Herbert Spencer

by J. Arthur Thomson

In his First Principles Spencer wrote: "The task before us is that of exhibiting the phenomena of Evolution in synthetic order. Setting out from an established ultimate principle [the Persistence of Force] it has to be shown that the course of transformation among all kinds of existences cannot but be that which we have seen it to be." [This refers to the formula: Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.] "It has to be shown that the redistribution of matter and motion must everywhere take place in those ways and produce those traits, which celestial bodies, organisms, societies alike display. And it has to be shown that this universality of process results from the same necessity which determines each simplest movement around us, down to the accelerated fall of a stone or the recurrent beat of a harp string. In other words, the phenomena of Evolution have to be deduced from the Persistence of Force. As before said, 'to this an ultimate analysis brings us down; and on this a rational synthesis must build up.'" And again he wrote: "The interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force, is nothing more than the reduction of our complex symbols of thought to the simplest symbols."

These were brave words, and if we understand them aright it is, to say the least, surprising to be told when we come to the life of organisms that "the processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible as results of any physical actions known to us."

On the first page of the Principles of Biology we read: "The properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by combination, are not destroyed in reality. It follows from the persistence of force, that the properties of a compound are resultants of the properties of its components—resultants in which the properties of the components are severally in full action, though mutually obscured." But on p. 122 it is written: "We find it impossible to conceive Life as emerging from the co-operation of the components."

In the frankest possible way Spencer admitted that his definition of Life did not cover the facts, that it did not recognise the essential or dynamic element, that "Life in its essence cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms." But if so, it can only be by great faith or great credulity that we can believe that an Evolution-formula in terms of "Matter, Motion, and Force" is adequate to describe its genesis.

At an earlier part of the Data of Biology Spencer assumed the origin of active protoplasm from a combination of inert proteids during the time of the earth's slow cooling, and did not suggest that there was any particular difficulty in the assumption; yet in the end we are told that it is "impossible even to imagine those processes going on in organic matter out of which emerges the dynamic element in Life."

"One can picture," Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan writes,[6] "how certain folk will gloat and 'chortle in their joy' over this confession, for such it will almost inevitably be regarded. But it is not likely that Mr Spencer is here, in so vital a matter, false to the evolution he has done so much to elucidate. The two seemingly contradictory statements are not really contradictory; they are made in different connections; the one in reference to phenomenal causation, the other to noumenal causation—to an underlying 'principle of activity.' The simple statement of fact is that the phenomena of life are data sui generis, and must as such be accepted by science. Just as when oxygen and hydrogen combine to form water, new data for science emerge; so, when protoplasm was evolved, new data emerged which it is the business of science to study. In both cases we believe that the results are due to the operation of natural laws, that is to say, can, with adequate knowledge, be described in terms of antecedence and sequence. But in both cases the results, which we endeavour thus to formulate, are the outcome of principles of activity, the mode of operation of which is inexplicable. We formulate the laws of evolution in terms of antecedence and sequence; we also refer these laws to an underlying cause, the noumenal mode of action of which is inexplicable. This, if I interpret him rightly, is Mr Spencer's meaning."

[6] "Natural Science," xiii., December 1898, p. 380.

Our own impression is that Spencer was guilty of "wobbling" between two modes of interpretation, between scientific description and philosophical explanation, a confusion incident on the fact that his Principles of Biology was also part of his Synthetic Philosophy. Biology as such has of course nothing to do with "the Ultimate Reality behind manifestations" or with the "implied noumenon." And when Spencer says "it is impossible even to imagine those processes going on in organic matter out of which emerges the dynamic element in Life," or when he illustrates his difficulty by pointing out how impossible it is to give a physico-chemical interpretation of the way a plant cell makes its wall, or a coccolith its imbricated covering, or a sponge its spicules, or a hen eats broken egg-shells, we do not believe he was thinking of anything but "phenomenal causation." When he says "The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible as results of any physical actions known to us," we see no reason to take the edge off this truth by saying that Spencer simply meant that the Ultimate Reality is inaccessible.

In any case, whether Spencer meant that we cannot give any scientific analysis in physico-chemical terms of the unified behaviour of even the simplest organism, or whether he simply meant that the raison d'être, the ultimate reality of life, was an inaccessible noumenon, he confesses that we have "only a surface knowledge"; "only the manifestations come within the range of our intelligence while that which is manifested lies beyond it"; "the order existing among the actions which living things exhibit remains the same whether we know or do not know the nature of that from which the actions originate." This seems to us to sound a more modest note than is heard in the sentence: "The interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion and Force, is nothing more than the reduction of our complex symbols of thought to the simplest symbols."