Elements of metaphysics

by A. E. Taylor

The mechanical view of physical processes is thus an indispensable postulate of the various empirical sciences which seek to describe those processes by the aid of general formulæ. Hence the protests which are sometimes urged against the use of mechanical interpretations in descriptive science are really in spirit no more than the expression of a personal distaste for the whole business of scientific generalisation and description. If there are to be sciences of physical processes at all, these sciences must be mechanical, in the wider acceptation of the term. It does not, however, follow because the mechanical view of physical processes is a necessity for our empirical sciences, that this view is consequently ultimately true. As we have learned already, when we pass from the statement that the processes of the physical order may, for the purpose of description by general formulæ, and the invention of practical methods for their production, be treated as to all intents mechanical, to the very different assertion that the physical order really is rigidly mechanical, we have deserted empirical science for dogmatic Metaphysics, and our metaphysical dogma must stand or fall by its own ultimate coherency and intelligibility as a way of thinking about Reality. The usefulness of the mechanical interpretation for other purposes is no evidence whatever of its value for the special purpose of the metaphysician.[^[139]]

§ 6. Our previous discussion has already satisfied us that, as Metaphysics, the postulate of Uniformity upon which the mechanical view of the physical order rests, is unintelligible and therefore indefensible. But we may supplement the discussion by one or two reflections which throw into striking relief the inadequacy of that concept of the physical order as a huge self-acting machine which is so often offered us to-day as the last word of scientific thought. In the mechanical metaphysical theories two points always receive special emphasis. The physical order, according to the thorough-going exponents of the doctrine, is a mechanism which is (a) self-contained and self-acting, and (b) entirely devoid of internal purpose.

Now, in both these respects the supposed world-machine differs absolutely from the real machines upon analogy with which the mechanical theory is in the last resort based.[based.] Every real machine is, to begin with, the incarnation of the internal purpose of a sentient being. It is something which has been fashioned for the express object of attaining a certain result, and the more perfect its structure the greater is the impossibility of understanding the principle of construction without comprehension of the result it is devised to effect. Why the various parts have precisely the shape, size, strength, and other qualities they have, you can only tell when you know what is the work the maker of the machine intended it to do. In so far as this is not the case, and the structure of the machine can be explained, apart from its specific purpose, by consideration of the properties of the material, the patterns of construction consecrated by tradition, and so forth, it must be regarded as an imperfect realisation of its type. In a perfect machine the character and behaviour of every part would be absolutely determined by the demands made on that part by the purpose to be fulfilled by the working of the whole; our inability ever to produce such a perfect mechanical structure causes all our actual machines to be imperfect and inadequate representations of the ideal we have before us in their construction.

Thus a true machine, so far from being purposeless, is a typical embodiment of conscious purpose. It is true that the machine, once set going, will continue to work according to the lines embodied in its construction irrespective of the adequacy with which they effect the realisation of the maker’s purpose. A watch, once wound up, will continue to go, though the indication of the lapse of time may, under fresh circumstances, cease to meet the interests of its maker or owner; and again, if the construction of the watch was faulty, it will not properly execute the purpose for which it was made. The machine has in itself no power of fresh purposive adaptability by which to modify the purpose it reflects, or to remedy an initial defect in its execution. But this merely shows that the purpose exhibited in the machine’s construction originated outside the machine itself, and that the originator had not the power to carry out his purpose with complete consistency. It does not in the least detract from the essentially teleological and purposive character of the machine quà machine.

This brings us to our second point. Just as no true machine is purposeless, so no true machine is self-acting. Not only are all machines in the end the product of designing intelligence, but all machines are dependent upon external purposive intelligence for control. They require intelligence to set them going, and they require it equally, in one form or another, to regulate and supervise their working. However complicated a piece of machinery may be, however intricate its provisions for self-regulation, self-adjustment, self-feeding, and so forth, there is always, if you look carefully enough, a man somewhere to work it. The obvious character of this reflection has unfortunately not prevented metaphysicians from drawing strange inferences from their own neglect of it.

Closer reflection upon the true character of machinery would thus suggest a very different interpretation of the analogy between the uniformities of the physical order and the regular working of our machines from that adopted by the “mechanical” view of nature, as elaborated into a metaphysical doctrine. It would lead us to conceive of the apparently mechanical as playing everywhere the same part which it fulfils in our own system of social life. We should think of the mechanical as filling an indispensable but subordinate place in processes which, in their complete character, are essentially teleological and purposive. Teleological action obviously depends for its success upon two fundamental conditions. It requires the establishment of types of reaction which remain uniform so long as their maintenance satisfies the attainment of the end towards which they are directed, and at the same time the power of modifying those types of reaction from time to time so as to meet fresh situations encountered or created in the progressive attainment of that end. In our own individual physical life these two conditions are found as the power to form habits, and the power to initiate spontaneously fresh response to variation in the environment. In so far as our dominant interests can be best followed by the uniform repetition of one type of reaction, attention is diverted from the execution of the reaction which becomes habitual, semi-conscious, and, as we correctly say, “mechanical,” the attention being thus set free for the work of initiating the necessary fresh modifications of habitual action. Our various industrial and other machines are devices for facilitating this same division of labour. The machine, once properly constructed and set in action, executes the habitual reaction, leaving the attention of its supervisor free to introduce the requisite relatively novel variations of response according to new situations in the environment.

There is nothing to prevent our interpreting the mechanical uniformities exhibited by the physical order in terms of this analogy. We should then have to think of the “laws” or “uniformities” in physical nature as corresponding to the habitual modes of reaction of the sentient beings of whose inner life the physical order is phenomenal; these uniformities would thus be essentially teleological in their own nature, and would also stand in intimate interrelation with the spontaneous initiation of fresh responses to variations in the environment on the part of the same sentient beings. Habit and spontaneity would mutually imply each other in nature at large as they do in our own psychical life, and the “mechanical” would in both cases be simply the lower level to which teleological action approximates in proportion as attention ceases to be necessary to its execution.

This conception would harmonise admirably with the result of our previous inquiry into the kind of evidence by which the existence of uniform “laws of nature” is established. For it would be an inevitable consequence of those subjective limitations which compel us to deal in bulk with processes we are unable to follow in their individual detail, that our observation of the physical order should reveal the broad general types of habitual response to typical external conditions, while failing to detect the subtler modifications in those responses answering to special variations in those conditions. Just so the uniformities ascertained by the statistical study of human nature are simply the exhibition on a large scale of the leading habitual reactions of human beings upon typical external situations, as disentangled from the non-habitual spontaneous responses to fresh elements in the external situation with which they are inseparably united in any concrete life of individual intelligent purpose.

There seems no objection to this conception of “laws of nature” as being the formulæ descriptive of the habitual behaviour of a complex system of sentient beings, beyond that based on the allegation that these “laws” are absolute, exact, and without exception. We have seen already that physical science has no means of proving this allegation, and no need whatever to make it, the whole doctrine of “rigid,” “unvarying” conformity to law being a mere practical postulate falsely taken by a certain school of thinkers for an axiom. We have also seen that the notion of rigid unvarying law is fundamentally irreconcilable with the only intelligible interpretation we were able to give to the conception of the real existence of the physical order. Thus we have no reason to accept it as true, and the fullest ground for dismissing it as false. But for the unintelligent superstition with which the “laws of nature” are worshipped in certain quarters, it would indeed have been unnecessary to deal at such length and with such reiteration with so simple a matter.

One suggestion, already made in slightly different words, may be once more emphasised in conclusion. Even among human beings the relative prominence of fresh spontaneous adaptations and habitual reactions in the life of the individual fluctuates greatly with the different individuals. The “intelligence” of different men, as gauged by their power of fresh adaptive modification of established habits of reaction, ranges over a great variety of different values. If we could acquire the same kind of insight into the individual purposes of non-human agents that we have into those of our immediate fellows, we should presumably find an even wider range of differences in this respect. In principle we have no means of setting any definite limits to the range in either direction. We can conceive a degree of attentive control of reaction so complete that every reaction represents a fresh stage in the realisation of an underlying idea, so that intelligence is everything and habit nothing; and again, we can conceive a state of things in which mere habit is everything and intelligent spontaneity nothing. Somewhere between these ideal limits all cases of finite purposive intelligence must be comprised, and it would be easy to show that neither limit can be actually reached by finite intelligence, though there may be indefinite approximation to either.[^[140]]