2. The Modern Scientific Interest in Nature.
—The movement of the fifteenth century which is variously termed
the revival of learning and the renascence was characterized by a new
interest in man's present life, and accordingly by a new interest in his
relationships with nature. It was naturalistic, in the sense that it
turned against the dominant supernaturalistic interest. It is possible
that the influence of a return to classic Greek pagan literature in
bringing about this changed mind has been overestimated. Undoubtedly
the change was mainly a product of contemporary conditions. But there
can be no doubt that educated men, filled with the new point of view,
turned eagerly to Greek literature for congenial sustenance and
reënforcement. And to a considerable extent, this interest in Greek
thought was not in literature for its own sake, but in the spirit it
expressed. The mental freedom, the sense of the order and beauty of
nature, which animated Greek expression, aroused men to think and
observe in a similar untrammeled fashion. The history of science in the
sixteenth century shows that the dawning sciences of physical nature
largely borrowed their points of departure from the new interest in
Greek literature. As Windelband has said, the new science of nature was
the daughter of humanism. The favorite notion of the time was that man
was in microcosm that which the universe was in macrocosm.
This fact raises anew the question of how it was that nature and man
were later separated and a sharp division made between language and
literature and the physical sciences. Four reasons may be suggested.
(a) The old tradition was firmly entrenched in institutions.
Politics, law, and diplomacy remained of necessity branches of
authoritative literature, for the social sciences did not develop until
the methods of the sciences of physics and chemistry, to say nothing of
biology, were much further advanced. The same is largely true of
history. Moreover, the methods used for effective teaching of the
languages were well developed; the inertia of academic custom was on
their side. Just as the new interest in literature, especially Greek,
had not been allowed at first to find lodgment in the scholastically
organized universities, so when it found its way into them it joined
hands with the older learning to minimize the influence of experimental
science. The men who taught were rarely trained in science; the men who
were scientifically competent worked in private laboratories and through
the medium of academies which promoted research, but which were not
organized as teaching bodies. Finally, the aristocratic tradition which
looked down upon material things and upon the senses and the hands was
still mighty.
(b) The Protestant revolt brought with it an immense increase of
interest in theological discussion and controversies. The appeal on
both sides was to literary documents. Each side had to train men in
ability to study and expound the records which were relied upon. The
demand for training men who could defend the chosen faith against the
other side, who were able to propagandize and to prevent the
encroachments of the other side, was such that it is not too much to say
that by the middle of the seventeenth century the linguistic training of
gymnasia and universities had been captured by the revived theological
interest, and used as a tool of religious education and ecclesiastical
controversy. Thus the educational descent of the languages as they are
found in education to-day is not direct from the revival of learning,
but from its adaptation to theological ends.
(c) The natural sciences were themselves conceived in a way which
sharpened the opposition of man and nature. Francis Bacon presents an
almost perfect example of the union of naturalistic and humanistic
interest. Science, adopting the methods of observation and
experimentation, was to give up the attempt to "anticipate"
nature—to impose preconceived notions upon her—and was to
become her humble interpreter. In obeying nature intellectually, man
would learn to command her practically. "Knowledge is power." This
aphorism meant that through science man is to control nature and turn
her energies to the execution of his own ends. Bacon attacked the old
learning and logic as purely controversial, having to do with victory in
argument, not with discovery of the unknown. Through the new method of
thought which was set forth in his new logic an era of expansive
discoveries was to emerge, and these discoveries were to bear fruit in
inventions for the service of man. Men were to give up their futile,
never-finished effort to dominate one another to engage in the
coöperative task of dominating nature in the interests of humanity.
In the main, Bacon prophesied the direction of subsequent progress. But
he "anticipated" the advance.
He did not see that the new science was for a long time to be worked in
the interest of old ends of human exploitation. He thought that it
would rapidly give man new ends. Instead, it put at the disposal of a
class the means to secure their old ends of aggrandizement at the
expense of another class. The industrial revolution followed, as he
foresaw, upon a revolution in scientific method. But it is taking the
revolution many centuries to produce a new mind. Feudalism was doomed
by the applications of the new science, for they transferred power from
the landed nobility to the manufacturing centers. But capitalism rather
than a social humanism took its place. Production and commerce were
carried on as if the new science had no moral lesson, but only technical
lessons as to economies in production and utilization of saving in
self-interest. Naturally, this application of physical science (which
was the most conspicuously perceptible one) strengthened the claims of
professed humanists that science was materialistic in its tendencies.
It left a void as to man's distinctively human interests which go beyond
making, saving, and expending money; and languages and literature put in
their claim to represent the moral and ideal interests of
humanity.
( d ) Moreover, the philosophy which professed itself based upon
science, which gave itself out as the accredited representative of the
net significance of science, was either dualistic in character, marked
by a sharp division between mind (characterizing man) and matter,
constituting nature; or else it was openly mechanical, reducing the
signal features of human life to illusion. In the former case, it
allowed the claims of certain studies to be peculiar consignees of
mental values, and indirectly strengthened their claim to superiority,
since human beings would incline to regard human affairs as of chief
importance at least to themselves. In the latter case, it called out a
reaction which threw doubt and suspicion upon the value of physical
science, giving occasion for treating it as an enemy to man's higher
interests.
Greek and medieval knowledge accepted the world in its qualitative
variety, and regarded nature's processes as having ends, or in technical
phrase as teleological. New science was expounded so as to deny the
reality of all qualities in real, or objective, existence. Sounds,
colors, ends, as well as goods and bads, were regarded as purely
subjective—as mere impressions in the mind. Objective existence
was then treated as having only quantitative aspects—as so much
mass in motion, its only differences being that at one point in space
there was a larger aggregate mass than at another, and that in some
spots there were greater rates of motion than at others. Lacking
qualitative distinctions, nature lacked significant variety.
Uniformities were emphasized, not diversities; the ideal was supposed to
be the discovery of a single mathematical formula applying to the whole
universe at once from which all the seeming variety of phenomena could
be derived. This is what a mechanical philosophy means.
Such a philosophy does not represent the genuine purport of science. It
takes the technique for the thing itself; the apparatus and the
terminology for reality, the method for its subject matter. Science
does confine its statements to conditions which enable us to predict and
control the happening of events, ignoring the qualities of the events.
Hence its mechanical and quantitative character. But in leaving them
out of account, it does not exclude them from reality, nor relegate them
to a purely mental region; it only furnishes means utilizable for ends.
Thus while in fact the progress of science was increasing man's power
over nature, enabling him to place his cherished ends on a firmer basis
than ever before, and also to diversify his activities almost at will,
the philosophy which professed to formulate its accomplishments reduced
the world to a barren and monotonous redistribution of matter in space.
Thus the immediate effect of modern science was to accentuate the
dualism of matter and mind, and thereby to establish the physical and
the humanistic studies as two disconnected groups. Since the difference
between better and worse is bound up with the qualities of experience,
any philosophy of science which excludes them from the genuine content
of reality is bound to leave out what is most interesting and most
important to mankind.
