Now having created these concepts "foxhound," "greyhound," and a lot of other similar ones, I find that they in their turn have a few attributes in common and thus give rise to a new concept "dog." Of course this "dog" is more of an abstraction than ever, the concept of a concept. In fact the peculiarity of this whole process is that, as sometimes stated, the broader the generalisation becomes the less is its depth; or in other words and obviously, that as the number of objects compared increases, the number of attributes common to them all decreases. Ultimately as we saw at the beginning, when a sufficient number of objects are taken in, the concept ("dog" or whatever it may be) fades away and ceases to have any meaning. This therefore is the dilemma of Science and indeed of all human knowledge, that in carrying out the process which is peculiar to it, it necessarily leaves the dry ground of reality for the watery region of abstractions, which abstractions become ever more tenuous and ungraspable the farther it goes, and ultimately fade into mere ghosts. Nevertheless the process is a quite necessary one, for only by it can the mind deal with things.
To dwell for a moment over this last point: it is clear that every object has relation to every other object in the world—exists in fact only in virtue of such relation to other objects; it has therefore an infinite number of attributes. The mind consequently is powerless to deal with such object—it cannot by any possibility think it. In order to deal with it, the mind is forced to single out a few of its attributes (the method of ignorance or abstraction already alluded to)—that is a few of its relations to other objects, and to think them first. The others it will think afterwards—all in good time. In thus stripping or abstracting the great mass of its attributes from our object, and leaving only a few, which it combines into a concept, the mind practically abandons the real article and takes up with a shadow; but in return for this it gets something which it can handle, which is light to carry about, and which, like paper-money, for the time and under certain conditions does really represent value. The only danger is lest it—the mind—carried away by the extensive applicability of the partial concept which it has thus formed, should credit it with an actual value—should project it on the background of the external world and ascribe to it that reality which belongs only to objects themselves, i.e., to things embodying an infinite range of attributes.
The peculiar method of Science is now clear to us, and can be abundantly illustrated from modern results. Our experience consists in sensations, we feel the weight of heavy bodies, we see them fall when let go, we have sensations of heat and cold, light and darkness, and so forth. But these sensations are more or less local and variable from man to man, and we naturally seek to find some common measure of them, by which we can talk about and describe them exactly, and independently of the peculiarities of individual observers. Thus we seek to find some common phenomenon which underlies (as we say) the sensations of heat and cold, or of light and darkness, or something which explains (i.e., is always present in) the case of falling bodies—and to do this we adopt the method of generalisation above described, i.e., we observe a great number of individual cases and then see what qualities or attributes they have in common. So far good. But it is just here that the fallacy of the ordinary scientific procedure comes in; for, forgetting that these common qualities are mere abstractions from the real phenomena we credit them with a real existence, and regard the actual phenomena as secondary results, "effects" or what-not of these "causes." This in plain language is putting the cart before the horse—or rather the shadow before the man. Thus finding that a vast number of variously shaped and coloured bodies tend to fall towards the earth, we erect this common attribute of falling into an independent existence which we call "attraction" or "gravitation"—and ultimately posit a universal gravitation acting on all bodies in Nature!—or finding that a number of different substances, such as water, air, wood, etc., convey to us the sensation we call sound, and that in all these cases the common element is vibration, we detach the attribute vibration, credit it with a separate existence, and speak of it as the cause of sound. But though we may thus think of the shadow as separate from the man, the shadow cannot be separate from the man; and though we may try to think of the falling or the vibration as separate from the wood or the stone, such falling and vibration cannot exist apart from these and other such materials, and the effort to speak of it as so existing ends in mere nonsense. More strange still is the fatuity, when, as in the case of the undulatory Theory of light or the Atomic theory of physics, the concepts thus erected into actualities are composed of purely imaginary attributes—of which no one has had any experience—an undulatory ether in the one case, a hard and perfectly elastic atom in the other. The total result is of course—just what we see—Science landing itself in pure absurdities in every direction. Beginning by detaching the attribute of falling from the bodies that fall—beginning that is by an abstraction, which of course is also a falsity—it generalises and generalises this abstraction till at last it reaches a perfectly generalised absurdity and thing without any meaning—the law of gravitation.[23] The statement that "every particle in the universe attracts every other particle with a force proportional to the mass of the attracting particle and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two" is devoid of meaning—the human mind can give no definite meanings to the words "mass," "attract," and "force," which do not overlap and stultify each other. The law in every way baffles intelligence. Newton, who invented it, declared that no philosophic mind would suppose that bodies could thus act on one another "without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action might be conveyed;" scientific men to-day are fain to see that a material mediation of this kind would only make the law still more remote from our comprehension than it already is, while, on the other hand, an immaterial mediation or a fourth-dimensional mediation, such as some propose, would simply remove the problem out of the regions of scientific analysis.[24] Again, the form of the law is declared to be the inverse square of the distance; but this is the law by the nature of space itself of any perfect radiation, and if true of gravitation involves the conclusion that that radiation of force (whatever its nature may be) takes place without loss or dissipation of any kind. This would make gravitation absolutely unique among phenomena. More than this, its propagation is supposed to be instantaneous over the most enormous distances of space, and to take place always unhindered and unretarded, whatever be the number or the nature of the bodies between! What can be more clear than that the law is simply metaphysical—a projection into a monstrous universality and abstraction, of partially understood phenomena in a particular region of observation—a Brocken-shadow on the background of Nature of the observer's own momentary attitude of thought?
Again, the undulatory theory of Light. Studying the phenomena of a vast number of coloured and bright bodies, Science finds that it can think about these phenomena—can generalise and tie them into bundles best by assuming that the bodies are all in a state of vibration; a vibration so minute that (unlike the vibrations connected with Sound) it cannot be directly perceived. So far good. There is no harm in the assumption of vibration, as long as it is understood to be a mere assumption for a temporary convenience of thought. But now Science goes farther than this, and not only supposes a common attribute to all visible bodies, but credits this common attribute with a real existence independent of the visible bodies in which it was supposed to inhere—and makes this the cause of their visibility! Obviously now a common and universal medium is required for this common and universal assumed vibration (just as Newton required a medium for his universal "falling")—and so, hey presto! we have the Undulatory Ether. And having got it we find that to fulfil our requirements it must have a pressure of 17 million million pounds on the square inch, and yet be so rare and tenuous as not to hinder the lightest breath of air; that while it is thus rare enough to surpass all our powers of direct scrutiny, its vibrations must yet be capable of agitating and breaking up the solidest bodies; that it must pass freely through some dense and close structures like glass, and yet be excluded by some light and porous, like cork, and so on and on! In fact we find that it is unthinkable. Against this adamantine, impalpable Ether, as against this instantaneous, untranslatable gravitation, Science bangs its devoted head in vain. Having created these absurdities by the method of "personification of abstractions"[25] or the "reification of concepts,"[26] it seriously and in all good faith tries to understand them; having dressed up its own Mumbo Jumbo (which it once jeered at religion for doing) it piously shuts its eyes and endeavours to believe in it.
The Atomic Theory affords a good example of the "method of ignorance." When we try to think about material objects generally—to generalise about them—that is, to find some attribute or attributes common to them, we are at first puzzled. They present such an immense variety. But after a time, by dint of stripping off or abstracting all such attributes or qualities as we think we perceive in one body and not in another—as for example, redness, blueness, warmth, saltness, life, intelligence, or what not—we find an attribute left, namely resistance to touch, which is common to all material bodies. This quality in the body we call "mass," and since it is only known by motion, mass and motion become correlative attributes which we find useful to class bodies by, not because they represent the various bodies particularly well, but because they are found in all bodies; just as you might class people by their boots—not because boots are a very valuable method of classification, but simply because every one wears boots of one kind or another. So far there is no great harm done. But now having by the method of ignorance thought away all the qualities of bodies, except the two correlatives of mass and motion, we set about to explain the phenomena of Nature generally by these two "thinks" that are left. We credit these "thinks" (mass and motion) with an independent existence and proceed to derive the rest of phenomena from them. The proceeding of course is absurd, and ends by exposing its own absurdity. Thinking of mass and motion as existing in the various bodies apart from colour, smell, and so forth—which of course is not the case—we combine the two attributes into one concept, the atom, which we thus assume to exist in all bodies. The atom has neither colour, smell, warmth, taste, life or intelligence; it has only mass and motion; for it came by the method of divesting our thought of everything but mass and motion. It is a projection of a "think" upon the background of nature. And it is an absurdity. No such thing exists in all the wide universe as mass and motion divested from colour, smell, warmth, life and intelligence. The atom is unthinkable. It is perfectly hard and it is perfectly elastic—which is the same as saying that it bends and it doesn't bend at the same time; it has form, and it hasn't form; it has affinities and yet is perfectly indifferent. To justify to men the ways of their Mumbo Jumbo has sorely exercised the votaries of the Atom. One philosopher says that it is mere matter, passive, exercising no force but resistance; another says that it is a centre of force, without matter; a third suggests that it is not itself matter, but only a vortex in other matter! All agree that it is not an object of sense, and there remains no conclusion but that it is nonsense![27]
And so on in all directions. Human thought flying off at its tangents from Nature lands itself in infinite nothings afar off, poor ghostly skeletons and abstractions from Nature—which indeed is all right, for human thought as yet can only see ghosts and not realities; but let there be no mistake, let these ghosts not be mistaken for realities—for they are not even compatible with each other. The Atom that suits the physicist does not suit the chemist. The Ether that does for the vehicle of Light will not do for the vehicle of universal Gravitation.
It would be hardly worth while entering into these criticisms, were it not evident that Science in modern times, either tacitly or explicitly, has been seeking, as I said at the beginning, to enounce facts independent of Man, the observer. Seeing that the ordinary statements of daily life are obviously inexact and relative to the observer—charged with human sensation in fact—Science has naturally tried to produce something which should be exact and independent of human sensation; but here it has of course condemned itself beforehand to failure; for no statement of isolated phenomena or groups of phenomena can be exact except by the method of ignorance aforesaid, and no statement obviously can be really independent of human sensation. When a man says It is cold, his statement, it must be confessed, is deplorably human and vague. It—what is that? Is—do you mean is? or do you mean feels, appears? Cold—in what sense? Cold to yourself, or to other people, or to polar bears, or by the thermometer? And so on. Science therefore steps in with an air of authority and sets him right. It says the temperature is 30° Fahrenheit, as if to settle the matter. But does this really settle the matter? Temperature—who knows what that is? What is the scientific definition of it? I find (Clerk-Maxwell's Theory of Heat, p. 2.) "the temperature of a body is a quantity which indicates how hot or how cold the body is." This sounds very much like saying, "the colour of a body is a quantity which indicates how blue, red, or yellow the body is." It does not bring us much farther on our way. But in the next paragraph Maxwell shows the object of his definition (which of course is only preliminary) by saying, "By the use, therefore, of the word temperature, we fix in our minds the conviction that it is possible not only to feel, but to measure, how hot a body is." That is to say he clearly maintains that it is possible to find an absolute standard of hotness or coldness—or rather of the unknown thing called temperature—outside of ourselves and independent of human sensation. When the man said he was cold he was probably just describing his own sensations, but here Science indicates that it is in search of something which has an independent existence of its own, and which therefore when found we can measure exactly and once for all. What then is that thing? What is temperature? say, what is it?
We cudgel our brains in vain. Perhaps the remainder of the sentence will help us. "The temperature is 30° Fahrenheit." "The unknown thing is thirty degrees." What then is a degree? That is the next question. When the Theory of Heat went out from sensation and left it behind, one of its first landing places was in the expansion of liquids—as in thermometer tubes. Here for some time was thought to be a satisfactory register of "temperature." But before long it became apparent that the degree—Fahrenheit, Réaumur, or what-not—was an entirely arbitrary thing, also that it was not the same[28] thing at one end of the scale as the other, and finally that the scale itself had no starting point! This was awkward, so a move was made to the air thermometer, and there was some talk about an absolute zero and absolute temperatures; it was thought that the Unknown thing showed itself most clearly and simply in the expansion of air and other gases, and that the "degree" might fairly be measured in terms of this expansion. But in a little time this kind of thermometer—chiefly because no gas turned out to be "theoretically perfect"—broke down, absolute zero and all, and another step had to be made—namely, to the dynamical theory. It was announced that the Unknown thing might be measured in terms of mechanical energy, and Joule at Manchester proclaimed that the work done by any quantity of water falling there a distance of 772 feet is capable of raising that water one degree Fahrenheit.[29] Here seemed something definite. To measure temperature by mass and velocity, to measure a degree by the flight of a stone, or the heat in the human body by the fall of a factory chimney—if rather roundabout and elusive of the main question—seemed at any rate promising of exact results! Unfortunately the difficulty was to pass from the theory to its application. The complicated nature of the problem, the "imperfection" of the gases and other bodies under consideration, the latent and specific heats to be allowed for, the elusive nature of heat in experiment, and the variable value of the degree itself—all render the conclusions on this subject most precarious; and the general equations connecting the Fahrenheit or other temperatures with a thermo-dynamic scale—while they become so unwieldy as to be practically useless—are themselves after all only approximate.
Finally, to give a last form to the mechanical theory of heat, the conception of flying atoms or molecules was introduced, and a number of neat generalisations were deduced from dynamical considerations. Of course it was inevitable, having once started with a mechanical theory, that one should arrive at the Atom some time or other—and (from what has already been said) it was also inevitable that the result should be unsatisfactory. It is sufficient to say that the molecular theory of heat is not in accordance with facts. Such things as the law of Charles and the law of Boyle, which according to it should be strictly accurate and of general application, are known to be true only over a most limited range. This failure of the theory may be said to arise partly from its being pursued by the statistical method; but if, on the other hand, we were to try and follow out the individual movement of each molecule we should be landed in a problem far exceeding in complexity the wildest flights of Astronomy, and should have exchanged for the original difficulty about "temperature" a difficulty far greater.