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'
Life and Matter
A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's
"Riddle of the Universe"
By
Sir Oliver Lodge
The expansion of a Presidential Address
to the Birmingham and Midland Institute
SECOND EDITION
London
Williams & Norgate
14 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden
1905
TO
JOHN HENRY MUIRHEAD
AND
MARY TALBOT MUIRHEAD
THE FRIENDS OF MANY NEEDING HELP
NOT IN PHILOSOPHY ALONE
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED
IN MEMORY OF CHANDOLIN AND ST LUC 1904
"Materialistic monism is nowadays the working hypothesis of every scientific explorer in every department, whatever other beliefs or denials he may, more or less explicitly and more or less consistently, superadd. Materialistic monism only becomes false when put forward as a complete philosophy of the universe, because it leaves out of sight the conditions of human knowledge, which the special sciences may conveniently disregard, but which a candid philosophy cannot ignore."
"The legitimate materialism of the sciences simply means temporary and convenient abstraction from the cognitive conditions under which there are 'facts' or 'objects' for us at all; it is 'dogmatic materialism' which is metaphysics of the bad sort."
D. G. Ritchie.
"Our metaphysics is really like many other sciences—only on the threshold of genuine knowledge: God knows if it will ever get further. It is not hard to see its weakness in much that it undertakes. Prejudice is often found to be the mainstay of its proofs. For this nothing is to blame but the ruling passion of those who would fain extend human knowledge. They are anxious to have a grand philosophy: but the desirable thing is, that it should also be a sound one."
Kant.
Preface
This small volume is in form controversial, but in substance it has a more ambitious aim: it is intended to formulate, or perhaps rather to reformulate, a certain doctrine concerning the nature of man and the interaction between mind and matter. Incidentally it attempts to confute two errors which are rather prevalent:—
1. The notion that because material energy is constant in quantity, therefore its transformations and transferences—which admittedly constitute terrestrial activity—are not susceptible of guidance or directive control.
2. The idea that the specific guiding power which we call "life" is one of the forms of material energy, so that directly it relinquishes its connection with matter other equivalent forms of energy must arise to replace it.
The book is specially intended to act as an antidote to the speculative and destructive portions of Professor Haeckel's interesting and widely-read work, but in other respects it may be regarded less as a hostile attack than as a supplement—an extension of the more scientific portions of that work into higher and more fruitful regions of inquiry.
OLIVER LODGE.
University of Birmingham,
October 1905.
Contents
| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| I | MONISM | 1 |
| II | "THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE" | 14 |
| III | THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE | 41 |
| IV | MEMORANDA FOR WOULD-BE MATERIALISTS | 60 |
| V | RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY | 71 |
| VI | MIND AND MATTER | 100 |
| VII | PROFESSOR HAECKEL'S CONJECTURAL PHILOSOPHY | 125 |
| VIII | HYPOTHESIS AND ANALOGIES CONCERNING LIFE | 136 |
| IX | WILL AND GUIDANCE | 152 |
| X | FURTHER SPECULATION AS TO THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE | 179 |
LIFE AND MATTER
CHAPTER I
MONISM
In his recent Presidential Address before the British Association, at Cambridge, Mr Balfour rather emphasised the existence and even the desirability of a barrier between Science and Philosophy which recent advances have tended to minimise though never to obliterate. He appeared to hint that it is best for scientific men not to attempt to philosophise, but to restrict themselves to their own domain; though, on the other hand, he did not appear to wish similarly to limit philosophers, by recommending that they should keep themselves unacquainted with scientific facts, and ignorant of the theories which weld those facts together. Indeed, in his own person he is an example of the opposite procedure, for he himself frequently takes pleasure in overlooking the boundary and making a wide survey of the position on its physical side—a thing which it is surely very desirable for a philosopher to do.
But if that process be regarded as satisfactory, it is surely equally permissible for a man of science occasionally to look over into the philosophic region, and survey the territory on that side also, so far as his means permit. And if philosophers object to this procedure, it must be because they have found by experience that men of science who have once transcended or transgressed the boundary are apt to lose all sense of reasonable constraint, and to disport themselves as if they had at length escaped into a region free from scientific trammels—a region where confident assertions might be freely made, where