Science and the Layman
I
IT is a disconcerting fact that strong convictions usually rest on ignorance. There is more knowledge in the world to-day than has ever existed before, and there are fewer generally accepted beliefs. Outside the severer sciences, having to do for the most part with matters on which the layman is not concerned to form a judgment, almost everything is held to be a matter of opinion. This is a basic fact about the modern mind. It is new, and it is very important. For it indicates that in our day, compared even with the time of our grandfathers, an entirely new basis for belief is insisted upon. Authority and tradition are now discredited, not only by a few exceptional rebels, but by the generality of mankind.
This is, undoubtedly, the greatest of all the changes that science has made in our general outlook. Not that science is wholly responsible for this change. A number of other factors have been at work, but it is science, or rather the scientific spirit, that gives to modern skepticism its chief support and justification.
On all the matters that now come within its scope science has successfully fought its battle with authority. It started by bringing a skeptical attitude to matters which had long been thought settled. This attitude was a necessary preliminary clearing of the ground. It is very necessary, for the scientific examination of any fact, to get rid of all preconceived ideas. But this is merely the starting point. After that comes genuine analysis, and the patient accumulation of all relevant data. The scientific spirit, so far as it can be said to be at all general in the modern mind, seems to stop short at the first step. There is certainly a widespread skepticism abroad — about everything under the sun. But there is very little trace of genuine inquiry. Religious dogmas, moral codes, the duties of a citizen, patriotism, are all matters on which clear and definite positive statements are regarded with skepticism. The traditional views about these things are no longer accepted. But no new beliefs, reached by a scientific process, have been put in their place. The scientific spirit, as applied to these regions, has not advanced beyond its first stage. The preliminary work of destruction has been accomplished, but the waste land so created remains a waste land.
Vigorous and healthy young people are often able to maintain life in an atmosphere of idle skepticism. The ardor of their instincts and the novelty of existence make the adventure of living sufficiently interesting, in spite of the absence of any religious beliefs or any conviction of a supremely important distinction between right and wrong. An increasing number of young people in the post-war world feel no need of such beliefs, and even actively resent them as possible constraints.
On the basis of a universal skepticism, very largely a spiritual offshoot of modern science, they have arrived at the conclusion, in Dostoevsky’s phrase, that all things are lawful.
This attitude is all very well — for a time. But there comes a stage in growth when life, instead of being an unlimited adventure, ‘narrows to one mortal career,’ as Santayana puts it. We are no longer content that life should be a succession of exciting experiences. We want it to have meaning. The great problems of religion and philosophy become, however vaguely, our problems. And we find, in the modern world, that these problems, the most important of all to us, have no answers — or, rather, have an infinite number of answers, all of them doubtful.
We need go back only a few years to see how novel a state of affairs this is for the ordinary man. There have always been skeptics, of course, but the present universal skepticism about these matters is an entirely new phenomenon. There is still a great deal of inertia, too. The churches still have plenty of adherents, although their doctrines, in many cases, become steadily more and more ambiguous. Our judges still mete out punishments, although righteous indignation with the wrongdoer has greatly declined. Nurse Cavell’s remark, ‘Patriotism is not enough,’ has not yet superseded the inscription, ‘For King and Country,’ on her monument. But none of these things now express general beliefs. To the man who is in earnest, who wishes his life to have direction, to have true significance, none of these things necessarily bring solace and conviction. This is not to say that there is no truth in these things, but that this truth, being based on tradition and authority, is not generally accepted. For an increasing number of people life has been deprived of all transcendental significance, or, in the ordinary meaning of the term, is meaningless.
This state of affairs, as we have said, can very largely be referred to the development of the scientific spirit. The scientific spirit constitutes the one great challenge to tradition and authority. It has made good; its prestige is enormous. An increasing number of people regard it as the one hope for the modern world. It is being invoked everywhere it can be invoked, even in politics and finance. But all the major interests of mankind — his spiritual problems — lie at present outside science. Here science has confined itself to destroying, or at least weakening, the plausibility of all the old solutions, without putting anything positive in their place. And this, to many people, more than counterbalances whatever advantages science may have brought with it. Science, these people say, has made life easier to live and at the same time made it not worth living.
This feeling is only indirectly due to definite scientific teachings. Science has only rarely directly combated any of the spiritual doctrines, or religious dogmas, that have hitherto nourished men. But what science has done is to establish a different scale of probability. Statements which look all very well in one universe of ideas may look very inadequate in another, although the logical reasons for the change may not be at all obvious. There can be no question, for instance, but that some religious doctrines look much less plausible in the modern universe of astronomy than they did in a universe whose chief and central body was the earth. It might be difficult to justify, logically, this change in our sense of likelihood, but it indisputably exists. Similarly, that doctrine of evolution which maintained that the whole process had come about by the random action of natural laws made belief in man’s transcendental significance much more difficult. In the new setting provided by physical and biological science the assumptions concerning man’s destiny and importance on which religious dogmas rested became much less plausible. Also, the new psychologies have, it appears, undermined the old bases of morality. We no longer think of right and wrong as the inflexible, objective things our grandfathers supposed them to be. The upshot of the new psychology, for the ordinary layman, is to diminish his belief in man as a fully responsible moral being. So much of a man’s behavior is now referred to his complexes and inhibitions, themselves accidental products of his circumstances, that the notion of moral responsibility has become almost meaningless. And morality itself, our notions of right and wrong, have their whole raison d’être in their survival value. Like everything else about a man’s make-up, they exist: because of their usefulness in the struggle for existence. They have no absolute value.
II
We have said that modern scientific doctrines, while they may not directly combat the old orthodox religious and moral assumptions, have made them much less probable. But it is a curious fact that it is the sciences which are least well established that have had the greatest influence in this respect. Indeed, of the mathematical sciences, astronomy alone has had any influence at all. And its influence has been confined to demonstrating the physical insignificance of man and his planet in the material universe. The modern universe of millions of millions of stars lasting for millions of millions of years certainly makes it unlikely that man’s significance in the scheme of things can be related to the size of his planet or to the duration of his life. Judged by such standards, he must be counted as an extremely insignificant and fleeting episode in the history of matter. To the mediævalist, who was shocked by Copernicus’s theory that the earth is not fixed in the middle of the universe, but moves round the sun, the universe of modern astronomy would doubtless seem a very distressing affair. But to us his reaction seems rather naïve. We do not so readily assume that man’s importance in the scheme of things, if there is a scheme, must be dependent on his spatial and temporal dimensions. We cannot see that his physical insignificance is necessarily a fatal objection to the religious assumptions regarding his nature and destiny. The modern skepticism on those matters, therefore, owes comparatively little to the science of astronomy.
But when we come to the biological sciences we encounter teachings which certainly have had a great influence on religious beliefs. The passionate resistance offered to the theory of evolution was due primarily to the fact that it did conflict with fundamental religious convictions. It made man a chance outcome of the operations of the laws of nature. Everything that had been relied on as evidence of design was swept away by this theory. The chance combinations of a mindless mechanism were sufficient to account for all that exists.
Also, another primary religious conviction, the notion that there exists a ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ in man, was made much less plausible by this theory, for it showed that all living things are so connected that the argument from continuity would require us to attribute a soul to every living thing, and possibly, if life can be shown to result from physical and chemical laws, to inorganic matter as well. Man’s old special and privileged position seemed to be destroyed, and this made the notions that he had a spiritual nature and a transcendental destiny much less plausible. Certain discoveries in physiology reënforced this conclusion. The fact that operations on the body can transform a saint into a homicidal maniac, and vice versa, makes the notion of a man’s true character and of a spiritual nature, existing apart from his bodily functions, very elusive. The notion that there is a soul which exists apart from the body, and does not share in the destruction of the body, loses greatly in credibility. The new psychologies, also, by explaining the ‘higher’ elements of our nature in terms of the Tower,’ have made less credible the concept of man as a spiritual, being, a partaker of the divine nature.
But, as we have said, these doctrines, which have had the greatest influence on the general outlook of the layman, are not among the bestestablished of scientific doctrines. Science and religion are not yet in hopeless conflict. The theory, for instance, that the whole course of evolution is a chance outcome of the random workings of the laws of physics and chemistry is by no means a proved and accepted scientific doctrine. We know that there are many, among the biologists themselves, who find it entirely unsatisfactory. They think that the notion of ‘purpose,’ even if in some very attenuated form, must be invoked to make intelligible the actual course of evolution. Mechanical notions, they assert, are not sufficient for the biological sciences. But there is not yet any very clear idea as to what supplementary notions are to be introduced in biology.
This, perhaps, does not matter very much. It is the need for such notions that interests the religious person. For such a notion as ‘purpose’ is incompatible with any form of materialism — the doctrine that everything results from ‘accidental collocations of atoms.’ The real offense of that philosophy against religious intuitions lay not in its emphasis on ‘atoms,’ but in its emphasis on ‘accidental.’ For the ‘matter’ of modern physics has become so elusive an entity that to say everything is wholly composed of matter can no longer be a shock to anybody. Matter, according to some of our leading physicists, may even be mental. The whole universe, according to Eddington, is composed of ‘mind-stuff’ and, according to Jeans, is a thought in the mind of God.
Materialism, so far as it reduces everything to matter, has therefore lost its sting. But the statement that everything has come about ‘accidentally’ really is incompatible with the assumptions of religion. All religions must be pure fantasies in a mindless and purposeless universe. But it would obviously be impossible for science ever to prove that the universe is purposeless, and therefore the possibility of a religious interpretation would always remain open. The ‘purposeless’ theory might be found sufficient; it could never be found necessary. Nevertheless, the discovery that that theory was scientifically insufficient would make the acceptance of the religious outlook much easier.
III
Psychology, as a science, is in a much less assured position even than biology. Indeed, some of the doctrines of psychoanalysis and behaviorism, for example, can hardly be called scientific at all. Nevertheless, they have been created by the scientific movement and they have played their part in affecting the general outlook of our time. It is very largely the prestige of the ‘exact’ sciences which secures for these doctrines such attention as they receive.
But the layman is not always aware of the difference. His natural judgment of a scientific theory, in the absence of special information, would be dependent on the degree to which it squared with common sense — that is, with the set of concepts he had found adequate to his own experience. He has been made aware, however, that this criterion is not sufficient. He is daily in contact with scientific achievements which, as he knows, rest on theories which are certainly not what he would regard as common-sensical. It often happens, therefore, that he develops an uncritical credulity about these matters. He becomes willing to give a measure of credence to almost anything that professes to be scientific. The influence exerted on the layman’s outlook by pseudo-science may be as great as or even greater than the influence exerted by well-attested scientific doctrines.
In discussing the influence of science on our general outlook, therefore, the word ‘science’ has to be extended to include almost everything that calls itself scientific, including some of the more absurd exaggerations of the new psychologies. Such depressing doctrines as that what we have been accustomed to call man’s higher aspirations spring from unsatisfied sexual desires, or, still more astounding, that ‘thoughts’ consist wholly of incipient speech movements, that ‘perceptions’ are movements of the eyeballs, and so forth, receive attention largely because their authors invoke the name of science. Were it not for the immense prestige of this name, the layman would probably reject them as obvious absurdities. He may think they sound absurd, but then he probably thinks that non-Euclidean geometry sounds absurd. He has learned that it is not safe to dismiss a scientific theory merely because it sounds ridiculous.
The layman’s consciousness that he is in no position to judge of the real standing of a scientific theory often results, as we have said, in an uncritical credulity. This has its ludicrous aspects. The credulity is so widespread, the prestige of science is so great, that, for example, appeals to it are now part of the recognized technique of advertising. Instead of the blunt statement that so-and-so is the best, we are now given what purport to be the scientific reasons for its excellence. The fact that these statements, whether justified or not, in many cases make appeal to a degree of scientific knowledge that the layman does not possess is not at all to their disadvantage. The right atmosphere has been created. The layman has learned to be submissive before scientific mysteries.
But, besides this widespread credulity, we sometimes meet with a shallow and comprehensive skepticism respecting the claims of science. Unfortunately, this reaction is often just as undiscriminating as the other. Mr. Bernard Shaw is reported to disbelieve altogether in the vast stellar distances preached by modern astronomy. The stars, he thinks, are much nearer than that. And there are intelligent people who seriously believe that Einstein is some sort of clever careerist whom the scientific world, for some mysterious reason, has conspired to boost. Such instances perhaps illustrate the natural human tendency to resent the incomprehensible. Other cases of skepticism spring from the desire to preserve certain cherished beliefs. Thus the Fundamentalists reject modern biology and geology in the interests of certain religious dogmas.
On the whole, however, the general reaction of the lay mind to the teachings of science is one of uncritical credulity. We may summarize this aspect of the influence of science on the layman by saying that there is now a general tendency to regard the scientific man as the one trustworthy authority. From being the laughable preoccupation of a few eccentrics, science has become the one key to knowledge, the one source of truth, in the modern world.
IV
The impact of science on the popular mind has had the effect of increasing both credulity and skepticism. For a very large number of people all authority, except scientific authority, is discredited. But this, we may be confident, is due merely to the present lack of any general understanding of the limitations of science. Many of the scientific men themselves are now busy in defining these limitations for us. There are questions that science is incompetent to deal with, and beliefs may rightly be based on evidence which is not scientific evidence. The fact is that science deals with a public world. It is concerned, as far as possible, only with perceptions that all men possess, and it claims that its results are of a kind that can secure universal assent. But there also exists a private world. My toothache, my perception of beauty, my sense of communion with God, all belong to it. These are not perceptions that everybody shares, nor can universal assent be claimed for them. But they are not therefore necessarily illusions. Indeed, many of our most unquestionable convictions rest entirely on such private data.
An experience which belongs to the private world, whether it be the taste of tomatoes or the mystic vision, cannot be subjected to scientific investigation. Nevertheless, the distinction between private worlds and public worlds is not absolute. In the endeavor to rationalize our private experiences we may make statements, as by constructing religious dogmas, which refer to the public world. Such statements may conflict with scientific knowledge. Hence arises what is called the conflict between science and religion. On the other hand, it is easy to see that science is not as purely objective as it professes to be. The primary judgments on which science relies, such questions as to whether a pointer coincides with a certain mark on a scale, or as to whether there are a certain number of objects in a collection, certainly are judgments on which universal assent could conceivably be obtained. But scientific theories, and still more the meaning of scientific theories, are matters on which considerable diversity of opinion can, and does, exist. Some of the modern controversies about quantum theory and relativity theory, for example, suffice to show that, in these matters, æsthetic and philosophical predilections, resting on purely private perceptions, can play an active part. Even in pure mathematics, Henri Poincaré tells us, a proof which is satisfactory to one mathematician is not always satisfactory to another. The controversy between the vitalists and mechanists in biology also suggests, in its violence and inconclusiveness, that we are here dealing with purely private notions of what is reasonable. The public and the private worlds do, to some extent, merge into one another.
But although science is not all we know and all we need to know, it is true that, in the public world with which it deals, the dominion of science is supreme. Any rationalization of our private experiences that we effect must be consistent, with scientific knowledge. The scientific method of arriving at truth, in the regions to which it can be applied, has proved itself the best method that man has yet hit upon. Owing to its success, the scientific method has obtained immense prestige in the eyes of the layman. In spite of its prestige, however, the scientific method still remains very unpopular. The patient accumulation of all relevant evidence, the cautious framing of hypotheses, and the careful verification of them, are almost unknown in ordinary human pursuits — such as politics, for example. And any attempt to apply such methods is strongly resented.
The fact is that man is not yet able to apply the scientific method to matters with which his emotions are strongly engaged. This is a disability which afflicts scientific men as much as any other sort of men. The reactions of scientific men in the Great War were just as passionate and irrational as were those of any other ‘patriot.’ And in such largely emotional matters as politics and social reform we find scientific men scattered among the various groups in quite the ordinary statistical way. Outside their science, scientific men are not conspicuous for their detachment and fair-mindedness.
We must conclude, then, that, in spite of the universal respect paid to the scientific method, its roots do not yet lie very deep. It has flourished in science because most of the things with which science has hitherto been concerned do not noticeably involve our emotions. The precise speed of light, the melting point of sulphur, the size of the hydrogen atom, are not questions on which we instinctively feel impelled to take sides. Whatever the truth may turn out to be, we can view it with comparative indifference. It sometimes happens, of course, that science does touch on matters which concern our emotions. Our detachment, our docility in face of the facts, then instantly vanish. The Copernican theory which so shocked the mediævalists is a case in point. Another is provided by Darwin’s theory of natural selection. And a great deal of the opposition encountered by the psychological theories of our own day has a similar cause.
It is no mere accident that science has advanced farthest in those regions where we are most indifferent to its results. One reason for this is to be found in the very constitution of human nature. Emotional interest necessarily creates bias. Perhaps an intelligent fish would find most of the painfully won results of human psychology fairly obvious. But there is also the possibility that the more ‘human’ sciences are intrinsically more difficult than those which deal with inanimate nature. It may well be that the principles governing the behavior of living bodies and minds are more numerous and more elusive than those governing the behavior of sticks and stones. But, however this may be, the discovery of these principles is certainly greatly hindered by human nature itself.
An important element in this resistance is fear. It is unfortunately true that those scientific doctrines which have a ‘human interest’ are nearly always unpleasant. The theory of evolution, for example, was almost universally found to be much more depressing than the theory of special creation that it replaced. Even those who preached the theory preached also that the pursuit of truth required, above all things, stoical courage and endurance. Truth, judged by the samples that science had obtained of it, was not a joyful and liberating thing. It was obviously something to be dreaded, although it was still, of course, man’s first duty to pursue it. Science’s further adventures into matters of human interest do nothing to diminish this impression. The new psychologies, for instance, cannot be called exhilarating. Such a doctrine as that art is a form of anal-erotism cannot be said to enrich life. In these matters it seems to be true that whatever science touches it debases. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that further attempts to extend the scientific method arouse in many people feelings of resentment and fear.
V
Nevertheless, as we have said, the general attitude of the layman toward science is, at present, one of respect and credulity. But this attitude is changing somewhat. The very activity of science at the present day has a little lowered its authority in the eyes of the layman. The rapidity with which new theories are invented and discarded evokes something of the distrust with which we watch the vagaries of our more versatile politicians. The frequent popularizations of science, keeping the layman up to date, show him that science is a far more tentative, imaginative, adventurous thing than he had ever supposed. Now authority, to the popular mind, must before all things be consistent. It may be that these rapid changes in scientific theory testify to a steady growth toward some general and final statement. But, to know that, we should have to know the inner connections between the changes, and this is something the layman does not know. He does not realize that the changes are only changes within limits. The possible variations seem to him to be almost without limit, so that a statement to-day might conceivably be replaced by its ‘opposite’ to-morrow. It is not surprising, therefore, that a certain skepticism is beginning to leaven the general credulity toward scientific statements.
It is probable that this skepticism will grow. And a very important fact is that it applies to the best-established of the sciences — the exact sciences. It is precisely physics itself which has witnessed the most revolutionary changes in our generation, and it is these changes, above all, which have been brought to the attention of the public.
For the first time since Newton, the ‘exact’ sciences appear as not unshakable. This loss of rigidity applies still more, of course, to the biological sciences. Biological theories, like psychological theories, are even more obviously tentative and experimental than those of the material sciences.
We conclude, therefore, that the general attitude toward science is in a transition stage. Scientific authority still looms immense in the general mind, but it is not quite so unquestioned as it was. The very ingenuity and fertility of the scientific imagination have created a certain distrust — even among many of the men of science themselves. This skepticism is, by and large, a wholesome corrective of the uncritical credulity that has hitherto characterized the layman. That credulity has too often been exploited in the interest of mere fads and prejudices. If the present skepticism is the first stage toward a critical appreciation of scientific theories, it is to be welcomed. And the criticism, to be adequate, must take account not only of the tentative character of science, but also of its limitations. It must no longer be assumed that science has universal jurisdiction. The extravagant claims that have been made for science in the past are now seen, by the scientific men themselves, to have rested on a misunderstanding of the true nature of science.
Science gives us but a partial knowledge of reality. There is much, and of the greatest importance, that lies outside the scientific scheme. A great deal of confusion and misgiving has been produced in the past by the failure to realize this fact. In the new outlook that is preparing, this source of confusion will be done away with. We shall no longer be required to regard our religious experiences as illusion, art will be seen to have a significance greater than that of a mere amusement, and science will rank with these as yet another method by which man makes contact with reality.