as the system is self-contained its changes and states are inherent in +its constitution. We need a term by which to designate that which is +thus inherent and constitutional. The term _ground_ might be reserved +for this purpose. The word ground has its natural home in logic. It is +here extended (if it be an extension) to that to which the logic has +reference in the existing world. One is here following Spencer, who +claims[47] that 'Logic is a science pertaining to objective existence'. +On these terms the constitution of any system is the ground of the +properties, states, and happenings in that system regarded as isolated. +But the changes or properties will be also in relation to surrounding +things or systems. _These_ changes, or modifications of change, in +relation to external things or events, may properly be said to be +conditioned; and we may well restrict the term conditions to influences +_outside_ the constitution as ground. Of course, if we accept this +usage, we must not speak, with Mill, of the constitution of any system +as the condition of its inherent changes or properties. That is why we +need some such word and concept as ground. Now we may fix our attention +on any constituent part of some natural system and make that part the +centre of our interest. That part may be changing in virtue of its +constitution; and the rest of the system, regarded as external to this +selected part, must therefore be regarded as conditioning. It is a +matter of convenience for purposes of scientific interpretation whether +we select a larger or a smaller system-group and discuss its +constitutional character. Thus we may think of the constitution of the +solar system, or of that of the sun's corona; of the constitution of an +organism or of that of one of its cells; of the constitution of a +complex molecule or of that of an atom therein. We have here reached, or +nearly reached, the limiting case in one direction--that of restricting +our field of inquiry. The limiting case in the other direction is, I +suppose, the universe. But could we so expand our thought as to embrace, +if that were possible, the whole universe, then there are no conditions; +for _ex hypothesi_ there is nothing for science outside the universe. We +have reached the limiting concept. Hence, for science, the constitution +of nature is the ultimate ground of all that is or happens. + +Let us now see how we stand. Consider the following statements: + +1. The Unknowable is the cause of all the phenomena we observe. + +2. The constitution of gunpowder is the cause of its explosiveness.[48] + +3. The fall of a spark was the cause of the actual explosion of the +powder.[49] + +Or these: + +1. Life is the cause of all vital manifestations. + +2. The inherited nature of a hen's egg is the cause of its producing a +chick and not a duckling. + +3. The cause of the development of the chick embryo is the warmth +supplied by the incubating mother.[50] + +In each case the reference under (1) is to a transcendent cause which +produces the phenomena under consideration. I suggest that the word +Source should here be used instead of cause. In each case the reference +under (2) is to the nature or constitution of that within which some +process occurs. I suggest that the word ground should here be used +instead of cause. In each case the reference under (3) is to some +external influence. I suggest that the word condition should here be +used instead of cause. We thus eliminate the word cause altogether. But +since, in nine cases out of ten, the conditions, or some salient +condition, is what is meant by cause in popular speech, and in the less +exact sciences, the word cause may perhaps be there retained with this +particular meaning. These are of course merely suggestions towards the +avoidance of puzzling ambiguity. One could wish that Spencer could have +thought out some such distinctions to help his sorely perplexed readers. + +One could wish, too, that he had devoted his great powers of thought to +a searching discussion of the different types of relatedness which are +found in nature, and to a fuller consideration of a synthetic scheme of +their inter-relatedness. It is imperative that our thought of relations +should have a concrete backing. 'Every act of knowing', says Spencer, +'is the formation of a relation in consciousness answering to a relation +in the environment.' But the knowledge-relations are of so very special +a type; and the relations in the environment are so many and varied. +Much more analysis of natural relations is required than Spencer +provides. I do not mean, of course, that there is any lack of +analysis--and of very penetrating analysis--in the _Psychology_, the +_Biology_, the _Sociology_, and the _Ethics_. I mean that in _First +Principles_, which must be regarded as his general survey of the +philosophy of science, there is no searching analysis of the salient +types of relationship which enter into the texture of this very complex +world. Such omnibus words as differentiation, integration, segregation, +do duty in various connexions with convenient elasticity of meaning to +suit the occasion. But apart from qualifying adjectives,[51] such as +astronomic, geologic, and so on up to artistic and literary, there is +too little attempt at either a distinguishing of the types of +relatedness or at a relationing of the relations so distinguished. One +just jumps from one to another after a break in the text, and finds +oneself in a wholly new field of inquiry. Little but the omnibus +terminology remains the same. Nor does the _Essay on the Classification +of the Sciences_, with all its tabulation, furnish what is really +required. What one seeks to know is how those specific kinds of +relatedness which characterize the successive phases of evolutionary +progress, inorganic, organic, and superorganic, differ from one another +and how they are connected. This one does not find. The impression one +gets, here and elsewhere, is that all forms of relatedness must somehow, +by the omission of all other specific characters, be reduced to the +mechanical type. This, no doubt, is unification of a sort. But is it the +sort of unification with which a philosophy of science should rest +content? + +It may be said that unification can only be reached by digging down to +some ubiquitous type of relation which is common to all processes +throughout the universe at any stage of evolution. But what, on these +terms, becomes of evolution itself as a problem to be solved? Surely any +solution of that problem must render an account of just those specific +modes of relatedness which have been ignored in digging down to the +foundations. Surely there must be unification of the superstructure as +well as of the substructure. Here and now is our world, within the +texture of which things stand to each other in such varied relations, +though they may be reducible to a few main types. There, in the faraway +part, was the primitive fire-mist, dear to Spencer's imagination, in +which the modes of relationship were so few and so simple, and all +seemingly of one main type. How do we get in scientific interpretation +from the one to the other? Will it suffice to breathe over the scene the +magic words differentiation and integration? Spencer appears to think +so. Of course he did exceptionally fine work in elucidating the modes of +differentiation and integration within certain relational fields--though +he sometimes uses the latter word for mere shrinkage in size.[52] But +what one asks, and asks of him in vain, is just how, within a connected +scheme, the several relational fields in the domain of nature are +themselves related, and how they were themselves differentiated. How, +for instance, did the specific relationships exhibited in the fabric of +crystals arise out of the primitive fire-mist relations? At some stage +of evolution this specific form of relatedness came into being, whereas +before that stage was reached it was not in being. No doubt we may say +that the properties of the pre-existing molecules were such that these +molecules could in due course become thus related, and enter into the +latticed architecture of the crystal. They already possessed the +potentiality of so doing. And if we have resort to potentialities, all +subsequently developed types and modes of relatedness were potentially +in existence _ab initio_--they were, as Tyndall said, 'once latent in a +fiery cloud.' But it is difficult to see how the specific modes of +relatedness which obtain within the crystal, can be said to exist prior +to the existence of the crystal within which they so obtain. + +Preserving the spirit of Spencer's teaching we must regard all modes +of relatedness which are disclosed by scientific research as part and +parcel of the constitution of nature, from whatever Source, knowable or +unknowable, that constitution be derived. Of these modes there are many; +indeed, if we deal with all concrete cases, their number is legion. For +purposes of illustration, however, we may reduce them, rather +drastically, to three main types. There are relations of the +physico-chemical type,[53] which we may provisionally follow Spencer in +regarding as ubiquitous; there are those of the vital type, which are +restricted to living organisms; there are those of the cognitive type, +which seem to be much more narrowly restricted. How we deal with these +is of crucial importance. Denoting them by the letters A, B, C we find +that there are progressively ascending modes of relatedness within any +given type. There is evolution within each type. Within the +physico-chemical type A, for example, atoms, molecules, and synthetic +groups of molecules follow in logical order of evolution. Now the +successive products, in which this physico-chemical type of relatedness +obtains, have certain _new and distinctive properties_ which are not +merely the algebraic sum of the properties of the component things prior +to synthesis. We may speak of them as constitutive of the products in a +higher stage of relatedness, thus distinguishing constitutive from +additive properties.[54] Similarly when B, the vital relations, are +evolved, the living products, in which these specific relations obtain, +have new constitutive properties, on the importance of which vitalists +are right in insisting, though I emphatically dissent from some of the +conclusions they draw from their presence. For if, beyond the +physico-chemical, a special agency be invoked to account for the +presence of new constitutive properties, then, in the name of logical +consistency, let us invoke special agencies to account for the +constitutive properties within the physico-chemical--for radio-active +properties for example. If a Source of phenomena be postulated, why not +postulate One Source of all phenomena from the very meanest to the very +highest? There remains the case of C--the synthetic whole in which +cognitive relatedness obtains. This is unquestionably more difficult of +scientific interpretation. But I believe that like statements may be +made in this case also. What we have, I conceive, is just a new and +higher type of relatedness with specific characters of its own. But of +this more in the sequel. + +It must be remembered that A, B, C stand for _relationships_ and that +the related things are progressively more complex within more complex +relational wholes. Relationships are every whit as real as are the terms +they hold in their grasp. I do not say more real; but I say emphatically +as real. And if this be so, then they ought somehow to be introduced +into our formulae, instead of being taken for granted. We give H{2}O as +the formula for a molecule of water. But that molecule is something very +much more than two atoms of hydrogen + one atom of oxygen. The +absolutely distinctive feature of the molecule is the specific +relatedness of these atoms. This constitutive mode of relatedness is, +however, just taken for granted. And it is scarcely matter for surprise +that, when we find not less specific modes of vital relatedness in the +living organism, they are too apt to be just ignored! + +Revert now to the empirical outcome of scientific research, for as such +I regard it, that new constitutive properties emerge when new modes and +types of relatedness occur, and when new products are successively +formed in evolutional synthesis. This, it will be said, involves the +acceptance of what is now commonly called creative evolution. I am far +from denying that, in the universe of discourse where Source is under +consideration, the adjective is justifiable. But, in the universe of +discourse of science, I regard it as inappropriate. What we have is just +plain evolution; and we must simply accept the truth--if, as I conceive, +it be a truth--that in all true evolution there is more in the +conclusion than is given in the premises; which is only a logical way of +saying that there is more in the world to-day than there was in the +primitive fire-mist. Not more 'matter and energy', but more varied +relationships and new properties, quite unpredictable from what one may +perhaps speak of as the fire-mist's point of view. This is no new +doctrine, though it has received of late a new emphasis. Mill, dealing +with causation,[55] speaks of a 'radical and important distinction'. +There are, he says in substance, some cases in which the joint effect of +the several causes is the algebraical sum of their separate effects. He +speaks of this as the 'composition of causes', and illustrates it from +the 'composition of forces' in dynamics. 'But in the other description +of cases', he says, 'the agencies which are brought together cease +entirely, and a totally different set of phenomena arise.' In these +cases 'a concurrence of causes takes place which calls into action new +laws bearing no analogy to any that we can trace in the separate +operation of the causes'. They might, he suggests, be termed +'heteropathic laws'. G. H. Lewes, too,[56] in his _Problems of Life and +Mind_, drew the distinction between properties which are _resultant_ and +those which are _emergent_. These suggestions were open to Spencer's +consideration long before the last edition of _First Principles_ +appeared. They were, however, too foreign to the established lines of +his thought to call for serious consideration. + +But if new relationships and new properties appear in the course of +evolutionary progress, where is the opportunity for that unification of +scientific knowledge which, according to Spencer, is the goal of +philosophy? To be frank, I am by no means sure that this question can be +answered in a manner that is other than tentative. Perhaps we have not +yet reached the stage at which more than provisional unification is +possible. Such provisional unification as is suggested by a survey of +the facts is that of seemingly uniform correlation in a hierarchy of +logical implication. There are certain modes of relatedness which belong +to the cognitive type. It would seem that whenever these obtain they may +be correlated with other modes of relatedness which are of the vital or +physiological type; and that these, in turn, may be correlated with +those that are physico-chemical. Thus C implies B, and B implies A. The +order cannot be reversed. Physico-chemical relations, _as a class_, do +not imply those that are physiological.[57] The implication is not +symmetrical. Spencer was within sight of this when he spoke[58] of the +abstract-concrete sciences as 'instrumental' with respect to the +concrete sciences, though the latter are not 'instrumental' in the same +sense with respect to the former. But unfortunately he regarded the +'chasm' between the two groups as 'absolute'. And for him the proper +home of properties--of all properties it would appear--is the +abstract-concrete group--mechanics, physics, and chemistry. This +seemingly leaves no place for a specific type of properties connected +with vital relatedness as such. In fact Spencer's method of treatment +reduces all modes of relatedness to the A type, the laws of which are, +for him, the primary 'causes' of all kinds of differentiation and +integration. Hence the laws of biology and psychology can ultimately be +expressed and explained, he thinks, in mechanical or mechanistic terms. +But in the doctrine of implication they are just the laws of B and C +respectively, though laws of A may underlie them in a logical sense. And +as we ascend the evolutionary plane from A to AB and thence to ABC--from +the physico-chemical to the vital and thence to the cognitive--we find +new modes of relatedness, new forms of more complex integration and +synthesis, new properties successively appearing in serial order. This +seems to me simply to express, in outline, the net result of +interpretation based on empirical observation--though much, very much, +requires to be filled in by future research. And the new properties are +not merely additive of preceding properties; they are constitutive, and +characterize the higher evolutionary products as such. Why they are thus +constitutive, science is unable to say. Spencer, of course, calls in the +Unknowable to supply the required nexus.[59] Otherwise, in each case, he +confesses that 'we can learn nothing more than that here is one of the +uniformities in the order of phenomena'.[60] None the less we may be +able some day to establish an ordinal correlation[61] of cognitive +processes with physiological processes, and an ordinal correlation of +these physiological processes with those of the physico-chemical type. +That I conceive to be the ideal of strictly scientific interpretation if +it is to be raised progressively to a level approaching that of the +exact sciences. It certainly is not yet attained. But I see no reason +why we should not regard it as attainable. It will involve the very +difficult determination of many correlation coefficients and +constants--and for some of these our data are, it must be confessed, +both scanty and unreliable. + +We must here note a much-discussed departure on Spencer's part from his +earlier position. On the first page of the _Biology_ in the earlier +editions, and in the last, we are told: + + 'The properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by + combination are not destroyed in reality. It follows from the + persistence of force that the properties of a compound are + resultants of the properties of its components, resultants in + which the properties of the components are severally in full + action, though mutually obscured.' + +There is no hint here of Mill's heteropathic laws nor of Lewes's +emergents. But in the last edition a special chapter is inserted on the +Dynamic Element in Life. We here find a tardy recognition of the +presence of specific vital characters. + + 'The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible + as the results of any physical actions known to us.... In brief, + then, we are obliged to confess that Life in its essence cannot be + conceived in physico-chemical terms.'[62] + +I speak of this as a tardy recognition; but it is one that does honour +to the man; it is a frank admission that his previous treatment was in +some measure inadequate, which a smaller man would not have had the +honesty or the strength of character to make. Of course it is traced +down to the Unknowable. 'Life as a principle of activity is unknown and +unknowable; while phenomena are accessible to thought the implied +noumenon is inaccessible.'[63] Still, certain specific characteristics +of living organisms are explicitly recognized as among the accessible +phenomena; and these cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. But +did Spencer fully realize how big a hole this knocks in the bottom of +the purely mechanical interpretation of nature he had for so long +championed? + +There remains for consideration the place of the cognitive relation in +Spencer's philosophy of science. We need not here discuss his +transfigured realism. Apart from the customary references to the +Unknowable, of which what is knowable is said to be symbolic, it comes +to little more than laying special emphasis on the truism that what is +known in the so-called objective world involves the process of knowing; +from which it follows that, apart from knowing it the objective world +cannot be known. From this Spencer draws the conclusion that terms in +cognitive relatedness have their very nature determined in and through +that relatedness, and cannot _in themselves_ be what they are, and as +they are, in the field of cognitive symbolism. This may or may not be +true. I am one of those who question the validity of the arguments in +favour of this conclusion. Since, however, the philosophy of science +deals only with the knowable--of which the so-called appearances with +which we have direct acquaintance are the primary data--we need not here +trouble ourselves with the controversy between realists and symbolists. +Even on Spencer's view the world as symbolized is the real world _for +science_. + +Now one way of expressing the fact that the cognitive relation is +always present where knowledge is concerned is to proclaim 'the truth +that our states of consciousness are the only things we can know'.[64] +But it is a terribly ambiguous way of expressing the fact. What is here +meant by a state of consciousness? So far as cognition is concerned it +is, or at any rate it involves, a relationship between something known +and the organism, as knowing--for Spencer assuredly the organism, though +a so-called inner aspect therein. Of course it is a very complex +relationship. It comprises relations in what is known, and relations in +the organism as knowing. Hence Spencer defines life, psychical as well +as physical, as 'the continuous adjustment of internal relations to +external relations'.[65] + + 'That which distinguishes Psychology is that each of its + propositions takes account both of the connected internal + phenomena and of the connected external phenomena to which they + refer. It is not only the one, nor only the other, that + characterises cognition. It is the connexion between these two + connexions.'[66] + +So far well. Cognition is a very complex network of relatedness +involving many terms. What are these terms? For Spencer the internal +terms are ultimately nervous (=psychic) shocks in highly integrated +aggregates; and the external terms are, proximately at least, things in +the environment. But both alike are spoken of as states of +consciousness. There is surely an opening for ambiguity here. Sometimes, +too, the words subjective affections are used in place of states of +consciousness. 'Thus we are brought to the conclusion that what we are +conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and +resistance, are but subjective affections.'[67] Well, these states of +consciousness, these subjective affections, fall into two great +classes--the vivid and the faint. The former, which we know as +sensations, accompany direct and therefore strong excitations of the +nerve-centres; the latter, which we know as remembered sensations, or +ideas of sensations, accompany indirect and therefore weak excitations +of the same nerve-centres.[68] And then we are told that the aggregate +of the faint is what we call the mind, the subject, the _ego_; the +aggregate of the vivid is what we call the external world, the object, +the _non-ego_.[69] It would seem, then, that the aggregate of vivid +_subjective_ affections is the _objective_ world so far as knowable. To +say the least of it, this terminology is somewhat perplexing. + +No doubt our knowledge of the external world involves a subtle and +intricate inter-relation of what is experienced vividly and what is +experienced faintly--of what is actually presented and what is ideally +re-presented. The distinction between them is a valid one. But when +Spencer equates this distinction with that between the external world +and the mind, as he does in the passages to which I have referred, the +validity of his procedure is seriously open to question. + +It must be confessed that an adequate analysis of cognitive relatedness +on scientific lines is not to be found in Spencer's works. I am not sure +that it is yet to be found in the works of any other philosopher, though +there are many signs that the difficult problems it involves are +receiving serious attention. This much seems certain, for those who +accept the spirit, though not perhaps the letter, of Spencer's teaching: +that there it is as a constitutive mode of relatedness in the realm of +nature, and that, if it forms part of the evolutionary scheme, if it is +present in the conclusion, so far reached, though it was absent in the +physico-chemical premises, if it is to be included in a philosophy of +science it must be dealt with by that philosophy on lines strictly +analogous to those on which any other relational problem is treated. +Firmly as we may believe in the reality of Source, we must not call to +our aid some psychic entity, some entelechy, some _elan vital_, to help +us out of our difficulties; for one and all of these lie wholly outside +the universe of discourse of science; and not one of them affords the +smallest help in solving a single scientific problem in a manner that is +itself scientific. + +We have seen that Spencer believed that the task of psychology is to +investigate the correlation of external and internal relations, and, in +that sense, itself to correlate them within a scientific interpretation. +Now the outcome of the former correlation is some form of behaviour or +conduct on the part of the organism. No doubt such behaviour affords +data to be dealt with in subsequent cognition. But it implies the prior +cognition which leads up to it; and it is this prior cognition, +abstracted from the behaviour to which it leads, that we have to +consider. It is so terribly complex that it is difficult to deal with it +comprehensibly in a brief space. Let me, however, try to do so, at least +in tentative outline. There occurs, let us say, an external event in the +physical world, such as the motion of a billiard-ball across the table; +and when during its progress this stimulates the retina, there is an +internal physico-chemical process which runs its course in retina, optic +nerves, and the central nervous system. We may regard these two +processes, external and internal, as _so far_, of like physical order. +With adequate knowledge the two could, in some measure, be serially +correlated as such. But the physico-chemical processes in the organism +are not only of this physical type. They are vital or physiological as +well. And this makes a real difference. Of course this statement is open +to question. But I, for one, believe that there are specific relations +present in physiological processes, _qua_ vital, other than those of the +physico-chemical type--relations which are effective and which require a +distinctive name. So far I am a vitalist. At some stage of evolution +these new modes of effective relatedness came into being, whereas in the +fire-mist and for long afterwards they were not in being. None the less +when they did actually come into being, under conditions of which we are +at present ignorant--though not so ignorant as we were--they were +dependent upon, and, for our interpretation, they logically imply, the +physico-chemical relations which are also present. In any given case +they further imply, through heredity-relatedness, the evolutionary +history of the organism in which they obtain. This so-called historical +element in biology no doubt involves a characteristic vital +relationship. But, I take it, the physico-chemical constitution of any +inorganic compound, and of any molecule therein, has also its +history--has relationship to past occurrences within its type, which +have helped to make it what it is. Still, in the organism the relation +to past happenings has a quite distinctive form which we deal with in +terms of heredity. See, then, how we stand so far. The internal +physiological process implies a long chain of heredity-relationships +through which the organism is prepared for its occurrence. It also +implies a physico-chemical basis, an underlying[70] physico-chemical +process. And this implies as a condition of its occurrence, the external +event, the passage of the billiard-ball across the table. In a broad +sense we may say that the inner process knows the external event which +is a condition of its occurrence. But we have not yet reached cognition +of the psychological type. + +Before passing on to indicate, in tentative outline, the nature of this +higher mode of relatedness, I pause to note two points. The first is +that knowing in that extended sense which I have borrowed,[71] is +essentially selective in its nature. The physiological process, in the +case I have taken, knows only that external event which is directly +before the eyes and which is serially correlated with changes in the +retinal images through the stimulation of specialized receptors. Of +other external events it has no such knowledge. Compare this with the +gravitative knowledge--if a yet wider extension of the meaning of the +word be permitted--which the earth has of the sun and all the other +members of the solar system--nay more, in degrees perhaps infinitesimal, +of all other material bodies in the universe. The motion of the earth in +its orbit implies the whole of this vast field of gravitative +relatedness. The existing orbital motion at any moment implies, too, the +preceding motion which it has, in a sense, inherited from the past. +Abolish the rest of the universe at this moment and the earth's motion +would cease to be orbital. In virtue of its 'inheritance from the past', +it would continue at uniform velocity in one direction. The continuous +change of direction and velocity we observe, is a response which implies +gravitative knowledge. In a sense, then, the whole solar system is known +by the earth as it swings in its orbit. + +The second point may be introduced by a question. Granted that we may +say, in a very liberal sense, that the earth in its motion has this +gravitative knowledge--is such knowledge accompanied by awareness? We do +not know. But the point I have in mind is this, that the question itself +is vague. Awareness of what? There must be awareness of something; and a +definite question should be directed towards the nature of that +something. For example: is the earth aware of its own motion? Or is it +aware of the solar system? Or is it aware of the relation of the one to +the other? If it be said that the second of these is meant when we ask +whether the knowledge is accompanied by awareness, well and good. The +answer will serve to define the question. Take now a case of biological +knowledge. Are the plants in the cottager's window, when they grow +towards the light, aware of a process in their own tissues? Or are they +aware of the sunshine? Or are they in some measure aware of the +connexion between the one and the other? To all these questions we must +answer, I suppose, that we do not know. But it may have been worth while +to ask them in a definite way. + +We pass, then, to cognition in the usual acceptation of the term--to +what we speak of as knowledge in the proper and narrower sense. My +contention is that this is a mode of relatedness which science must +endeavour to treat on precisely the same lines as it deals with any +other natural kind of relatedness. At some stage of evolution it came +into being, whereas in the fire-mist, and for long afterwards, it was +not in being. None the less when it did come into being, it was +dependent on, and for our interpretation it logically implies, +underlying physiological processes, as they in turn imply +physico-chemical processes, in each case serially correlated. It is +pre-eminently selective. And just as any physiological process, however +externally conditioned, is grounded in[72] the constitution of the +organism, as such, so too is any cognitive process grounded in the +constitution of the organism as one in which this higher type of +relatedness has supervened. Again, just as the physiological +constitution implies a prolonged racial preparation, describable in +terms of that mode of relatedness we name heredity, so, too, does any +cognitive process imply, not only this racial preparation of the +biological kind, but also an individual preparation of the psychological +kind--implies relatedness to what we call, rather loosely, prior +experience--which itself implies a concurrent physiological preparation. + +Now there can be no doubt that awareness is a characteristic feature of +the knowledge of cognition, whether it be present or absent in knowledge +in the more extended sense. We must just accept this as what appears to +be a fact. In science we do not pretend to say why facts are what they +are and as they are. We take them as they are given, and endeavour to +trace their connexions and their implications. Accepting, then, +awareness as given, we must ask: Awareness of what? It is sometimes said +that cognition is aware of itself. I am not sure that I understand what +this means. If we are speaking of the cognitive relation, which is an +awareness relation, the question seems to be whether a relation of +awareness is related to itself. But of course if a field of cognitive +relatedness be regarded as a complex whole, any part may be related to +the rest, and the rest to any part. That kind of self-awareness--if we +must so call it!--is eminently characteristic of cognition in the higher +forms of its development. On these terms cognition is aware of +itself--though the mode of statement savours of ambiguity. + +Let us next ask whether there is awareness of the underlying cortical +process. If we are speaking of direct awareness, apparently not. The +correlation between the two is only discoverable through a very +elaborate and complex[73] application of further cognition in +interpretative knowledge. We only know the correlated cortical process +by description, as Mr. Bertrand Russell would say,[74] and never by +direct acquaintance. + +Parenthetic reference must here, I suppose, be made to psycho-physical +parallelism. But it shall be very brief. The sooner this cumbrous term +with its misleading suggestions is altogether eliminated from the +vocabulary of science the better. The locus of the so-called parallelism +is, we are told, the cortex of the brain. But the cortical process is +only an incident--no doubt a very important one, but still an +incident--in a much wider physiological process, the occurrence of +which, in what we may speak of as primary cognition, implies events in +the external world. It is of these events that there is direct physical, +physiological, and cognitive knowledge. Of course there are also +inter-cortical relations which underlie the relations of those ideal +cognita (Spencer's faint class) that supplement the primary cognita +which imply direct stimulation of sensory receptors (Spencer's vivid +class). It is questionable whether any form of cognition, properly so +called, is possible in their absence. Now I see no objection to +labelling the fact (if it be a fact) that the cognitive process implies +a physiological process in which, as in a larger whole, the cortex +plays its appropriate part, by the use of some such convenient +correlation-word as psycho-physical; but only so long as this does not +involve a doctrine of parallelism; so long as it merely means that +cognition implies, let us say, certain underlying cortical changes. Of +course it implies a great deal more than cortical process only; but this +may perhaps be taken for granted. My chief objection to the word +'parallelism' is that it suggests two separate orders of being, and not +two types of relationship within one order of being for scientific +study.[75] We do not speak of parallelism between physiological and +physico-chemical processes. We just say that scientific interpretation +proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a +kind that physiological process implies a physico-chemical basis. So +too, I urge, we should be content to say that scientific interpretation +proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a +kind that cognitive process implies a physiological basis. + +It may be said that Spencer accepted the so-called identity hypothesis +which does not lie open to the objection that it suggests two orders of +being. He believed[76] 'that mind and nervous action are the subjective +and objective faces of the same thing', though 'we remain utterly +incapable of seeing or even imagining how the two are related'. Well, we +may call them in one passage the same thing, we may speak, in another +passage, of the antithesis between them as never to be transcended, and +we may try to save the situation by reference to duality of aspect. But +this kind of treatment does not help as much towards a scientific +interpretation. It is true that, in yet another passage, speaking of the +correlation of the physical and the psychical, Spencer says:[77] 'We can +learn nothing more than that here is one of the uniformities in the +order of phenomena.' Then why not leave it at that? And if there be a +constant and uniform correlation which is 'in a certain indirect way +quantitive', it would seem that we _do_ see, as far as science ever +professes to see, 'how the two are related.' We see, or conceive, how +they are related in much the same way as we do in the case of the +connexion between the physiological and the physico-chemical, and in +numberless other cases. Both parallelism and identity will have to go by +the board in a philosophy of science. They must be replaced by the far +more modest hypothesis, which seems to express all that they really mean +for science, that cognition always implies certain physiological +processes in the organism. + +If we do speak of mind and nervous action as two faces of the same +thing, it seems pretty certain that the one face is not directly aware +of the other. When we speak of awareness in cognition we must therefore, +it appears, exclude any direct awareness of concurrent physiological +processes. Of what, then, is there awareness? Primarily perhaps of some +occurrence in the external world. But the difficulty here is that, in +the simplest case of human cognition there is awareness of so many +things and in such varying degrees. There may be primary awareness of +events in the external world (Spencer's vivid series), awareness of the +relations involved in these occurrences as such, of the relations of +these to ideal re-presentations of like kind (Spencer's faint series), +of the relations of any or all of these to behaviour as actually taking +place or as ideally re-presented; and all in different degrees within a +relational meshwork of bewildering complexity, which we have not, as +yet, adequately unravelled. The essential point to bear in mind is that +the cognitive relation always involves relatedness of _many terms_, and +that its discussion involves the analysis of what, in the higher phases +of its existence, is probably the most complex natural occurrence in +this complex world. + +I cannot here follow up further the difficult problem of +cognition[78]--save to add one or two supplementary remarks. First: it +is, I suppose, fairly obvious that any given field of cognitive +relatedness comprises _all_ that is then and there selectively cognized. +Just as, in the very extended sense of the word 'knowledge', the earth +knows, in gravitative fashion, the whole solar system, as does also any +one of the planets, so, in the restricted sense, is knowledge +co-extensive with all that is, selectively, in cognitive relationship +with the organism or that part of the organism which is the locus of +awareness. I speak here of the locus of awareness in just the same sense +as I might speak of the earth as a locus of gravitative knowledge of the +solar system. The locus of awareness is just a specialized portion of +the whole relational web. In other words, the relatedness is of the +part-whole kind, where whole means rest of the whole other than the +specific part. In any such integrated system the part implies the +whole--which, by the way, is quite a different matter from saying that +the part includes the whole, or, as I understand the words, is +equivalent to the whole. But, whereas gravitative knowledge is +reciprocal--the sun knowing the earth in the same fashion as the earth +knows the sun--cognitive knowledge is not reciprocal. My cognitive +awareness of a spinning-top does not imply that the spinning-top is in +like manner aware of me. The part knows the whole in a way that the +whole does not know the part. The relationship of the part to the rest +of the whole is not reciprocal or symmetrical. This we must just accept +as a given feature of cognitive relatedness.[79] + +Another very important point is that cognitive relatedness is +effective. By this I mean that just as, when the earth is in gravitative +relation to the sun and the other planets (the constitution of nature +being what it is), changes take place because the parts of the system as +a whole are in this field of effective relatedness; so too, when the +organism is in cognitive relation to its environment, changes in this +system also take place just because a part of the whole system is in +cognitive relatedness to the rest of the system. That means that the +cognitive relation really counts--that it is not merely an epiphenomenal +accompaniment of changes which would be precisely the same if it were +absent. The 'sum of energy' presumably remains constant. There is no +necessary interference with physical principles. But we know of so many +cases in which the direction of change may be changed without any +alteration of the 'amount of energy', as the phrase goes, that I see no +reason, based on physical science,[80] for denying this kind of +effectiveness, within a field of cognitive relatedness, if the facts +seem indubitably to point to its existence. To assert that the presence +or absence of cognitive relatedness makes absolutely no difference +appears to me, I confess, little short of preposterous; to urge that it +may be brought under the rubric of physico-chemical relatedness surely +involves the ignoring of differentiating features, which science should +not ignore. But, on the other hand, to invoke an immaterial psychic +entity[81]--unless this merely names the relatedness itself[82] as +gravitation names the gravitative relatedness--appears to me quite +unwarranted in the scientific universe of discourse.[83] + +I must, however, draw to a conclusion. I cannot but think that Spencer +failed to bring cognition and the conscious awareness it involves into +really close touch with the rest of his philosophy of science. No such +double-aspect theory as he accepted affords a satisfactory avenue of +scientific approach. But where Spencer failed, who has come within +measurable sight of success? We are only just beginning to see our way +to stating the problem in such a form as to bring it within the purview +of science. What we must insist on, as followers, at a distance, of +Herbert Spencer, is the treatment of this type of relatedness on lines +similar to our treatment of other types of relatedness within one order +of nature. + +Surveying his work as a whole, we may confidently assert that Spencer +brought to a conclusion a great task, and was himself great in its +execution. The present generation can, perhaps, hardly realize how +potent his influence was on the thought of the latter half of the last +century. Many of his conclusions ran counter to those which were, in his +day, widely accepted. If only they seemed to him to be true, however, he +held to them with a tenacity which his opponents branded as obstinacy. +But as he himself said: + + 'It is not for nothing that a man has in him sympathies with some + principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, + and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of + his time. While he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of + the future; and his thoughts are as children born to him, which he + may not carelessly let die. Not as adventitious therefore will the + wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he + sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of + it, he is thus playing his right part in the world.'[84] + + + + +NOTES + + +[1] _Fragments of Science_, vol. ii, p. 132. + +[2] _Essays_, vol. i (American reprint), p. 3. + +[3] _Op. cit._, p. 32. + +[4] _Op. cit._, p. 58. + +[5] Cf. W. K. Clifford, _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 95. + +[6] _More Letters_, vol. ii, p. 235. + +[7] _Memories and Studies_, p. 139. + +[8] _Ibid._, p. 140. + +[9] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 212. + +[10] James, _op. cit._, p. 124. + +[11] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 211. + +[12] _First Principles_, Sixth (Popular) Edition, p. 446 (hereafter F. +P.). + +[13] _Principles of Psychology_, Third Edition, vol. i, p. 508 +(hereafter Ps.). + +[14] Ps., vol. i, p. 627. + +[15] _Ibid._, p. 158. + +[16] F. P., p. 155. + +[17] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484. + +[18] There is '_intrinsic_ force by which a body manifests itself as +occupying space, and that _extrinsic_ force distinguished as energy'. F. +P., p. 150. + +[19] 'Divest the conceived unit of matter of the objective correlate to +our subjective sense of effort and the entire fabric of physical +conceptions disappears.' F. P., p. 151 note. Cf. Ps., vol. ii, pp. 237, +239. + +[20] F. P., p. 171. + +[21] e.g. 'Social changes take directions that are due to the joint +actions of citizens determined as are those of all other changes wrought +by the composition of forces.' 'The flow of capital into business +yielding the largest returns, the buying in the cheapest market and +selling in the dearest, the introduction of more economical modes of +manufacture, the development of better agencies for distribution, +exhibit movements taking place in directions where they are met by the +smallest totals of opposing forces.' F. P., pp. 193-6. + +[22] _Creative Evolution_, English translation, p. 53. + +[23] _Op. cit._, pp. 385, 6. + +[24] According to Dr. Carr's interpretation of M. Bergson, 'The whole +world, as it is presented to us and thought of by us, is an illusion. +Our science is not unreal, but it is a transformed reality. The +illusions may be useful, may, indeed, be necessary and indispensable, +but nevertheless it is illusion.' _Problem of Truth_, p. 66. + +[25] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389. + +[26] 'But, when I posit the facts with the shape they have for me +to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception and intellection such as +they are in me to-day; for it is they that portion the real into lots, +they that cut the facts out of the whole of reality.' C. E., p. 389. + +[27] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389. + +[28] _Op. cit._, p. 387. + +[29] _Introduction to Metaphysics_, English translation, p. 8 and +_passim_. + +[30] e.g. 'Organisation can only be studied scientifically if the +organised body has first been likened to a machine.' C. E., p. 98. +Science is, I think, generally used by M. Bergson for _intellectual_ +knowledge in contradistinction to intuitional knowledge. + +[31] F. P., p. 184. + +[32] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 14. + +[33] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 366. + +[34] F. P., p. 156. + +[35] 'There remained to assign a reason for that increasingly-distinct +demarkation of parts, &c.... This reason we discovered to be the +segregation, &c.... This cause of the definiteness of local +integrations, &c.' F. P., p. 440. + +[36] F. P., p. 43. + +[37] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 47. + +[38] F. P., p. 176. + +[39] F. P., p. 154. + +[40] _Proceedings Aristotelian Society_, 1912-13, p. 1. + +[41] _Popular Scientific Lectures_, English translation, p. 254. + +[42] _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 111. + +[43] 'But when we ask what this energy is, there is no answer save that +it is the noumenal cause implied by the phenomenal effect.' F. P., p. +154. It is towards this and like statements that my criticism is +directed. There can be no objection to the treatment, by physicists, of +energy as an entity in the sense given below in note 82. Those phenomena +to which 1/2 _mv_^{2} has reference are fundamental realities for +physical science. + +[44] In a statement of the law of gravitation we may substitute the +words 'in a degree' for 'with a force'; we may speak of 'the measure of +attraction' instead of 'the force of attraction'. + +[45] _System of Logic_, Bk. III, ch. v, Sec. 3, Eighth Edition, vol. i, +p. 383. + +[46] _Ibid._, Sec. 3 and Sec. 5, pp. 379 and 389. + +[47] Ps., vol. ii, p. 93; cf. p. 97. One has now, however, to add the +realm of subsistence. + +[48] As a more technical example the following may be given:--The +difference in properties of isomers is caused by difference of internal +molecular structure notwithstanding identity of chemical composition. + +[49] If we take spark as cause and explosion as effect there is +obviously no proportionality between the cause and its effect. Thus M. +Bergson speaks of the spark as 'a cause that acts by releasing'; and he +adds that 'neither quality nor quantity of effect varies with quality or +quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable'. _Creative Evolution_, +p. 77. Compare what Spencer introduced into the Sixth edition of F. P. +(pp. 172-3), concerning 'trigger action which does not produce the power +but liberates it'. According to the treatment in the text there can be +no 'proportionality' unless both ground and conditions are taken into +account. + +[50] Spencer says (F. P., pp. 169-70) that 'the transformation of the +unorganised contents of an egg into the organised chick is a question of +heat' ['altogether a question of heat', in the Third Edition], and tells +us that 'the germination of plants presents like relations of cause and +effect as every season shows'. But he also says that 'the proclivities +of the molecules determine the typical structure assumed'. Obviously +here the 'heat supplied' falls under (3) of the text, and 'the +proclivities of the molecules' is his notion of what should fall under +(2). + +[51] See Index to F. P., _sub verbo_ 'integration'. + +[52] e. g. 'Diminish the velocities of the planets and their orbits will +lessen--the solar system will contract, or become more integrated.' +_Essays_, vol. iii, p. 28. Mere condensation is often spoken of as +integration. But then the term is used with bewildering laxity. Cf. +James, _Memories and Studies_, p. 134. + +[53] I retain in this connexion the current term physico-chemical. It +seems that the basal type of relatedness here is electrical. It may be +said that when we come down to the atom the _things in_ relation are +electrical, are electrons, are positive and negative charges. So be it. +But is it not the _electrical relatedness_ that is constitutive of the +atom as such? + +[54] 'A large number of physical properties', says Nernst, 'have been +shown to be clearly additive; that is, the value of the property in +question can be calculated as though the compound were such a mixture of +its elements that they experience no change in their properties.' But +other properties are not additive. 'The kind of influence of the atom in +a compound is primarily dependent on the mode of its union, that is, +upon the constitution and configuration of the compound. Such +non-additive properties may be called constitutive.' Quoted by E. G. +Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 238. + +[55] _System of Logic_, vol. i, Bk. III, ch. vi. + +[56] _Problems of Life and Mind_, Series II, p. 212. + +[57] Of course if a particular physico-chemical change (_a_) is +correlated with a particular physiological or vital change (_b_), then +(_b_) implies (_a_) as (_a_) implies (_b_). The statement in the text +refers to the implications of classes of change. There may be +physico-chemical relatedness without any correlated vital relatedness; +but there does not appear to be any vital relatedness which is not +correlated with physico-chemical relatedness. + +[58] _Essays_, vol. iii, pp. 31, 55. + +[59] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484. + +[60] F. P., p. 178. + +[61] An ordinal correlation is one that couples every term of a series +(_a_) with a specific term of another series (_b_) and _vice versa_ in +the same order in each. Cf. Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 175. I +shall sometimes speak of such correlation as serial. + +[62] _Principles of Biology_, Edition of 1898, pp. 117, 120. + +[63] _Op. cit._, p. 122. + +[64] Ps., vol. i, p. 208. + +[65] F. P., p. 61. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 134. + +[66] Ps., vol. i, p. 132. James well says 'Spencer broke new ground here +in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved together, +they must be studied together. He gave to the study of mind in isolation +a definite quietus, and that certainly is a great thing to have +achieved'. _Memories and Studies_, p. 140. + +[67] Ps., vol. i, p. 206. + +[68] Ps., vol. i, p. 124. + +[69] F. P., p. 120. Ps., vol. ii, p. 472. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 98. + +[70] The word underlying is used in the sense of occupying a lower +position in the logical hierarchy above indicated. If any one likes to +speak of the physico-chemical and the vital as two aspects of one +process, he is free to do so. And if he likes to say that the vital is +caused by the physico-chemical, let him do so; but he must define the +exact sense in which he uses the ambiguous word cause. The word inner in +the text means within the organism. + +[71] See S. Alexander, 'On Relations: and in particular the Cognitive +Relation.' _Mind._, vol. xxi, N. S., No. 83, p. 318. + +[72] I have avoided the use of the word determine. It would be well to +distinguish between that which is _determined_ from without, that is, +conditioned, and that which is _determinate_, that is, grounded in the +constitution. I am here, I think, in line with Bosanquet. (See +_Principle of Individuality and Value_, e. g. pp. 341, 352.) I have also +avoided all reference to teleology. Without committing myself to the +acceptance of all that Mr. Bosanquet says in the fourth lecture of the +series to which reference has just been made, his treatment, there, +appears to be on right lines. There is no opposition in teleology, so +treated, to what is determinate. Indeed, such teleology is the +expression of the logical structure of the world, or, as Spencer would +say, the universality of law. For just as higher types of relatedness +imply a substratum of physico-chemical processes, so do all events imply +the underlying logic of events. Cf. W. T. Marvin, _A First Book of +Metaphysics_, ch. xiii, 'On the logical strata of reality.' + +[73] Cf. Ps., vol. i, pp. 99 and 140. + +[74] _Problems of Philosophy_, ch. v; cf. _Proc. Aristotelian Soc._, +1910-11, p. 108. + +[75] It should be distinctly understood that I here speak of one order +of being in reference to the phenomena dealt with by science, including +the cognitive phenomena discussed in the text. Whether we should speak +of the Source of phenomena as constituting a separate order of being is +a question I cannot discuss in a note. Does the logic of events imply a +Logos? That is the question in brief. But, since the implication in +question is not of the scientific kind, I may leave it on one side in +considering a philosophy of science. + +[76] Ps., vol. i, p. 140. + +[77] F. P., p. 178. + +[78] I have confined my attention to the cognitive type of relatedness. +Other higher modes supervene when the course of evolution is traced +further upwards. Indeed, cognition is only part of the underlying basis +implied by the richer forms of distinctively human relational life. +Spencer has much to say of them in his _Sociology_ and his _Ethics_, +though he fails to realize that the phenomena he is dealing with involve +essentially new constitutive features in man and in society. Can music +or any form of art be discussed in terms of cognition only? I merely add +this note to show that I am not unaware of the patent fact that when we +have reached the cognitive type of relatedness, we are nowhere near the +top of the evolutional tree. + +[79] The part which is the centre of awareness, may be spoken of as +experienc_ing_, in contradistinction to what is experienc_ed_. It is +clear that such experiencing is always correlative to what is +experienced actually or ideally (Spencer's vividly or faintly). The +centre of awareness is either the cortex, or some specific part of the +cortex, or (more generally) the organism as owning the cortex, in each +case in accordance with the universe of discourse. + +[80] Few physicists would, I think, be prepared to deny that, within a +field of effective relatedness, there may be, and very often is, +guidance without work done or any change in the 'amount of energy'. What +physicists are concerned to insist on is their cardinal principle that +every physical change involves physical terms in physical relatedness. +This can be fully and freely accepted in accordance with the doctrine of +implication sketched in the text. It is when Life or Consciousness is +invoked to play the part of a non-physical term, or thing, which acts +and reacts as if it were a physical term or thing, that physicists enter +an emphatic protest. Cognitive relatedness among physical things may +well be effective in guidance. To claim its presence must not, however, +be regarded as in any sense equivalent to a denial of underlying +physico-chemical relatedness. + +[81] Until those who seek to furnish evidence of the existence of +discarnate spirits can make some plausible suggestions as to the nature +of a comprehensible scheme of correlation which shall serve to link the +discarnate with the incarnate, one is forced to enter their results in a +suspense account. It is of little use to proclaim the existence of +'facts scorned by orthodox science'. The so-called facts must be +incorporated within a consistent scheme, before they can claim a place +in the fabric of scientific truth. + +[82] As the word entity is now often used, for example by Mr. G. E. +Moore, cognitive relatedness may be termed an entity. 'When I speak of +an entity I shall mean to imply absolutely nothing more with regard to +that which I so call, than that it _is_ or _was_--that it is or was +contained in the Universe; and of anything whatever which _is_ or _was_, +I shall take the liberty to say that it is an entity.' G. E. Moore, +_Proc. Aristotelian Soc._, 1909-10, p. 36. + +[83] I have no space to discuss the physiological differentiation which +is implied by the effectiveness of the cognitive relation. It involves, +I believe, the differentiation of a superior cortical system from an +inferior system of nervous arcs. I have dealt with it in some detail +elsewhere. See _Instinct and Experience_. + +[84] F. P., pp. 91-2. + + + OXFORD: HORACE HART M.A. + PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE*** + + +******* This file should be named 37513.txt or 37513.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/5/1/37513 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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