This brings us to consider the view often pontifically asserted that there can be no conflict between science and religion because they belong to altogether different realms of thought. The implication is that discussions such as we have been pursuing are superfluous. But it seems to me rather that the assertion challenges this kind of discussion—to see how both realms of thought can be associated independently with our existence. Having seen something of the way in which the scientific realm of thought has constituted itself out of a self-closed cyclic scheme we are able to give a guarded assent. The conflict will not be averted unless both sides confine themselves to their proper domain; and a discussion which enables us to reach a better understanding as to the boundary should be a contribution towards a state of peace. There is still plenty of opportunity for frontier difficulties; a particular illustration will show this.

A belief not by any means confined to the more dogmatic adherents of religion is that there is a future non-material existence in store for us. Heaven is nowhere in space, but it is in time. (All the meaning of the belief is bound up with the word future; there is no comfort in an assurance of bliss in some former state of existence.) On the other hand the scientist declares that time and space are a single continuum, and the modern idea of a Heaven in time but not in space is in this respect more at variance with science than the pre-Copernican idea of a Heaven above our heads. The question I am now putting is not whether the theologian or the scientist is right, but which is trespassing on the domain of the other? Cannot theology dispose of the destinies of the human soul in a non-material way without trespassing on the realm of science? Cannot science assert its conclusions as to the geometry of the space-time continuum without trespassing on the realm of theology? According to the assertion above science and theology can make what mistakes they please provided that they make them in their own territory; they cannot quarrel if they keep to their own realms. But it will require a skilful drawing of the boundary line to frustrate the development of a conflict here.[50]

The philosophic trend of modern scientific thought differs markedly from the views of thirty years ago. Can we guarantee that the next thirty years will not see another revolution, perhaps even a complete reaction? We may certainly expect great changes, and by that time many things will appear in a new aspect. That is one of the difficulties in the relations of science and philosophy; that is why the scientist as a rule pays so little heed to the philosophical implications of his own discoveries. By dogged endeavour he is slowly and tortuously advancing to purer and purer truth; but his ideas seem to zigzag in a manner most disconcerting to the onlooker. Scientific discovery is like the fitting together of the pieces of a great jig-saw puzzle; a revolution of science does not mean that the pieces already arranged and interlocked have to be dispersed; it means that in fitting on fresh pieces we have had to revise our impression of what the puzzle-picture is going to be like. One day you ask the scientist how he is getting on; he replies, “Finely. I have very nearly finished this piece of blue sky.” Another day you ask how the sky is progressing and are told, “I have added a lot more, but it was sea, not sky; there’s a boat floating on the top of it”. Perhaps next time it will have turned out to be a parasol upside down; but our friend is still enthusiastically delighted with the progress he is making. The scientist has his guesses as to how the finished picture will work out; he depends largely on these in his search for other pieces to fit; but his guesses are modified from time to time by unexpected developments as the fitting proceeds. These revolutions of thought as to the final picture do not cause the scientist to lose faith in his handiwork, for he is aware that the completed portion is growing steadily. Those who look over his shoulder and use the present partially developed picture for purposes outside science, do so at their own risk.

The lack of finality of scientific theories would be a very serious limitation of our argument, if we had staked much on their permanence. The religious reader may well be content that I have not offered him a God revealed by the quantum theory, and therefore liable to be swept away in the next scientific revolution. It is not so much the particular form that scientific theories have now taken—the conclusions which we believe we have proved—as the movement of thought behind them that concerns the philosopher. Our eyes once opened, we may pass on to a yet newer outlook on the world, but we can never go back to the old outlook.

If the scheme of philosophy which we now rear on the scientific advances of Einstein, Bohr, Rutherford and others is doomed to fall in the next thirty years, it is not to be laid to their charge that we have gone astray. Like the systems of Euclid, of Ptolemy, of Newton, which have served their turn, so the systems of Einstein and Heisenberg may give way to some fuller realisation of the world. But in each revolution of scientific thought new words are set to the old music, and that which has gone before is not destroyed but refocussed. Amid all our faulty attempts at expression the kernel of scientific truth steadily grows; and of this truth it may be said—The more it changes, the more it remains the same thing.

[50] This difficulty is evidently connected with the dual entry of time into our experience to which I have so often referred.

INDEX

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

On [page 32], the reference to Einstein has been replaced by [Dickens] as shown in the Index. This quote appears in “Martin Chuzzlewit” published in 1843.