Unseen World and Other Essays

John Fiske

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. "What are you, where did you come from, and whither are you bound? "- the question which from Homer's days has been put to the wayfarer in strange lands- is likewise the all-absorbing question which man is ever asking of the universe of which he is himself so tiny yet so wondrous a part. From the earliest times the ultimate purpose of all scientific research has been to elicit fragmentary or partial responses to this question, and philosophy has ever busied itself in piecing together these several bits of information according to the best methods at its disposal, in order to make up something like a satisfactory answer. In old times the best methods which philosophy had at its disposal for this purpose were such as now seem very crude, and accordingly ancient philosophers bungled considerably in their task, though now and then they came surprisingly near what would to-day be called the truth. It was natural that their methods should be crude, for scientific inquiry had as yet supplied but scanty materials for them to work with, and it was only after a very long course of speculation and criticism that men could find out what ways of going to work are likely to prove successful and what are not

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• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819932659
• Langue: English

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THE UNSEEN WORLD AND OTHER ESSAYS
By John Fiske
TO
JAMES SIME.
MY DEAR SIME:
Life has now and then some supreme moments of purehappiness,
which in reminiscence give to single days the valueof months
or years. Two or three such moments it has been mygood fortune
to enjoy with you, in talking over the mysterieswhich forever
fascinate while they forever baffle us. It was ourmidnight talks
in Great Russell Street and the Addison Road, andour bright May
holiday on the Thames, that led me to write thisscanty essay on
the “Unseen World, ” and to whom could I so heartilydedicate it
as to you? I only wish it were more worthy of itsorigin. As for
the dozen papers which I have appended to it, by wayof clearing
out my workshop, I hope you will read themindulgently, and
believe me
Ever faithfully yours,
JOHN
FISKE.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, February 3, 1876.
ESSAYS.
I. THE UNSEEN WORLD.
PART FIRST.
“What are you, where did you come from, and whitherare you bound? ”— the question which from Homer's days has been putto the wayfarer in strange lands— is likewise the all-absorbingquestion which man is ever asking of the universe of which he ishimself so tiny yet so wondrous a part. From the earliest times theultimate purpose of all scientific research has been to elicitfragmentary or partial responses to this question, and philosophyhas ever busied itself in piecing together these several bits ofinformation according to the best methods at its disposal, in orderto make up something like a satisfactory answer. In old times thebest methods which philosophy had at its disposal for this purposewere such as now seem very crude, and accordingly ancientphilosophers bungled considerably in their task, though now andthen they came surprisingly near what would to-day be called thetruth. It was natural that their methods should be crude, forscientific inquiry had as yet supplied but scanty materials forthem to work with, and it was only after a very long course ofspeculation and criticism that men could find out what ways ofgoing to work are likely to prove successful and what are not. Theearliest thinkers, indeed, were further hindered from accomplishingmuch by the imperfections of the language by the aid of which theirthinking was done; for science and philosophy have had to make aserviceable terminology by dint of long and arduous trial andpractice, and linguistic processes fit for expressing general orabstract notions accurately grew up only through numberlessfailures and at the expense of much inaccurate thinking and loosetalking. As in most of nature's processes, there was a great wasteof energy before a good result could be secured. Accordinglyprimitive men were very wide of the mark in their views of nature.To them the world was a sort of enchanted ground, peopled withsprites and goblins; the quaint notions with which we now amuse ourchildren in fairy tales represent a style of thinking which oncewas current among grown men and women, and which is still currentwherever men remain in a savage condition. The theories of theworld wrought out by early priest-philosophers were in great partmade up of such grotesque notions; and having become variouslyimplicated with ethical opinions as to the nature and consequencesof right and wrong behaviour, they acquired a kind of sanctity, sothat any thinker who in the light of a wider experience ventured toalter or amend the primitive theory was likely to be vituperated asan irreligious man or atheist. This sort of inference has not yetbeen wholly abandoned, even in civilized communities. Even to-daybooks are written about “the conflict between religion and science,” and other books are written with intent to reconcile the twopresumed antagonists. But when we look beneath the surface ofthings, we see that in reality there has never been any conflictbetween religion and science, nor is any reconciliation called forwhere harmony has always existed. The real historical conflict,which has been thus curiously misnamed, has been the conflictbetween the more-crude opinions belonging to the science of anearlier age and the less-crude opinions belonging to the science ofa later age. In the course of this contest the more-crude opinionshave usually been defended in the name of religion, and theless-crude opinions have invariably won the victory; but religionitself, which is not concerned with opinion, but with theaspiration which leads us to strive after a purer and holier life,has seldom or never been attacked. On the contrary, the scientificmen who have conducted the battle on behalf of the less-crudeopinions have generally been influenced by this religiousaspiration quite as strongly as the apologists of the more-crudeopinions, and so far from religious feeling having been weakened bytheir perennial series of victories, it has apparently been growingdeeper and stronger all the time. The religious sense is as yet toofeebly developed in most of us; but certainly in no preceding agehave men taken up the work of life with more earnestness or withmore real faith in the unseen than at the present day, when so muchof what was once deemed all-important knowledge has been consignedto the limbo of mythology.
The more-crude theories of early times are to bechiefly distinguished from the less-crude theories of to-day asbeing largely the products of random guesswork. Hypothesis, orguesswork, indeed, lies at the foundation of all scientificknowledge. The riddle of the universe, like less important riddles,is unravelled only by approximative trials, and the most brilliantdiscoverers have usually been the bravest guessers. Kepler's lawswere the result of indefatigable guessing, and so, in a somewhatdifferent sense, was the wave-theory of light. But the guesswork ofscientific inquirers is very different now from what it was inolder times. In the first place, we have slowly learned that aguess must be verified before it can be accepted as a sound theory;and, secondly, so many truths have been established beyondcontravention, that the latitude for hypothesis is much less thanit once was. Nine tenths of the guesses which might have occurredto a mediaeval philosopher would now be ruled out as inadmissible,because they would not harmonize with the knowledge which has beenacquired since the Middle Ages. There is one direction especiallyin which this continuous limitation of guesswork byever-accumulating experience has manifested itself. From first tolast, all our speculative successes and failures have agreed inteaching us that the most general principles of action whichprevail to-day, and in our own corner of the universe, have alwaysprevailed throughout as much of the universe as is accessible toour research. They have taught us that for the deciphering of thepast and the predicting of the future, no hypotheses are admissiblewhich are not based upon the actual behaviour of things in thepresent. Once there was unlimited facility for guessing as to howthe solar system might have come into existence; now the origin ofthe sun and planets is adequately explained when we have unfoldedall that is implied in the processes which are still going on inthe solar system. Formerly appeals were made to all manner ofviolent agencies to account for the changes which the earth'ssurface has undergone since our planet began its independentcareer; now it is seen that the same slow working of rain and tide,of wind and wave and frost, of secular contraction and ofearthquake pulse, which is visible to-day, will account for thewhole. It is not long since it was supposed that a species ofanimals or plants could be swept away only by some unusualcatastrophe, while for the origination of new species somethingcalled an act of “special creation” was necessary; and as to thenature of such extraordinary events there was endless room forguesswork; but the discovery of natural selection was the discoveryof a process, going on perpetually under our very eyes, which mustinevitably of itself extinguish some species and bring new onesinto being. In these and countless other ways we have learned thatall the rich variety of nature is pervaded by unity of action, suchas we might expect to find if nature is the manifestation of aninfinite God who is without variableness or shadow of turning, butquite incompatible with the fitful behaviour of the anthropomorphicdeities of the old mythologies. By thus abstaining from all appealto agencies that are extra-cosmic, or not involved in the orderlysystem of events that we see occurring around us, we have at lastsucceeded in eliminating from philosophic speculation the characterof random guesswork which at first of necessity belonged to it.Modern scientific hypothesis is so far from being a haphazardmental proceeding that it is perhaps hardly fair to classify itwith guesses. It is lifted out of the plane of guesswork, in so faras it has acquired the character of inevitable inference from thatwhich now is to that which has been or will be. Instead of theinnumerable particular assumptions which were once admitted intocosmic philosophy, we are now reduced to the one universalassumption which has been variously described as the “principle ofcontinuity, ” the “uniformity of nature, ” the “persistence offorce, ” or the “law of causation, ” and which has been variouslyexplained as a necessary datum for scientific thinking or as a netresult of all induction. I am not unwilling, however, to adopt thelanguage of a book which has furnished the occasion for the presentdiscussion, and to say that this grand assumption is a supreme actof faith, the definite expression of a trust that the infiniteSustainer of the universe “will not put us to permanentintellectual confusion. ” For in this mode of statement the harmonybetween the scientific and the religious points of view is wellbrought out. It is as affording the only outlet from permanentintellectual confusion that inquirers have been driven to appeal tothe principle