“Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsmans cut and thrust differ from the manne”
Whatever forms the Living Being may take
on, whether simple or complex, _production, growth, reproduction,_ are
the phaenomena which distinguish it from that which does not live.
If this be true, it is clear that the student, in passing from the
physico-chemical to the physiological sciences, enters upon a totally
new order of facts; and it will next be for us to consider how far
these new facts involve _new_ methods, or require a modification of
those with which he is already acquainted. Now a great deal is said
about the peculiarity of the scientific method in general, and of the
different methods which are pursued in the different sciences. The
Mathematics are said to have one special method; Physics another,
Biology a third, and so forth. For my own part, I must confess that I
do not understand this phraseology.
So far as I can arrive at any clear comprehension of the matter,
Science is not, as many would seem to suppose, a modification of the
black art, suited to the tastes of the nineteenth century, and
flourishing mainly in consequence of the decay of the Inquisition.
Science is, I believe, nothing but _trained and organised common
sense_, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from
a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only
so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in
which a savage wields his club. The primary power is the same in each
case, and perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of
the two. The _real_ advantage lies in the point and polish of the
swordsman's weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of
the adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant.
But, after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the
clubman developed and perfected.
So, the vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical
faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are practised
by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A
detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his
shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored
the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. Nor
does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady, finding a
stain of a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has
upset the inkstand thereon, differ in any way, in kind, from that by
which Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet.
“The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.”
Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one
of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game
of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary
duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have
a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and
getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a
disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son,
or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a
pawn from a knight?
Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune,
and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who
are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules
of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is
a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us
being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard
is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules
of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other
side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just,
and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a
mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who
plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing
generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who
plays ill is checkmated--without haste, but without remorse.
My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which
Retzsch [53] has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul.
Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel
who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win--and
I should accept it as an image of human life.
Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty
game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in
the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things
and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the
affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in
harmony with those laws.
“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing”
I do not even know whether the infinite difference between us
and them may not be compensated by THEIR persistence and MY cessation
after apparent death, just as the humble bulb of an annual lives, while
the glorious flowers it has put forth die away.
Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without
end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it
help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind--that my own highest
aspirations even--lead me towards the doctrine of immortality. I doubt
the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand
words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.
Science has taught to me the opposite lesson. She warns me to be careful
how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require
stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously
hostile.
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact,
not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.
Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the
great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire
surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be
prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever
and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have
only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at
all risks to do this.
There are, however, other arguments commonly brought forward in favour
of the immortality of man, which are to my mind not only delusive but
mischievous. The one is the notion that the moral government of the
world is imperfect without a system of future rewards and punishments.
The other is: that such a system is indispensable to practical morality.
I believe that both these dogmas are very mischievous lies.
With respect to the first, I am no optimist, but I have the firmest
belief that the Divine Government (if we may use such a phrase to
express the sum of the "customs of matter") is wholly just. The more I
know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing of my own),
the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does NOT flourish nor is
the righteous punished. But for this to be clear we must bear in mind
what almost all forget, that the rewards of life are contingent upon
obedience to the WHOLE law--physical as well as moral--and that moral
obedience will not atone for physical sin, or vice versa.
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
I do not even know whether the infinite difference between us
and them may not be compensated by THEIR persistence and MY cessation
after apparent death, just as the humble bulb of an annual lives, while
the glorious flowers it has put forth die away.
Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without
end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it
help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind--that my own highest
aspirations even--lead me towards the doctrine of immortality. I doubt
the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand
words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.
Science has taught to me the opposite lesson. She warns me to be careful
how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require
stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously
hostile.
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact,
not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.
Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the
great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire
surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be
prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever
and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have
only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at
all risks to do this.
There are, however, other arguments commonly brought forward in favour
of the immortality of man, which are to my mind not only delusive but
mischievous. The one is the notion that the moral government of the
world is imperfect without a system of future rewards and punishments.
The other is: that such a system is indispensable to practical morality.
I believe that both these dogmas are very mischievous lies.
With respect to the first, I am no optimist, but I have the firmest
belief that the Divine Government (if we may use such a phrase to
express the sum of the "customs of matter") is wholly just. The more I
know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing of my own),
the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does NOT flourish nor is
the righteous punished. But for this to be clear we must bear in mind
what almost all forget, that the rewards of life are contingent upon
obedience to the WHOLE law--physical as well as moral--and that moral
obedience will not atone for physical sin, or vice versa.
The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
[Between the two lectures on the Dog, mentioned above, on April 9,
Huxley delivered a Friday evening discourse, at the same place, "On
the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species" ("Collected Essays" 2
227). Reviewing the history of the theory of evolution in the
twenty-one years that had elapsed since the "Origin of Species" first
saw the light in 1859, he did not merely dwell on the immense
influence the "Origin" had exercised upon every field of biological
inquiry.] "Mere insanities and inanities have before now swollen to
portentous size in the course of twenty years." "History warns us that
it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies, and to
end as superstitions." [There was actual danger lest a new generation
should] "accept the main doctrines of the "Origin of Species" with as
little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so
many of our contemporaries, years ago, rejected them."
[So dire a consummation, he declared, must be prevented by unflinching
criticism, the essence of the scientific spirit,] "for the scientific
spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held
truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors."
[What, then, were the facts which justified so great a change as had
taken place, which had removed some of the most important
qualifications under which he himself had accepted the theory? He
proceeded to enumerate the] "crushing accumulation of evidence"
[during this period, which had proved the imperfection of the
geological record; had filled up enormous gaps, such as those between
birds and reptiles, vertebrates and invertebrates, flowering and
flowerless plants, or the lowest forms of animal and plant life. More:
paleontology alone has effected so much--the fact that evolution has
taken place is so irresistibly forced upon the mind by the study of
the Tertiary mammalia brought to light since 1859, that] "if the
doctrine of evolution had not existed, paleontologists must have
invented it." [He further developed the subject by reading before the
Zoological Society a paper "On the Application of the Laws of
Evolution to the Arrangement of the Vertebrata, and more particularly
of the Mammalia" ("Proceedings of the Zoological Society" 1880 pages
649-662).
“Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a mans upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.”
“Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.”
“Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.”
“Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.”
“Zeal is fit only for the wise but is found mostly in fools”
What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.
From the dawn of exact knowledge to the present day, observation, experiment, and speculation have gone hand in hand; and, whenever science has halted or strayed from the right path, it has been, either because its votaries have been content with mere unverified or unverifiable speculation (and this is the commonest case, because observation and experiment are hard work, while speculation is amusing); or it has been, because the accumulation of details of observation has for a time excluded speculation.
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a mans training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain.
The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.
But anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact, rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the anticipation of Nature, that is, by the invention of hypotheses, which, though verifiable, often had very little foundation to start with.
For once reality and his brains came into contact and the result was fatal.
Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsmans cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
