Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays

by Edward Carpenter

Nature is an infinitude, and can at no point be circumscribed by the human intellect. Nor obviously is there any sense in taking one little portion of Nature and isolating it from the rest, and then describing it exhaustively as if it really were so isolated. A thousand mechanicians will agree, as I have said, in their description of a machine, because in fact they will agree to view the machine just in the one aspect of its particular action; but ask a thousand people to describe one and the same face—or, better still, get a thousand portrait-painters, skilled in their art, to paint portraits of the same face—and you know perfectly well that all the likenesses will be different. And why will they be different? Simply because every face, however rude, has infinite sides, infinite aspects, and each painter selects what he paints from his own point of view. And the same is true of every object and process in Nature.

Then if these things are true (you ask again) how is it that scientific men do arrive at definite conclusions, and do agree with each other so far as they do?

It is, and obviously must be, by the method of isolation; by the method of selecting certain aspects of the problems presented to them, and ignoring others. For since all the relations of any phenomenon of Nature cannot possibly be compassed, the only way must be to ignore some and concentrate attention on others; and when there is a kind of tacit agreement as to which aspects shall be passed over and which considered, there is naturally an agreement in the results. Thus by this method, waiving all other aspects of the problem, the Eye may be described and defined as an optical instrument, the Heart as a common Pump, and the Solar System as a neat illustration of certain mechanical laws discovered by Galileo and Newton.

On the subject of the Solar System and Astronomy I will dwell for a few moments, as here—in this great example of the perfection of Modern Science—we have again a case apparently most adverse to my contention. The generalisations by which Newton established the nature of the planetary orbits has been a wonder to succeeding generations; the positions of the planets can be foretold, eclipses can be calculated with amazing accuracy. Yet every tyro in Mathematics knows that the equations which give these results can only be solved by what is called "neglecting small quantities"—that is, the problems cannot be solved in their entirety, but by leaving out certain terms and elements, which do not appear important, a solution can be approached. And naturally it has been an important point to show that these small quantities may be safely neglected. In the case, for instance, of the orbits of the planets round the sun, and of the moon round the earth, it was for a long time taken as proved that the small variations in the shape and position of each elliptic orbit would never be accompanied by any permanent increase or diminution in its size—that is, that the mean distances of the planets from the sun, and of the moon from the earth, would always remain within certain limits. Of late years however Professor George Darwin, taking up one of these poor little neglected quantities in the theory of the moon, found that it indicated after all very vast and very permanent, though of course very slow, changes in her mean distance from the earth; so that now it appears probable that the Moon's true orbit, instead of being a limited ellipse, is a continually though gradually enlarging Spiral, which may some day carry the Moon to a great distance from the earth. If an eclipse were calculated for twenty years in advance on the Elliptic theory or the Spiral theory, it would probably—so slow would be the divergence—make no perceptible difference; but in a hundred centuries the two theories would lead to results utterly different.

Thus the certitude of Astronomy as a Science arises largely from the fact that our times are so brief compared with Celestial periods. The proper periods of Celestial changes are to be reckoned by thousands, perhaps millions, of years; but we, ignoring that aspect of the problem, fix our observations on one little point of time, and are quite satisfied with the result!

As another illustration of my meaning, consider the Fixed Stars, so-called. These stars in their groups and clusters, which we know so well by sight, have remained apparently in the very same, or nearly the same, relative positions during all the 2,000 or 3,000 years that we have any record of the shapes of the Constellations. Yet now by minute telescopic and spectroscopic examination we know that they are moving, and have been moving all the time, in various differing directions with great velocities, amounting to miles per second. Nevertheless, so great are the spaces concerned, so great the times, that all this long period has not sufficed to bring them into any greatly changed attitude with regard to each other! What would you think of an intelligent foreigner who, coming to England to study the game of cricket, remained on the cricket field for a quarter of a minute—during which time the players would have hardly changed their positions—and having noted a few points, went away and wrote a volume on the laws of the game? And what are we to think of poor little Man who, having noted the stars for a few centuries, is so sure that he understands their movements, and that he is versed in all the "ordinances of heaven."

Thus it would appear that every Nature-problem is so enormously complex that it can only be got at by what we have called the Method of Ignorance. Let us take a practical Science problem like that of Vaccination. The question here, put in its simplest terms, seems to be, Whether Vaccination, with calf or human lymph, prevents or alleviates Smallpox; and if it does, whether it does so without engendering other evils at least as great. At first sight this may appear to you a very simple question, and easy to solve; but the moment you come to think about it, you see its extreme complexity. In the first place, it is obvious that in a question like this, individual cases afford no test. It is obvious that the fact that A. is vaccinated and has not taken small-pox proves nothing, for there is nothing to show that he would have taken it if he had not been vaccinated. And when you have got people vaccinated by the hundred and the thousand, you still are not certain; for these people may belong to a certain class, or a certain locality, or may have certain habits and conditions of life, which may account for their comparative immunity, and these causes must be eliminated before any definite conclusion can be reached. Thus it is not till the great mass of the population is vaccinated that we can expect reliable statistics. But the introduction of a practice of this kind on so great a scale necessarily takes a long period of years, and meanwhile changes are taking place in the habits of the people, Sanitation is being improved, customs of Diet are altering, possibly (as so often happens in the history of an epidemic) the disease, having run its course, is beginning spontaneously to decline. And thus another series of possible causes has to be discussed.

Then, supposing the question, notwithstanding all these difficulties, to be so far settled in favour of the present system—there still arises that whole other series of difficulties with regard to the possibility of the spread of other diseases by the practice, and with regard to the extent of such spread, before we can arrive at any finale. This series of questions is almost as complex as the other; and it includes that great element of uncertainty—the question what interval of time may elapse between inoculation with a disease and its actual appearance. For if in several cases children break out with erysipelas immediately after vaccination, of course there is a certain presumption that vaccination has been the cause; but if the erysipelas only appears some years after, its connection with the operation may, though real, be impossible to trace.

The matter standing thus, it seems to us almost a mystery how it was that the medical authorities of the early days of Jennerism were so cocksure of their conclusions—until we remember that in arriving at those conclusions they practically ignored all these other points that I have mentioned, like changes of Sanitation, spontaneous decline of Small-pox, the spread of other diseases, etc., and simply limited themselves to one small aspect of the problem. But now, after this interval of time, when the neglected facts and aspects have meanwhile forced themselves on our attention, how remarkable is the change of attitude as evidenced by the finding of the late Royal Commission! (1896).

From all this do not understand me to deride Science—for I have no intention of doing that; on the contrary, I think the debt we owe to modern investigation quite incalculable; but I only wish to warn you how complex all these problems are, how impossible that notion of settling even one of them by a cut-and-dried intellectual formula.