Religion and Science from Galileo to Bergson

by J. C. Hardwick

Propaganda not Science.—It is very doubtful whether the genuine scientists, who devoted themselves not to propaganda but to research, could have been ready to sanction the uses to which their own discoveries were put. From the exhaustive references of Lange in his History of Materialism (Engl. Trans., Vol. II, pp. 49-123), it is evident that "the extreme views of La Mettrie, Diderot, and Holbach cannot be fathered on any of the great scientists or philosophers, but were an attempt to supply scientific principles to the solution of philosophical, ethical, or religious questions, frequently for practical and political purposes."[21]

There are certainly risks attached to the popularisation of the results of scientific research. Theories have to be presented with an appearance of finality which does not legitimately belong to them, and sometimes in a somewhat startling aspect, otherwise the reader is left cold, for it is excitement rather than genuine information that attracts the majority. As a judicious writer has observed:

"No ideas lend themselves to such easy, but likewise to such shallow generalisations as those of science. Once let out of the hand which uses them in the strict and cautious manner by which alone they lead to valuable results, they are apt to work mischief. Because the tool is so sharp, the object to which it is applied seems to be so easily handled. The correct use of scientific ideas is only learnt by patient training, and should be governed by the not easily acquired habit of self-restraint."[22]

Scientific Progress.—Alongside of this rigorous propaganda, which prepared the way for the upheaval of 1789, genuine scientific progress was being made, especially in the regions of Astronomy, Botany and Chemistry. The ideas of Newton were taken up and elaborated by means of more efficient mathematical processes—especially the theory of infinitesimals—by the distinguished astronomer, Laplace, in his Système du Monde (1796), and in the successive volumes of his Méchanique Céleste (1799-1825), which has been called a new Principia.

Important advances in chemistry are associated with the name of Lavoisier (1743-1794), who introduced into that science a principle which has become axiomatic, and which to-day remains the foundation of all work in the laboratory. To Lavoisier belongs the merit of introducing what is known as the "quantitative method" into chemistry, and thus establishing that science upon the exact—that is to say mathematical—basis, where it now rests and putting exact research in the place of vague reasoning. His principle was that in all chemical combinations and reactions, the total weight of the various ingredients remains unchanged; there is (in spite of appearances) neither loss nor gain of actual matter. "The quantity of matter is the same at the end as at the beginning of every operation." It was Lavoisier who finally established the correct theory of combustion; that it consisted in the combination of a special element called oxygen, with other bodies or elements.

The Atomic Theory.—Lavoisier had opened a door to researches which naturally led the way to the establishment of the atomic theory of matter on an experimental, and not merely a theoretical basis. That theory is indeed nothing more than the elaboration of Lavoisier's own principle. John Dalton (1766-1844), a Manchester quaker, published in 1810 his New System of Chemical Philosophy, where highly important conclusions are drawn both from Lavoisier's facts and from experimental results of other chemists. Of these, Dalton gave an account and an explanation which has ever since been the soul of all chemical reasoning. This explanation is known as his Atomic theory.

The two facts of which Dalton's theory is an explanation are as follows. First (Lavoisier's fact), that the total weight of substances remains always the same, be they combined in ever so many different ways. Second, that all substances, be they in large or in small quantities, combine with each other, or separate from each other, in definite and fixed proportions. The theory of Dalton was that these combinations take place between independent particles of matter, which are indestructible and indivisible. These "atoms" of the various elements have definite weights which are responsible for the proportion in which they are found to combine. These facts of proportion in combination, or "chemical affinity," could not be accounted for by the theory which regards matter as "continuous," but only by the opposite theory that it is "discrete" (i.e. divided up into particles).

Philosophical Corollaries.—These strictly scientific theories associated with the name of Laplace, Lavoisier, and Dalton tended to strengthen in the popular estimation, the philosophical conclusions of writers like Holbach. The scientists themselves remained "agnostic" with regard to questions that lay outside their scope: they maintained here the correct attitude for scientific research. The question put by Napoleon to Laplace, why he had not introduced the name of God into the Méchanique Céleste, was out of place, and deserved the crushing reply it received. Scientific research is not concerned with questions of philosophy.

Still, it did not escape popular attention that the old pillar of a mechanistic view of the universe now seemed to be reinforced by another. The theory of the conservation of energy was now supplemented by that of the indestructibility of matter (Lavoisier). And to crown all, the old atomic theory, which Lucretius had made the foundation of his dogmatic materialism, was now re-established on an experimental basis.

So far as physical science was concerned, the situation seemed menacing to a religious view of life. Men felt that they inhabited a world of indestructible matter, moved by a certain measure of force, unchangeable and fixed. The prison of determinism and matter was closing around them.