Religion and Science from Galileo to Bergson

by J. C. Hardwick

If these conclusions be valid, the bottom falls out of Naturalism, for if nature "implies something other than itself," it does not stand alone; and that nature does stand alone is the beginning and end of all naturalist theory. And, furthermore, this "something other than itself," which Nature involves, is "a self-distinguishing consciousness"; i.e. something to which we can attribute personality.

Green and Spencer contrasted.—This theory has only to be compared with that of Herbert Spencer for a fundamental difference to declare itself. The two systems do indeed adopt as axiomatic the conception of the uniformity and unity of nature, which works in accordance with a single law. But Spencer saw in that law the expression of a blind force, an unknowable power, of which it would be no more and no less true to say that it was "spiritual" than that it was "material." But for Green the law was the expression of a spiritual principal analogous to our own intelligence—a manifestation (to use theological language) of God.

F. H. Bradley.—Undoubtedly the most notable of English Hegelians is F. H. Bradley, whose metaphysical essay, Appearance and Reality, was a work of genuine originality. The book is not of a type to make much appeal outside academic circles, though it is written in an easy and attractive style: its results may seem, to the unsophisticated reader, somewhat too ambiguous. "Ultimate Doubts" is the title of the last chapter, and "It costs us little to find that in the end Reality is inscrutable," is a remark not uncharacteristic of the author. Yet this really profound thinker and acute reasoner played an important part in helping to discredit that negative dogmatism which was so much in vogue during his own lifetime. He pointed out the limits beyond which natural science could not transgress without lapsing into "dogmatic superstition."

"Too often the science of mere Nature, forgetting its own limits and false to its true aims, attempts to speak about first principles. It becomes transcendent, and offers us a dogmatic and uncritical metaphysics" (p. 284).

Though the fault has not always been on the side of the scientists: "Metaphysics itself, by its interference with physical science, has induced that to act, as it thinks, in self-defence, and has led it, in so doing, to become metaphysical. And this interference of metaphysics I would admit and deplore, as the result and the parent of most injurious misunderstanding.... So long as natural science keeps merely to the sphere of phenomena and the laws of their occurrence, metaphysics has no right to a single word of criticism" (p. 285).

This critical handling of the problem of the relations of science and philosophy did much to draw attention to the confusion of thought lying at the base of much popular materialism. It began to be realised that the principles of physical science are only fruitful of good results in the sphere properly belonging to them; and that the uncritical use of these principles results in a hybrid philosophy, which is neither sound science nor rational metaphysics.

A. J. Balfour.—Before Bradley's essay was published, a somewhat similar line of criticism had been developed by Mr. A. J. Balfour in his Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879). Its title sounds unpromising, but the book voiced a demand for a rational philosophy of science which was practically non-existent at that time; and consequently, in the absence of any adequate examination of the principles of science, uncritical dogmatism flourished quite unchallenged. Balfour, elsewhere, indicates the objects with which he wrote the book—to elicit from the disciples of natural science a rationale of their method:

"A full and systematic attempt, first to enumerate, and then to justify, the presuppositions on which all science finally rests, has, it seems to me, still to be made. After the critical examination which I desiderate has been thoroughly carried out, it may appear that at the very root of our scientific system of belief lie problems of which no satisfactory solution has yet been devised."[49] Thus Balfour drew attention to the fact that the common-sense philosophy of naturalism rested upon a tacit agreement to overlook certain important problems which are the indispensable preliminaries to any thinking which can be called critical, or lay claim to be regarded as philosophy in the strict sense. That some of these problems seem artificial, and the questions raised by them gratuitous, to the eye of "common sense" is an irrelevant consideration, for "nothing stands more in need of demonstration than the obvious."

Naturalism Checked.—Thus Bradley and Balfour between them, merely by adopting a critical attitude, created an embarrassing situation for naturalism. Between them these writers administered a serious check to that naively uncritical dogmatism which, backed by the prestige of natural science, had sought to impose itself on the world as a new orthodoxy less liberal, in some ways, than the old.

Nor did they stop short at negative criticism, but substituted (according to the idealistic tradition) a spiritual view of reality for the mechanistic materialism that had become so popular. Appearance and Reality is a book of which the trend might seem too obscure, but it ends with a note that is definite enough: