Essays on the use and limit of the imagination in science

by John Tyndall

CONTENTS.

	PAGE
PROS AND CONS TOUCHING THE FIRST EDITION	[1]
SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION	[13]
SCIENTIFIC LIMIT OF THE IMAGINATION	[52]
EARLIER THOUGHTS	[66]

PROS AND CONS
TOUCHING THE FIRST EDITION.

From the TIMES, Sept. 19, 1870.

THE GLORY of a Natural Philosopher appears to depend less on the power of his imagination to explore minute recesses or immeasurable space than on the skill and patience with which, by observation and experiment, he assures us of the certainty of these invisible operations. Newton’s glory is founded, not on the sudden imagination by which he leapt ‘from a falling apple to a falling moon,’ but on that astonishing tenacity of investigation by which he reduced his guesses to moral certainties, and enabled us to witness a practical verification of his laws in every almanack we use. When the movements of the heavenly bodies have been discovered by this laborious process, the imagination is excellently employed in picturing to the mind’s eye what transcends the physical vision; and, perhaps, the labour of the investigation itself would be unendurable unless the attention could be relieved by the constant pictorial aid afforded by the imagination....

In a word, it seems to us worth consideration whether that use of the imagination in Natural Philosophy of which the Professor speaks needed any encouragement at the present day. The discoveries of science have been so astonishing, the new worlds they have opened to us are so vast, that there is, perhaps, more danger of our imagination being exercised too freely than of its not being exercised sufficiently upon them. No one will dispute the claim of the Professor to be one of the privileged spirits of whom he speaks, if there are any such, and he proceeds accordingly to exercise his imagination, not upon the little germ-cells, but upon that vast primordial nebulous envelope out of which, according to the opinion to which some philosophers incline, all the infinite complexity of the existing world has been developed. We are not privileged spirits, and we own ourselves not altogether able to follow him when he leads us into the imaginary realms of the original chaos. He confesses that Mr. Darwin ‘has drawn heavily upon time and adventurously upon matter.’ We ask ourselves again whether we are listening to one experimental philosopher describing the achievements of another experimental philosopher. We had been under the impression that Natural Philosophers drew no bills. We do not presume to say one word about the Evolution Hypothesis. We neither affirm nor deny that Professor Tyndall existed in a nebulous state an infinite number of centuries ago. We only venture to suggest that when the British Association amuse the public with these speculations they are illustrating, not the scientific use of the imagination, but the imaginative use of science.

From the SATURDAY REVIEW, Sept. 24, 1870.

Here, too, we question whether Sir William Thomson will be content with this definition of the process by which he has been guided to his most recent advance in molecular physics. In the splendid series of inductions verified step after step by rigorous experiment and observation, and kept in exactest continuity by the chain of mathematical evolution, is imagination the faculty to which are to be given the chief honours of this conquest of a new realm of physics? This would surely be to force upon us a new and arbitrary classification or analysis of the powers of the intellect. If we follow Professor Tyndall himself through the masterly train of reasoning whereby he leads us to the laws of reflection and transmission of light as the cause of the azure of the firmament, is what we admire the leap of imagination, or the firmly balanced and duly graduated tread of a mind trained in the discipline of logic, and careful to plant every step on the assured ground of fact or experience? It is simply a misnomer to apply the name of imagination to the process or the faculty to which this onward march into the realm of unexplored nature is really due. As well describe as a triumph of the imagination the connected and organized plan of the great strategist which has drawn round Paris a living cordon of 300,000 men.

From a Lecture addressed to Teachers at the South Kensington Museum, April 30, 1861, by J. TYNDALL.

Here, then, is an exhibition of power which we can call forth or cause to disappear at pleasure. We magnetize our strip of steel by drawing it along the pole of a magnet; we can demagnetize it, or reverse its magnetism, by properly drawing it along the same pole in the opposite direction. What, then, is the real nature of this wondrous change? What is it that takes place among the atoms of the steel when the substance is magnetized? The question leads us beyond the region of sense, and into that of imagination. This faculty, indeed, is the divining rod of the man of science. Not, however, an imagination which catches its creations from the air, but one informed and inspired by facts, capable of seizing firmly on a physical image as a principle, of discerning its consequences, and of devising means whereby these forecasts of thought may be brought to an experimental test. If such a principle be adequate to account for all the phenomena, if from an assumed cause the observed facts necessarily follow, we call the assumption a theory, and once possessing it, we can not only revive at pleasure facts already known, but we can predict others which we have never seen. Thus, then, in the prosecution of physical science, our powers of observation, memory, imagination, and inference, are all drawn upon. We observe facts and store them up; imagination broods upon these memories, and by the aid of reason tries to discern their interdependence. The theoretic principle flashes, or slowly dawns upon the mind, and then the deductive faculty interposes to carry out the principle to its logical consequences. A perfect theory gives dominion over natural facts; and even an assumption which can only partially stand the test of a comparison with facts, may be of eminent use in enabling us to connect and classify groups of phenomena.

From the GUARDIAN, Sept. 21, 1870.

He held some pieces of paper in his hand, but he rarely referred to them. Thoroughly possessed by his subject, his thoughts seemed to flow forth with perfect ease, fresh minted as they were in the most appropriate and perspicuous words. He led his hearers gently and almost unconsciously through the most perplexed mazes and subtlest passages of thought, keeping their ears enchained and their fancy charmed by the endless succession of apt metaphor; and yet, whenever he felt or fancied that their overstrained attention began to flag, he was able to turn aside into light and pleasant banter, and after this interlude of welcome refreshment, to resume again with renewed power the unbroken thread of his serious discourse. It was the manifest work of a master in his art, handling with ease and grace the weighty tools which long use had made familiar to his hand.

From the ENGLISH CHURCHMAN, Sept. 29, 1870.

What astonishes us beyond measure is, that a man of Professor Tyndall’s real ability and earnestness should sneer at the second verse of the Bible, and speak of it as a legend! Why, surely, he has here the very thing which he is searching—the true origin of life. When chaos ruled over the world, and the earth was void of life; it was the Divine Spirit that breathed over the lifeless mass, and light and life sprang into existence. Without stopping to point out the evidence of the highest Christian doctrine in this passage, we have at least the solution of the enigma of the origin of life, in the revealed truth that it was caused by the Creative Spirit.

From the RECORD, Sept. 23, 1870.

Discovery of Motives, No. I.—But why did Professor Tyndall make such an appeal to the imagination of his hearers? His imaginary picture of the occult operations of light was introduced as a plea for the wildness of such weaker brethren, as he calls Mr. Darwin, in speaking of his theory of natural selection, succeeded by his supplementary theory of pangenesis. It is objected to Mr. Darwin’s theories by Christian philosophers that these theories are essentially atheistic. That they are framed for the express purpose of blotting out of the page of nature some of the most marvellous evidences of design—of the most patent revelations of the book of nature, that there is an all-wise, all-mighty Creator, God. That these theories deprive man of all those prerogatives that raise him above the brute. That the facts of nature contradict them. The first theory of Mr. Darwin, that of natural selection, is an attempt to account for the formation of all animal and vegetable beings from an hypothetical germ.... Even this does not pall the imagination of Professor Tyndall. He accepts the theory of the avowed atheist Louis Buchner, in his ‘Force and Matter,’ that the theory of evolution requires us to imagine not only that all the structures, animal and vegetable, were once potentially present in the fire-mist of the nebulous theory, but also that all mental powers—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael—are potential in the fires of the sun.

Professor Tyndall appeals to believers in the Bible as God’s Word not to style such a theory wicked or impious. He says men can hold it, and manifest in their lives what he terms so-called Christian virtues. He says, ‘They who keep such questions open and will not tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon of their souls, have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God, as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God.’ These men then are theists, but what kind of a God does their free speculation require? The theists who are sneered at by Professor Tyndall, who believe in a God who has revealed his will and his mind to man, have far higher and more convincing proofs that He has so revealed Himself than Professor Tyndall can ever accumulate for his belief in the undulatory theory of light.

Professor Tyndall’s philosophy regards the universe as a huge mechanical, self-supporting, self-sustaining, self-evolving, material machine—untended by a loving Father’s sustaining and providential care. His God is the God of the Epicureans, who created and started the machine into motion and then left it for ever to itself. Such a philosophy, the child of unbridled pride of intellect, may appeal to the wildest imagination of corrupted human nature, but it has no sympathy with all the higher yearnings of the soul.

From the LANCET, Sept. 24, 1870.

Discovery of Motives, No II.—Now, Professor Tyndall’s object was to preach about germs, and he proceeded to accomplish it in somewhat the following manner. He first set forth that it was a wholesome use of the imagination to apply our knowledge of aërial sound-waves to the solution of the question—what is the cause of the phenomena of light? And he then proceeded to draw one of those charming word-pictures for which he is so famous, showing the rippling of the ethereal light-waves against molecules in the atmosphere, the greater proportionate reflection of the shorter wave of blue, and the consequent preponderance of blue rays in the light reflected to us from the sky, and of red and yellow rays in the light coming unreflected from the sun.... Now, the aim of all this was to seek and show that the air is filled by an infinite multitude of suspended particles, so minute that they do not produce darkness, and that these particles may be germs. Professor Tyndall does not say that they are germs, but, by the aid of a special disclaimer, he prevented his audience from forgetting that they might be. We should be very loth to accuse him of disingenuousness, but we are unable entirely to acquit him of special pleading. We feel that his lecture was a very skilful attempt to familiarise the public mind with the existence of atmospheric particles, and to lead up to and encourage, without absolutely expressing the idea that germs are particles, and that particles may be germs.

To the Editor of the RECORD.

SIR,—It is a grave error on your part to represent me as calling Mr. Darwin ‘one of the weaker brethren.’ Were I asked to name the highest representative of the stronger ones, I should probably name him. But in your article you link my name with that of a writer whom I do rank among the weaker brethren; weak through a defect common to him and his antagonists—the incompetence, namely, to look round a great question and see its bearings on all sides.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

JOHN TYNDALL.

ATHENÆUM CLUB, October 4.

From the PALL MALL GAZETTE, September 20, 1870.

Why does Professor Tyndall attribute to Goethe the ‘notion,’ as he calls it, that matter is ‘the living garment of God’? We are not aware that it is to be found in his works. In ‘Faust’ Goethe introduces the spirit of the earth, who describes his own operations as consisting in weaving into one vast fabric the ‘tumults of human life, the storm of actions,’ births and deaths, and the affairs of us mortals, and working thereout ‘a living garment for the Divinity.’ Whether the phrase be a piece of cant, or a piece of sublimity, it has no semblance of the meaning which the Professor attributes to it.

From the SPECTATOR, September 24, 1870.

Professor Tyndall concluded his lecture by a passage on the development theory, in which he contended that if our traditional view of matter had been Goethe’s view, that matter is ‘the living garment of God,’ instead of Young’s, who looked upon it as foreign to mind, and taking all its laws from outside itself, the development theory would not seem to us what we now mean by materialistic. The ‘Pall Mall’ falls severely on Professor Tyndall for misquoting Goethe, and shows that the passage in ‘Faust’ probably referred to, where the Erdgeist speaks of weaving a ‘living garment for the Divinity,’ did not refer to external nature at all. No doubt the special quotation was a little wide of the mark, but does the critic in the ‘Pall Mall’ doubt that Professor Tyndall was interpreting quite accurately Goethe’s conception, as elsewhere expressed with sufficient elaboration? If he does not, his criticism is a cavil. If he does, let him study Goethe more thoroughly—‘Gott und Welt,’ for example, of the proem to which a friend has sent us a faithful version to-day, which we print in another column. What can be stronger than this?—

Was wär’ ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse

Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse!

Ihm ziemt’s, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,

Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen.

A Translation of Goethe’s Proemium to ‘Gott und Welt.’

To Him who from eternity, self-stirred,

Himself hath made by His creative Word!

To him, supreme, who causeth Faith to be,

Trust, Hope, Love, Power, and endless Energy!

To Him, who, seek to name Him as we will,

Unknown within Himself abideth still!

Strain ear and eye, till sight and sense be dim;

Thou’lt find but faint similitudes of Him:

Yea, and thy spirit in her flight of flame

Still strives to gauge the symbol and the name:

Charmed and compelled thou climb’st from height to height,

And round thy path the world shines wondrous bright;

Time, Space, and Size, and Distance cease to be,

And every step is fresh infinity.

What were the God who sat outside to scan

The spheres that ’neath his finger circling ran?

God dwells within, and moves the world and moulds,

Himself and Nature in one form enfolds:

Thus all that lives in Him and breathes and is,

Shall ne’er His puissance, ne’er His spirit miss.

The soul of man, too, is an universe:

Whence follows it that race with race concurs

In naming all it knows of good and true

God,—yea, its own God; and with homage due

Surrenders to His sway both earth and heaven;

Fears Him, and loves, where place for love is given.

J. A. S.

From the SPECTATOR, September 24.

From the TIMES, October 3, 1870.

But the most serious obstacle of a public nature which can possibly impede the progress of science—an obstacle before which all others sink into absolute insignificance—is the reign of prejudice, or the unwillingness to adopt the teachings of science, and to accept her legitimate conclusions through certain preconceived opinions, the result of a faulty education or a vicious temperament. To this, indeed, we think the British Association cannot pay too much attention, and we were not a little gratified, in consequence, at the eloquent lecture on the use of the imagination in science delivered by Professor Tyndall. The importance of such a discourse at such a time to clear the atmosphere of the clouds of prejudice which a mistaken zeal has raised in the minds of a large class cannot be over-estimated. Since it is certain that religious intolerance and religious bigotry are the largest sources of prejudice, the removal of these ought to be a primary object of the association, and when the undertaking is made with the same spirit of reverence, the same earnestness of purpose, and philosophical acumen which distinguished Professor Tyndall’s discourse, it seems impossible to doubt that much benefit must ultimately result thereby to the cause of truth. The impression produced on our minds by that philosophical masterpiece will not be easily effaced. As we listened in that crowded hall with admiration to the thoughtful investigator who was unfolding to us the workings of a mind much more than ordinarily acute, we pictured to ourselves the effect which it was so well calculated to produce in the mind of the sceptic in science. We saw in imagination the victory of conscience and reason, the emancipation of a soul, the new birth of an intelligence. As the speaker welded one link to another of the long chain of ratiocination, his ardour rising with the progress of his argument, we thought that it had never been our good fortune to listen to so splendid a discourse. But the end was not yet. The grand appeal had still to be made. In a magnificent peroration Professor Tyndall concluded an argument of no common order—an argument not fitted, indeed, to assuage the terrors of a vicious imagination; an argument which may perchance have grated harshly on the sacerdotal ear; but an argument which elicited thunders of applause from an audience more than usually critical—with an appeal of unrivalled eloquence to abandon dogmatism for ever, and fairly bring every hypothesis before the bar of a disciplined reason. The place and the people were worthy of the man. In a vast hall whose name recalls the finest relics of the old English ballad were gathered together all that the most populous and intelligent shire of Britain could produce of talent and influence, while grouped around the presidential chair were many of the most brilliant ornaments of British science and the representatives of foreign philosophy. It may, indeed, be surmised that of the three thousand souls who listened to Professor Tyndall’s lay sermon there were few who entered into the discussion prepared to embrace his views. Yet we think that there were few also who left that hall at all events without a doubt that the search after truth which is the sole object of the investigation of nature is neither so prosaic nor so dangerous a quest as the false prophets and the Philistines would assert—that philosophy is not ‘harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose’—

But musical as is Apollo’s lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets,

Where no crude surfeit reigns.