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Sir Oliver Lodge
Life and Matter: A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe"
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066176525
Table of Contents
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.
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 speculative hypothesis might rank as theory, and where verification was both unnecessary and impossible.
The most striking instance of a scientific man who on entering philosophic territory has exhibited signs of exhilaration and emancipation, is furnished by the case of Professor Haeckel of Jena. In an eloquent and popular work, entitled das Welt-Räthsel, the World Problem, or "The Riddle of the Universe," this eminent biologist has surveyed the whole range of existence, from the foundations of physics to the comparison of religions, from the facts of anatomy to the freedom of the will, from the vitality of cells to the attributes of God; treating these subjects with wide though by no means superhuman knowledge, and with considerable critical and literary ability. This work, through the medium of a really excellent translation by Mr. M'Cabe, and under the auspices of the Rationalist Press Association, has obtained a wide circulation in this country, being purchasable for six-pence at any bookstall; where one often finds it accompanied by another still more popular and similarly-priced treatise by the same author, a digest or summary of the religious aspect of his scientific philosophy, under the title The Confession of Faith of a Man of Science.
Professor Haeckel's credentials, as a learned biologist who introduced Darwinism into Germany, doubtless stand high; and it is a great tribute to his literary ability that a fairly abstruse work on so comprehensive a subject should have obtained a wide notoriety, and have been welcomed by masses of thinking readers, especially by many among the skilled artisans, in this country.
From several points of view this diffusion of interest is most satisfactory, since the spread of thought on serious topics is greatly to be welcomed. Moreover, there is a vast mass of information in these writings which must be new to the bulk of the inhabitants of these islands. There is also a great deal of criticism which should arouse professors of dogmatic theology, and exponents of practical religion, to a keener sense of their opportunities and responsibility. A view of their position from outside, by an able and unsparing critic, cannot but be illuminating and helpful, however unpleasant.
Moreover, the comprehensive survey of existence which can be taken by a modern man of science is almost sure to be interesting and instructive, when properly interpreted with the necessary restrictions and expansions; and if it be found that the helpful portions are unhappily accompanied by over-confident negations and supercilious denials of facts at present outside the range of orthodox science, these natural blemishes must be discounted and estimated at their proper worth; for it would be foolish to imagine that even a diligent student of Nature has special access to the kind of truths which have been hidden