قراءة كتاب Life and Matter A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe'
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Life and Matter A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe'
classes of fact and has stretched scientific theory into regions of guess-work and hypothesis, where it loses touch with real science altogether. The facts which he chooses gratuitously to deny, and the facts which he chooses vigorously to emphasise, are arbitrarily selected by him according as they will or will not fit into his philosophic scheme. The scheme itself is no new one, and almost certainly contains elements of truth. Some day far hence, when it is possible properly to formulate it, a system of Monism may be devised which shall contain the whole truth. At present the scheme formulated by Professor Haeckel must to philosophers appear rudimentary and antiquated, while to men of science it appears gratuitous, hypothetical, in some places erroneous, and altogether unconvincing.
Before everything a philosopher should aim at being all-inclusive, before everything a man of science should aim at being definite, clear, and accurate. An attempt at combination is an ambitious attempt, which may legitimately be made, but which it appears is hardly as yet given to man to make successfully. Attempts at an all-embracing scheme, which shall be both truly philosophic and truly scientific, must for the present be mistrusted, and the mistrust should extend especially to their negative side. Positive contributions, either to fact or to system, may be real and should be welcome; but negative or destructive criticism, the eschewing and throwing away of any part of human experience, because it is inconsistent with a premature and ill-considered monistic or any other system, should be regarded with deep suspicion; and the promulgation of any such negative and destructive scheme, especially in association with free and easy dogmatism, should automatically excite mistrust and repulsion.
There are things which cannot yet be fitted in as part of a coherent scheme of scientific knowledge—at present they appear like fragments of another order of things; and if they are to be forced into the scientific framework, like portions of a "puzzle-map," before their true place has been discovered, a quantity of substantial fact must be disarranged, dislocated, and thrown away. A premature and cheap Monism is therefore worse than none at all.
CHAPTER II
"THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE"
I shall now endeavour to exhibit the way in which Professor Haeckel proceeds to expound his views, and for that purpose shall extract certain sentences from his work, The Riddle of the Universe; giving references to the sixpenny translation, now so widely circulated in England, in order that they may be referred to in their context with ease. To scientific men the exaggeration of statement will in many cases be immediately obvious; but in the present state of general education it will often be necessary to append a few comments, indicating, as briefly as possible, wherein the statement is in excess of ascertained fact, however interesting as a guess or speculation; wherefore it must be considered illegitimate as a weapon wherewith to attack other systems, so far as they too are equally entitled to be considered reasonable guesses at truth.
The central scientific doctrines upon which Professor Haeckel's philosophy is founded appear to be two—one physical, the other biological. The physical doctrine is what he calls "the Law of Substance"—a kind of combination of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy: a law to which he attaches extraordinary importance, and from which he draws momentous conclusions. Ultimately he seems to regard this law as almost axiomatic, in the sense that a philosopher who has properly grasped it is unable to conceive the negative. A few extracts will suffice to show the remarkable importance which he attaches to this law:—
"All the particular advances of physics and chemistry yield in theoretical importance to the discovery of the great law which brings them to one common focus, the 'law of substance.' As this fundamental cosmic law establishes the eternal persistence of matter and force, their unvarying constancy throughout the entire universe, it has become the pole-star that guides our monistic philosophy through the mighty labyrinth to a solution of the world-problem" (p. 2).
"The uneducated member of a civilised community is surrounded with countless enigmas at every step, just as truly as the savage. Their number, however, decreases with every stride of civilisation and of science; and the monistic philosophy is ultimately confronted with but one simple and comprehensive enigma—the 'problem of substance'" (p. 6).
"The supreme and all-pervading law of nature, the true and only cosmological law, is, in my opinion, the law of substance; its discovery and establishment is the greatest intellectual triumph of the nineteenth century, in the sense that all other known laws of nature are subordinate to it. Under the name of 'law of substance' we embrace two supreme laws of different origin and age—the older is the chemical law of the 'conservation of matter,' and the younger is the physical law of the 'conservation of energy.' It will be self-evident to many readers, and it is acknowledged by most of the scientific men of the day, that these two great laws are essentially inseparable" (p. 75).
"The conviction that these two great cosmic theorems, the chemical law of the persistence of matter and the physical law of the persistence of force, are fundamentally one, is of the utmost importance in our monistic system. The two theories are just as intimately united as their objects—matter and force or energy. Indeed, this fundamental unity of the two laws is self-evident to many monistic scientists and philosophers, since they merely relate to two different aspects of one and the same object, the cosmos" (p. 76).
"I proposed some time ago to call it the 'law of substance,' or the 'fundamental cosmic law'; it might also be called the 'universal law,' or the 'law of constancy,' or the 'axiom of the constancy of the universe.' In the ultimate analysis it is found to be a necessary consequence of the principle of causality" (p. 76).
I criticise these utterances below, and I also quote extracts bearing on the subject from Professor Huxley in Chapter IV.; but meanwhile Professor Haeckel is as positive as any Positivist, and runs no risk of being accused of Solipsism:—
"Our only real and valuable knowledge is a knowledge of nature itself, and consists of presentations which correspond to external things."... "These presentations we call true, and we are convinced that their content corresponds to the knowable aspect of things. We know that these facts are not imaginary, but real" (p. 104).
He also tends to become sentimental about the ultimate reality as he perceives it, and tries to construct from it a kind of religion:—
"The astonishment with which we gaze upon the starry heavens and the microscopic life in a drop of water, the awe with which we trace the marvellous working of energy in the motion of matter, the reverence with which we grasp the universal dominance of the law of substance throughout the universe—all these are part of our emotional life, falling under the heading of 'natural religion'" (p. 122).
"Pantheism teaches that God and the world are one. The idea of God is identical with that of nature or substance.... In pantheism, God, as an intra-mundane being, is everywhere identical with nature itself, and is operative within the world as 'force' or 'energy.' The latter view alone is compatible with our supreme law—the law of substance. It follows necessarily that pantheism is the world-system of the modern scientist" (p. 102).
"This 'godless world-system' substantially agrees with the monism or pantheism of the modern scientist; it is only another expression for it, emphasising its negative aspect, the non-existence of