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The
Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience (continued)
With Einstein space is
real, but relative to the observer. He rejects the Newtonian concept of an absolute
space. The object observed is variable; it is relative to the observer; its
mass, shape, and size change as the observer’s position and speed change.
Movement and rest, too, are relative to the observer. There is, therefore, no
such thing as a self-subsistent materiality of classical physics. It is, however,
necessary here to guard against a misunderstanding. The use of the word ‘observer’
in this connexion has misled Wildon Carr into the view that the theory of Relativity
inevitably leads to Monadistic Idealism. It is true that according to the theory
the shapes, sizes, and durations of phenomena are not absolute. But as Professor
Nunn points out, the space-time frame does not depend on the observer’s
mind; it depends on the point of the material universe to which his body is
attached. In fact, the ‘observer’ can be easily replaced by a recording
apparatus.16 Personally, I believe that the ultimate character of
Reality is spiritual: but in order to avoid a widespread misunderstanding it
is necessary to point out that Einstein’s theory, which, as a scientific
theory, deals only with the structure of things, throws no light on the ultimate
nature of things which possess that structure. The philosophical value of the
theory is twofold. First, it destroys, not the objectivity of Nature, but the
view of substance as simple location in space - a view which led to materialism
in Classical Physics. ‘Substance’ for modern Relativity-Physics is
not a persistent thing with variable states, but a system of interrelated events.
In Whitehead’s presentation of the theory the notion of ‘matter’
is entirely replaced by the notion of ‘organism’. Secondly, the theory
makes space dependent on matter. The universe, according to Einstein, is not
a kind of island in an infinite space; it is finite but boundless; beyond it
there is no empty space. In the absence of matter the universe would shrink
to a point. Looking, however, at the theory from the standpoint that I have
taken in these lectures, Einstein’s Relativity presents one great difficulty,
i.e. the unreality of time. A theory which takes time to be a kind of fourth
dimension of space must, it seems, regard the future as something already given,
as indubitably fixed as the past.17 Time as a free creative movement
has no meaning for the theory. It does not pass. Events do not happen; we simply
meet them. It must not, however, be forgotten that the theory neglects certain
characteristics of time as experienced by us; and it is not possible to say
that the nature of time is exhausted by the characteristics which the theory
does note in the interests of a systematic account of those aspects of Nature
which can be mathematically treated. Nor is it possible for us laymen to understand
what the real nature of Einstein’s time is. It is obvious that Einstein’s
time is not Bergson’s pure duration. Nor can we regard it as serial time.
Serial time is the essence of causality as defined by Kant. The cause and its
effect are mutually so related that the former is chronologically prior to the
latter, so that if the former is not, the latter cannot be. If mathematical
time is serial time, then on the basis of the theory it is possible, by a careful
choice of the velocities of the observer and the system in which a given set
of events is happening, to make the effect precede its cause.18 It
appears to me that time regarded as a fourth dimension of space really ceases
to be time. A modern Russian writer, Ouspensky, in his book called Tertium Organum,
conceives the fourth dimension to be the movement of a three-dimensional figure
in a direction not contained in itself.19 Just as the movement of
the point, the line and the surface in a direction not contained in them gives
us the ordinary three dimensions of space, in the same way the movement of the
three-dimensional figure in a direction not contained in itself must give us
the fourth dimension of space. And since time is the distance separating events
in order of succession and binding them in different wholes, it is obviously
a distance lying in a direction not contained in the three-dimensional space.
As a new dimension this distance, separating events in the order of succession,
is incommensurable with the dimensions of three-dimensional space, as a year
is incommensurable with St. Petersburg. It is perpendicular to all directions
of three-dimensional space, and is not parallel to any of them. Elsewhere in
the same book Ouspensky describes our time-sense as a misty space-sense and
argues, on the basis of our psychic constitution, that to one-, two- or three-dimensional
beings the higher dimension must always appear as succession in time. This obviously
means that what appears to us three-dimensional beings as time is in reality
an imperfectly sensed space-dimension which in its own nature does not differ
from the perfectly sensed dimensions of Euclidean space. In other words, time
is not a genuine creative movement; and that what we call future events are
not fresh happenings, but things already given and located in an unknown space.
Yet in his search for a fresh direction, other than the three Euclidean dimensions,
Ouspensky needs a real serial time, i.e. a distance separating events in the
order of succession. Thus time which was needed and consequently viewed as succession
for the purposes of one stage of the argument is quietly divested, at a later
stage, of its serial character and reduced to what does not differ in anything
from the other lines and dimensions of space. It is because of the serial character
of time that Ouspensky was able to regard it as a genuinely new direction in
space. If this characteristic is in reality an illusion, how can it fulfil Ouspensky’s
requirements of an original dimension?
Passing now to other levels
of experience - life and consciousness. Consciousness may be imagined as a deflection
from life. Its function is to provide a luminous point in order to enlighten
the forward rush of life.20 It is a case of tension, a state of self-concentration,
by means of which life manages to shut out all memories and associations which
have no bearing on a present action. It has no well-defined fringes; it shrinks
and expands as the occasion demands. To describe it as an epiphenomenon of the
processes of matter is to deny it as an independent activity, and to deny it
as an independent activity is to deny the validity of all knowledge which is
only a systematized expression of consciousness. Thus consciousness is a variety
of the purely spiritual principle of life which is not a substance, but an organizing
principle, a specific mode of behaviour essentially different to the behaviour
of an externally worked machine. Since, however, we cannot conceive of a purely
spiritual energy, except in association with a definite combination of sensible
elements through which it reveals itself, we are apt to take this combination
as the ultimate ground of spiritual energy. The discoveries of Newton in the
sphere of matter and those of Darwin in the sphere of Natural History reveal
a mechanism. All problems, it was believed, were really the problems of physics.
Energy and atoms, with the properties self-existing in them, could explain everything
including life, thought, will, and feeling. The concept of mechanism - a purely
physical concept - claimed to be the all-embracing explanation of Nature. And
the battle for and against mechanism is still being fiercely fought in the domain
of Biology. The question, then, is whether the passage to Reality through the
revelations of sense-perception necessarily leads to a view of Reality essentially
opposed to the view that religion takes of its ultimate character. Is Natural
Science finally committed to materialism? There is no doubt that the theories
of science constitute trustworthy knowledge, because they are verifiable and
enable us to predict and control the events of Nature. But we must not forget
that what is called science is not a single systematic view of Reality. It is
a mass of sectional views of Reality - fragments of a total experience which
do not seem to fit together. Natural Science deals with matter, with life, and
with mind; but the moment you ask the question how matter, life, and mind are
mutually related, you begin to see the sectional character of the various sciences
that deal with them and the inability of these sciences, taken singly, to furnish
a complete answer to your question. In fact, the various natural sciences are
like so many vultures falling on the dead body of Nature, and each running away
with a piece of its flesh. Nature as the subject of science is a highly artificial
affair, and this artificiality is the result of that selective process to which
science must subject her in the interests of precision. The moment you put the
subject of science in the total of human experience it begins to disclose a
different character. Thus religion, which demands the whole of Reality and for
this reason must occupy a central place in any synthesis of all the data of
human experience, has no reason to be afraid of any sectional views of Reality.
Natural Science is by nature sectional; it cannot, if it is true to its own
nature and function, set up its theory as a complete view of Reality. The concepts
we use in the organization of knowledge are, therefore, sectional in character,
and their application is relative to the level of experience to which they are
applied. The concept of ‘cause’, for instance, the essential feature
of which is priority to the effect, is relative to the subject-matter of physical
science which studies one special kind of activity to the exclusion of other
forms of activity observed by others. When we rise to the level of life and
mind the concept of cause fails us, and we stand in need of concepts of a different
order of thought. The action of living organisms, initiated and planned in view
of an end, is totally different to causal action. The subject-matter of our
inquiry, therefore, demands the concepts of ‘end’ and ‘purpose’,
which act from within unlike the concept of cause which is external to the effect
and acts from without. No doubt, there are aspects of the activity of a living
organism which it shares with other objects of Nature. In the observation of
these aspects the concepts of physics and chemistry would be needed; but the
behaviour of the organism is essentially a matter of inheritance and incapable
of sufficient explanation in terms of molecular physics. However, the concept
of mechanism has been applied to life and we have to see how far the attempt
has succeeded. Unfortunately, I am not a biologist and must turn to biologists
themselves for support. After telling us that the main difference between a
living organism and a machine is that the former is self-maintaining and self-reproducing,
J.S. Haldane says:
‘It is thus evident
that although we find within the living body many phenomena which, so long as
we do not look closely, can be interpreted satisfactorily as physical and chemical
mechanism, there are side by side other phenomena [i.e. self-maintenance and
reproduction] for which the possibility of such interpretation seems to be absent.
The mechanists assume that the bodily mechanisms are so constructed as to maintain,
repair, and reproduce themselves. In the long process of natural selection,
mechanisms of this sort have, they suggest, been evolved gradually.
‘Let us examine this
hypothesis. When we state an event in mechanical terms we state it as a necessary
result of certain simple properties of separate parts which interact in the
event. . . . The essence of the explanation or re-statement of the event is
that after due investigation we have assumed that the parts interacting in the
event have certain simple and definite properties, so that they always react
in the same way under the same conditions. For a mechanical explanation the
reacting parts must first be given. Unless an arrangement of parts with definite
properties is given, it is meaningless to speak of mechanical explanation.
‘To postulate the
existence of a self-producing or self-maintaining mechanism is, thus, to postulate
something to which no meaning can be attached. Meaningless terms are sometimes
used by physiologists; but there is none so absolutely meaningless as the expression
"mechanism of reproduction". Any mechanism there may be in the parent
organism is absent in the process of reproduction, and must reconstitute itself
at each generation, since the parent organism is reproduced from a mere tiny
speck of its own body. There can be no mechanism of reproduction. The idea of
a mechanism which is constantly maintaining or reproducing its own structure
is self-contradictory. A mechanism which reproduced itself would be a mechanism
without parts, and, therefore, not a mechanism.’21
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[See
Notes]
Date/Time Last Modified: 6/18/2002 8:03:05 AM
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