Now what is the practical outcome of all these criticisms of the human mind? Does it follow that thought is futile1 and discussion vain? By no means. Rather these considerations lead us toward mutual2 understanding. They clear up the deadlocks3 that come from the hard and fast use of terms, they establish mutual charity as an intellectual necessity. The common way of speech and thought which the old system of logic5 has simply systematized, is too glib6 and too presumptuous7 of certainty. We must needs use language, but we must use it always with the thought in our minds of its unreal exactness, its actual habitual8 deflection from fact. All propositions are approximations to an elusive9 truth, and we employ them as the mathematician10 studies the circle by supposing it to be a polygon11 of a very great number of sides.
We must make use of terms and sometimes of provisional terms. But we must guard against such terms and the mental danger of excessive intension they carry with them. The child takes a stick and says it is a sword and does not forget, he takes a shadow under the bed and says it is a bear and he half forgets. The man takes a set of emotions and says it is a God, and he gets excited and propagandist and does forget; he is involved in disputes and confusions with the old gods of wood and stone, and presently he is making his God a Great White Throne and fitting him up with a mystical family.
Essentially12 we have to train our minds to think anew, if we are to think beyond the purposes for which the mind seems to have been evolved. We have to disabuse13 ourselves from the superstition14 of the binding15 nature of definitions and the exactness of logic. We have to cure ourselves of the natural tricks of common thought and argument. You know the way of it, how effective and foolish it is; the quotation16 of the exact statement of which every jot17 and tittle must be maintained, the challenge to be consistent, the deadlock4 between your terms and mine.
More and more as I grow older and more settled in my views am I bored by common argument, bored not because I am ceasing to be interested in the things argued about, but because I see more and more clearly the futility18 of the methods pursued.
How then are we to think and argue and what truth may we attain19? Is not the method of the scientific investigator20 a valid21 one, and is there not truth to the world of fact in scientific laws? Decidedly there is. And the continual revision and testing against fact that these laws get is constantly approximating them more and more nearly to a trustworthy statement of fact. Nevertheless they are never true in that dogmatic degree in which they seem true to the unphilosophical student of science. Accepting as I do the validity of nearly all the general propositions of modern science, I have constantly to bear in mind that about them too clings the error of excessive claims to precision.
The man trained solely22 in science falls easily into a superstitious23 attitude; he is overdone24 with classification. He believes in the possibility of exact knowledge everywhere. What is not exact he declares is not knowledge. He believes in specialists and experts in all fields.
I dispute this universal range of possible scientific precision. There is, I allege25, a not too clearly recognised order in the sciences which forms the gist26 of my case against this scientific pretension27. There is a gradation in the importance of the individual instance as one passes from mechanics and physics and chemistry through the biological sciences to economics and sociology, a gradation whose correlations28 and implications have not yet received adequate recognition, and which does profoundly affect the method of study and research in each science.
Let me repeat in slightly altered terms some of the points raised in the preceding sections. I have doubted and denied that there are identically similar objective experiences; I consider all objective beings as individual and unique. It is now understood that conceivably only in the subjective29 world, and in theory and the imagination, do we deal with identically similar units, and with absolutely commensurable quantities. In the real world it is reasonable to suppose we deal at most with PRACTICALLY similar units and PRACTICALLY commensurable quantities. But there is a strong bias30, a sort of labour-saving bias, in the normal human mind, to ignore this, and not only to speak but to think of a thousand bricks or a thousand sheep or a thousand Chinamen as though they were all absolutely true to sample. If it is brought before a thinker for a moment that in any special case this is not so, he slips back to the old attitude as soon as his attention is withdrawn31. This type of error has, for instance, caught many of the race of chemists, and ATOMS and IONS and so forth32 of the same species are tacitly assumed to be similar to one another.
Be it noted33 that, so far as the practical results of chemistry and physics go, it scarcely matters which assumption we adopt, the number of units is so great, the individual difference so drowned and lost. For purposes of enquiry and discussion the incorrect one is infinitely34 more convenient.
But this ceases to be true directly we emerge from the region of chemistry and physics. In the biological sciences of the eighteenth century, common-sense struggled hard to ignore individuality in shells and plants and animals. There was an attempt to eliminate the more conspicuous35 departures as abnormalities, as sports, nature’s weak moments; and it was only with the establishment of Darwin’s great generalizations36 that the hard and fast classificatory system broke down and individuality came to its own. Yet there had always been a clearly felt difference between the conclusions of the biological sciences and those dealing38 with lifeless substance, in the relative vagueness, the insubordinate looseness and inaccuracy of the former. The naturalist39 accumulated facts and multiplied names, but he did not go triumphantly40 from generalization37 to generalization after the fashion of the chemist or physicist41. It is easy to see, therefore, how it came about that the inorganic42 sciences were regarded as the true scientific bed-rock. It was scarcely suspected that the biological sciences might perhaps after all be TRUER than the experimental, in spite of the difference in practical value in favour of the latter. It was, and is by the great majority of people to this day, supposed to be the latter that are invincibly43 true; and the former are regarded as a more complex set of problems merely, with obliquities and refractions that presently will be explained away. Comte and Herbert Spencer certainly seem to me to have taken that much for granted. Herbert Spencer no doubt talked of the unknown and unknowable, but not in this sense as an element of inexactness running through all things. He thought, it seems to me, of the unknown as the indefinable Beyond of an immediate44 world that might be quite clearly and definitely known.
There is a growing body of people which is beginning to hold the converse45 view — that counting, classification, measurement, the whole fabric46 of mathematics, is subjective and untrue to the world of fact, and that the uniqueness of individuals is the objective truth. As the number of units taken diminishes, the amount of variety and inexactness of generalization increases, because individuality tells for more and more. Could you take men by the thousand billion, you could generalize about them as you do about atoms; could you take atoms singly, it may be that you would find them as individual as your aunts and cousins. That concisely47 is the minority belief, and my belief.
Now what is called the scientific method in the physical sciences rests upon the ignoring of individualities; and like many mathematical conventions, its great practical convenience is no proof whatever of its final truth. Let me admit the enormous value, the wonder of its results in mechanics, in all the physical sciences, in chemistry, even in physiology,— but what is its value beyond that? Is the scientific method of value in biology? The great advances made by Darwin and his school in biology were not made, it must be remembered, by the scientific method, as it is generally conceived, at all. His was historical research. He conducted research into pre-documentary history. He collected information along the lines indicated by certain interrogations; and the bulk of his work was the digesting and critical analysis of that. For documents and monuments he had fossils and anatomical structures and germinating48 eggs too innocent to lie. But, on the other hand, he had to correspond with breeders and travellers of various sorts; classes entirely49 analogous50, from the point of view of evidence, to the writers of history and memoirs51. I question profoundly whether the word “science,” in current usage anyhow, ever means such patient disentanglement as Darwin pursued. It means the attainment52 of something positive and emphatic53 in the way of a conclusion, based on amply repeated experiments capable of infinite repetition, “proved,” as they say, “up to the hilt.”
It would be of course possible to dispute whether the word “science” should convey this quality of certitude, but to most people it certainly does at the present time. So far as the movements of comets and electric trams go, there is no doubt practically cock-sure science; and Comte and Herbert Spencer seem to me to have believed that cock-sure could be extended to every conceivable finite thing. The fact that Herbert Spencer called a certain doctrine54 Individualism reflects nothing on the non-individualizing quality of his primary assumptions and of his mental texture55. He believed that individuality (heterogeneity) was and is an evolutionary56 product from an original homogeneity, begotten57 by folding and multiplying and dividing and twisting it, and still fundamentally IT. It seems to me that the general usage is entirely for the limitation of the word “science” to knowledge and the search after knowledge of a high degree of precision. And not simply the general usage; “Science is measurement,” Science is “organized commonsense,” proud in fact of its essential error, scornful of any metaphysical analysis of its terms.
Now my contention58 is that we can arrange the fields of human thought and interest about the world of fact in a sort of scale. At one end the number of units is infinite and the methods exact, at the other we have the human subjects in which there is no exactitude. The science of society stands at the extreme end of the scale from the molecular59 sciences. In these latter there is an infinitude of units; in sociology, as Comte perceived, there is only one unit. It is true that Herbert Spencer, in order to get classification somehow, did, as Professor Durkheim has pointed60 out, separate human society into societies, and made believe they competed one with another and died and reproduced just like animals, and that economists61 following List have for the purposes of fiscal62 controversy63 discovered economic types; but this is a transparent64 device, and one is surprised to find thoughtful and reputable writers off their guard against such bad analogy. But indeed it is impossible to isolate65 complete communities of men, or to trace any but rude general resemblances between group and group. These alleged66 units have as much individuality as pieces of cloud; they come, they go, they fuse and separate. And we are forced to conclude that not only is the method of observation, experiment, and verification left far away down the scale, but that the method of classification under types, which has served so useful a purpose in the middle group of subjects, the subjects involving numerous but a finite number of units, has also to be abandoned in social science. We cannot put Humanity into a museum or dry it for examination; our one single still living specimen67 is all history, all anthropology68, and the fluctuating world of men. There is no satisfactory means of dividing it, and nothing else in the real world with which to compare it. We have only the remotest ideas of its “life-cycle” and a few relics69 of its origin and dreams of its destiny.
This denial of scientific precision is true of all questions of general human relations and attitude. And in regard to all these matters affecting our personal motives70, our self-control and our devotions, it is much truer.
From this it is an easy step to the statement that so far as the clear-cut confident sort of knowledge goes, the sort of knowledge one gets from a time-table or a text-book of chemistry, or seeks from a witness in a police court, I am, in relation to religious and moral questions an agnostic. I do not think any general propositions partaking largely of the nature of fact can be known about these things. There is nothing possessing the general validity of fact to be stated or known.
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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deadlocks
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| 僵局( deadlock的名词复数 ) | |
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deadlock
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| n.僵局，僵持 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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glib
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| adj.圆滑的，油嘴滑舌的 | |
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presumptuous
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| adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的 | |
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habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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mathematician
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| n.数学家 | |
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polygon
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| n.多边形；多角形 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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disabuse
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| v.解惑；矫正 | |
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superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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jot
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| n.少量；vi.草草记下；vt.匆匆写下 | |
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futility
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| n.无用 | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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investigator
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| n.研究者，调查者，审查者 | |
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valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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overdone
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| v.做得过分( overdo的过去分词 )；太夸张；把…煮得太久；（工作等）过度 | |
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allege
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| vt.宣称，申述，主张，断言 | |
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gist
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| n.要旨；梗概 | |
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pretension
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| n.要求；自命，自称；自负 | |
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correlations
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| 相互的关系( correlation的名词复数 ) | |
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subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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generalizations
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| 一般化( generalization的名词复数 )； 普通化； 归纳； 概论 | |
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generalization
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| n.普遍性，一般性，概括 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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naturalist
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| n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者) | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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physicist
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| n.物理学家，研究物理学的人 | |
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inorganic
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| adj.无生物的；无机的 | |
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invincibly
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| adv.难战胜地，无敌地 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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concisely
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| adv.简明地 | |
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germinating
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| n.& adj.发芽（的）v.（使）发芽( germinate的现在分词 ) | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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attainment
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| n.达到，到达；［常pl.］成就，造诣 | |
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emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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begotten
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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molecular
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| adj.分子的；克分子的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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economists
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| n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 ) | |
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fiscal
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| adj.财政的，会计的，国库的，国库岁入的 | |
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controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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anthropology
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| n.人类学 | |
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relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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