The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer. Gerard John

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СКАЧАТЬ destitute of anything resembling scientific support. Suppositions which are avowedly hazarded as conjectures, and which must appeal to processes of Nature of which we know nothing, whatever authorship they may boast, have nothing to do with Science, and possess no sort of value for our purpose.41 It must of course be allowed that we may still be utterly in the dark as to the whole of this question, and that further discoveries may one day completely upset all our present notions. But we are concerned with the evidence which Science has now before her, and with the assertion so confidently advanced that this makes the Law of ceaseless Evolution an indisputable truth. We find, on the contrary, that this Law runs directly counter to the facts as they are at present known to us, and to the conclusions drawn from them by the most authoritative representatives of science.

      Nor is it only our own globe and solar system that appear to be thus bound towards an inevitable doom. The eternal rhythm of life and death, of which we have been told as pervading the endless depths of space, has no better title to scientific sanction. Like the minor province which we inhabit, the whole universe, we are assured, – so far as we have means of calculating, – must ultimately arrive at a condition of eternal stagnation, – its component parts being drawn close together by their mutual attractions, – so that motion ceases; while the heat replacing it being equally diffused, becomes as incapable of doing work as water between two pools on the same level is of turning a mill. As the writer lately quoted sums up the matter:42

      Slow as the process of condensation is, it is not endless. In time all the meteoric dust will be collected into stars or planets; and in time the law of dissipation of energy will bring all these bodies to a uniform temperature. So at last the movements due to the original unequal distribution of matter will cease, and the life of the universe will come to an end. We know of no process of rejuvenescence, by means of which dissipation of energy and the force of gravitation might be counteracted. Several attempts have been made to refute the theory of the dissipation of energy, but all have failed.

      This, however, is but the first of many difficulties which must be disposed of ere the account of the world's genesis which we are considering can pretend to our acceptance on the ground that reason and science proclaim its truth.

      VII

      "THE SEVEN ENIGMAS"

      THE doctrine that the universe is an automatic machine, – self-originated and self-sustained – undoubtedly rests upon a principle formally recognized by some evolutionists, as the "Law of Continuity," and taken for granted by many who do not put it into words. This principle is, – that everything must always have happened according to the same laws of Nature which operate now; that there can never have been a "miracle," understanding by this term whatever is beyond the scope of natural forces; and that, accordingly, the whole of the world's history, – one stage as much as another, – falls within the province of Science. By no one has this position been more clearly stated than by the late Professor Romanes.

      All minds [he tells us]43 with any instincts of science in their composition have grown to distrust, on merely antecedent grounds, any explanation which embodies a miraculous element. Such minds have grown to regard all these explanations as mere expressions of our own ignorance of natural causation; or, in other words, they have come to regard it as an à priori truth that nature is always uniform in respect of method or causation; that the reign of law is universal; the principle of continuity ubiquitous.

      He goes on to declare that "The fact of evolution – or, which is the same thing, the fact of continuity in natural causation – has now been undoubtedly proved in many departments of nature," and that, in particular, "throughout the range of inorganic nature" it is "a demonstrated fact."

      If this be so, it must necessarily follow that the Laws of Nature, as Science finds them operating, sufficiently explain not only all that happens in our present world, but also all that must have happened while this world was being produced. According to what has already been said, by "The Law of Continuity" no more can be signified than that Continuity is a fact, that the world has actually come to be what it is through the continual operation of just the same natural forces as we find at work to-day. That things did so happen we have not and cannot have, direct evidence; for no witness was there to report. We can but draw inferences from the present to the past, and argue that what Nature does to-day, she must have been capable of doing yesterday and the day before. Only thus can continuity of natural laws possibly be established. It would obviously be vain to argue that we must suppose no other forces ever to have acted than those we can observe, because, for all we know, other conditions may so have altered as to make their results altogether different from any of which we have experience.

      It is likewise manifest that if we are to speak of demonstrated facts, and of conclusions placed beyond rational possibility of doubt, proofs must be forthcoming sufficient to compel scientific assent.

      And here lies the difficulty. Very much must unquestionably have happened in the course of the world's making for which the Laws of Nature as we find them now acting cannot account, and which, therefore, Science cannot attempt to explain. So we are assured by eminent scientific men, – men, too, who desire nothing more than to find an explanation, but are driven, in search of one, as we have already seen Sir W. Crookes, to plead the limitation of our knowledge, and that there may be capabilities in Nature of which we are ignorant. But it remains always true, that what we do not know is not yet part of Science, and that if our scientific information, so far as it goes, is adverse to the Law of Continuity, it is quite unscientific to bring arguments for the law not from our knowledge, but from our lack of it. Still more unscientific is it to proclaim that Science has pronounced judgment in a sense contrary to that of all the evidence hitherto presented to her.

      Amongst the men of Science who testify as above, we may begin with Herr Du Bois-Reymond, an avowed Evolutionist and Materialist, whom Professor Haeckel styles, "the all-powerful secretary and dictator of the Berlin Academy of Sciences."44 He can be suspected of no prejudices which would prevent him from accepting Professor Haeckel's cosmogony, if only he found the evidence satisfactory. Far from this, however, he declares,45 that the history of the universe confronts us with no less than seven problems, for which Science has no solution to offer, and some of which he holds to be for ever insoluble. These he styles "Enigmas," and they are:

      (1) The nature of Matter and of Force.

      (2) The origin of Motion.

      (3) The origin of Life.

      (4) The apparently designed order of Nature.

      (5) The origin of sensation and consciousness.

      (6) The origin of rational thought and speech.

      (7) Free-will.

      The first, second, and fifth of these are in the opinion of Du Bois-Reymond "transcendental," or beyond possibility of solution. The others, in his judgment, have certainly not yet been solved, but perhaps may be solved some day. As to the last, he much doubts whether it should not also be classed as "transcendental."

      It thus appears that in the judgment of a competent witness, and one no-wise biassed by preconception or prejudice, so far from it being true that Professor Haeckel's story of the universe is imperiously imposed on us by the results of Science, not one but several great gulfs in the course of that history must have been bridged over somehow, which Science confesses she cannot bridge, so far as her present knowledge goes, that is to say, so far as she is Science at all.

      Professor Haeckel, it is true, loudly pronounces Du Bois-Reymond's declaration to be mere "dogmatism"СКАЧАТЬ