Science and the Unseen World

Arthur Stanley Eddington

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789123722
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Physicist and astronomer Arthur Eddington tested Einstein's Theory of Relativity at an eclipse in 1919. A lifelong Quaker, his 1929 Swarthmore Lecture explores how science and religion define and look at reality. 'You will understand the true spirit neither of science nor of religion unless seeking is placed in the forefront.' 'He puts a strong line against simplistic reductionism in relation to our minds. He emphasizes that when we ask the question, "What are we to think of it all? What is it all about?, " the answer must embrace but not be limited to the scientific answer. His lecture explores this in a delightful way, that remains fully relevant today.' — Prof. George Ellis 'The attitude of the scientist, here so admirably explained, is the attitude, also, of the mystic. Experience, to both, is what matters most."'- The Sufi Quarterly, 1929.

II

It is with some such thoughts as these of the relation of Man to the visible universe that the scientifically minded among us approach the problem of his relation to the Unseen World. It is not with any dogmatic challenge that I have given this outline of evolution. Part of what I have described seems to be securely established; other parts involve a considerable element of conjecture—the best we can do to string together fragmentary knowledge. Scientific theories have blundered in the past; they blunder no doubt today; yet we cannot doubt that along with the error there come gleams of a truth for which the human mind is impelled to strive. So brief a summary cannot convey the true spirit and intention of this scientific probing of the past, any more than the spirit of history is conveyed by a table of dates. We seek the truth; but if some voice told us that a few years more would see the end of our journey, that the clouds of uncertainty would be dispersed, and that we should perceive the whole truth about the physical universe, the tidings would be by no means joyful. In science as in religion the truth shines ahead as a beacon showing us the path; we do not ask to attain it; it is better far that we be permitted to seek.

I daresay that most of you are by no means reluctant to accept the scientific epic of the Creation, holding it perhaps as more to the glory of God than the traditional story. Perhaps you would prefer to tone down certain harshnesses of expression, to emphasise the forethought of the Creator in the events which I have called accidents. I would not venture to say that those who are eager to sanctify, as it were, the revelations of science by accepting them as new insight into the divine power are wrong. But this attitude is liable to grate a little on the scientific mind, forcing its free spirit of inquiry into one predetermined mode of expression; and I do not think that the harmonising of the scientific and the religious outlook on experience is assisted that way. Perhaps our feeling on this point can be explained by a comparison. A business man may believe that the hand of Providence is behind his commercial undertakings as it is behind all the vicissitudes of his life; but he would be aghast at the suggestion that Providence should be entered as an asset in his balance sheet. I think it is not irreligion but a tidiness of mind, which rebels against the idea of permeating scientific research with a religious implication.

Probably most astronomers, if they were to speak frankly, would confess to some chafing when they are reminded of the psalm “The heavens declare the glory of God.” It is so often rubbed into us with implications far beyond the simple poetic thought awakened by the splendour of the star-clad sky. There is another passage from the Old Testament that comes nearer to my own sympathies—

“And behold the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice....And behold there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?”

Wind, earthquake, fire—meteorology, seismology, physics—pass in review, as we have been reviewing the natural forces of evolution; the Lord was not in them. Afterwards, a stirring, an awakening in the organ of the brain, a voice which asks “What doest thou here?”

III

We have busied ourselves with the processes by which the electric particles widely diffused in primeval chaos have come together to build the complexity of a human being; we cannot but acknowledge that a human being involves also something incommensurable with the kind of entities we have been treating of. I do not mean to say that consciousness has not undergone evolution; presumably its rudiments exist far down the scale of animal life. But it is a constituent or an aspect of reality which our survey of the material world leaves on one side. Hence arises insistently the problem of the dualism of spirit and matter. On the one side there is consciousness stirring with activity of thought and sensation; on the other side there is a material brain, a maelstrom of scurrying atoms and electric charges. Incommensurable as they are, there is some kind of overlap or contact between them. As the mind is traversed by a certain thought the atoms at some point of the brain range themselves so as to start a material impulse transmitting the mental command to a muscle; or again a nervous impulse arrives from the outer world, and as the atoms of a brain-cell move in response to the physical forces simultaneously a sensation of pain occurs in the mind.

Let us for a moment consider the most crudely materialistic view of this connection. It would be that the dance of atoms in the brain really constitutes the thought, that in our search for reality we should replace the thinking mind by a system of physical objects and forces, and that by so doing we strip away an illusory part of our experience and reveal the essential truth which it so strangely disguises. I do not know whether this view is still held to any extent in scientific circles, but I think it may be said that it is entirely out of keeping with recent changes of thought as to the fundamental principles of physics. Its attractiveness belonged to a time when it was considered that the way to understand or explain a scientific phenomenon was to make a concrete mechanical model of it.

I cannot in a few moments make clear a change of thought which it has taken a generation to accomplish. I can only say that physical science has turned its back on all such models, regarding them now rather as a hindrance to the apprehension of the truth behind the phenomena. We have the same desire as of old to get to the bottom of things, but the ideal of what constitutes a scientific explanation has changed almost beyond recognition. And if today you ask a physicist what he has finally made out the æther or the electron to be, the answer will not be a description in terms of billiard balls or fly-wheels or anything concrete; he will point instead to a number of symbols and a set of mathematical equations which they satisfy. What do the symbols stand for? The mysterious reply is given that physics is indifferent to that; it has no means of probing beneath the symbolism. To understand the phenomena of the physical world it is necessary to know the equations which the symbols obey but not the nature of that which is being symbolised. It would be irrelevant here to defend this change, to make clear the intellectual satisfaction afforded by these symbolic equations, or to explain why the demand of the layman for a concrete explanation has to be set aside. We have, however, to see how this newer outlook has modified the challenge from the material to the spiritual world.

For those who were bent on finding a model for everything, the material brain appeared in the light of a ready-made model of the mind. And being a model, it was for them the full explanation of the mind. A mechanism of concrete particles, like the billiard-ball atoms of the brain, was their ideal of an explanation. They were hoping similarly to find a mechanism of gyrostats and cog-wheels to explain the æther. The cog-wheels of the æther were hidden, but the cog-wheels of the mind seemed to be at any rate partly exposed. The mere sight of such machinery gave them a feeling of satisfaction, even if they could not tell in the least how it worked. I am not here greatly concerned with the question whether, or to what extent, the brain-cells may rightly be regarded as the cog-wheels of the mind. What I wish to point out is that we no longer have the disposition which, as soon as it scents a piece of mechanism, exclaims “Here we are getting to bedrock. This is what things should resolve themselves into. This is ultimate reality.” ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• SYNOPSIS
• SCIENCE AND THE UNSEEN WORLD
• II
• III
• IV
• V
• VI
• VII
• VIII
• IX
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER