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Science and Democracy
THERE is science and science ; and it is our bounden duty to be clear about the sort of science we have in mind when we talk about the application of science to any sort of human affairs. There is science in the great broad general sense, in which it means a method—a method of steady observation of all the facts ; a method of experimentation, wherever experimentation is possible, in order to increase the area of facts ; a method of accurate reasoning, based upon all the facts. This is "the cool, serious, gentle spirit of science" of which General Smuts has spoken ; and in this sense we may say with him that "we want to-day the scientific spirit in human affairs." Again, there is science in a narrower sense, in which it means the application of scientific method to some particular area of natural and material facts—the facts of Nature's inanimate matter, on which physics and chemistry are based ; or the facts of Nature's animate life, which are the basis of biological science. When we have settled this distinction, we can ask ourselves two questions. What can science in the broad sense—" the cool, serious, gentle spirit "—do for our human affairs ? And again what can science in the narrower sense, and especially biology, contribute to the improvement of social and political life ?
Plato was very clear that politics needed the direction of science in the great broad sense of the word. But Plato's science was a science of the eternal ideals which he thought to be the only realities ; and his "scientific expert" was .what we should call an idealist philosopher, who sought to rise, and to raise human affairs, above the mere level of facts (poor wavering reflections of true reality, like the bent image of your stick which you may see quivering in water) into the high heaven of ideal righteousness. The scientific expert of our days is of another pattern. He is the trained economist, statistician, observer, who watches his department of human affairs calmly and quietly in the mass, and can tell you, by his study of averages, the " normal " or "long run" ten- dencies resulting from a set of factors. Now, such a man may be an excellent mentor or check on the extravagant optimism, or the calculated pessimism, of the mere party politician. He brings a douche of the cool waters of science to every argument : he takes mere hopes and fears to the bed-rock of facts ; and scientific commissions composed of such persons should perhaps be yoked, in increasing degree, with our party politicians, in order to make democracy safe as well as vital, efficient as well as energetic. But we cannot, all *the same, expect science to be our saviour. Science is an excellent mentor and a very proper check ; but it goes no further. In the first place, science is not concerned with the ends or ideals which, after all, are the essence of govern- ment, the shining and guiding stars of human affairs. Science will tell you, or it may tell you, the tendencies which you may expect to result, in the long run, if you pursue such and such ends in such and such a concatenation of events. But it is you yourself—you, the politician, who are trying to guide your country—who must propose the ends ; it is you who must take upon yourself the solemn responsibility of saying, and trying to persuade your nation, "This is the good and the right thing to do, and this shall be an end of our national endeavour." You will take into account the scientific calculation of tendencies ; you will weigh it long and carefully ; but you will tell yourself that there are also tendencies and consequences—effects on the moral character, and gains or losses in the moral stature, of your nation—which you can calculate as well as, or even better than, the scientific expert ; and above all you will tell yourself that every choice of ends is in its nature an act of moral faith, an expression of moral conviction, on which a man must stake himself and his whole personality because the faith and conviction are burning within him. . . . But this is to talk as if ends were chosen by lonely individuals ; and that, as we all know, is not true in human affairs. We are brought, in this why, to a seeond consideration whieb bears on the relation of science, the cool, serious, gentle spirit of science," to the conduct of human affairs. The process of science, on the whole, is a process of individual thinking. One scientific expert may aid, or check, another, and in that sense there is collaboration ; but the process remains, in the main, individual. The process of social life is a process of collective thinking. The whole society moves and heaves, until it attains "the common "— the common mind, the common purpose, the eonunon end. In the realm of moral ends we must pay a supreme respect to this moving and heaving of a whole society. This process of movement—this fine, unconscious dialectic--this activity of social discussion—does it not, after all, issue in a truth, a kingdom of ends, which is the highest attainable truth and kingdom in the sphere of our secular life ? And has not the very process itself a value, apart from the results it attains, because it is a process to which we are all made to contribute, by being caught into its activity, and from which we all gain, in our inward being, by being made its partakers ? This perhaps is the fundamental reason why science can never, guide—though it well may aid—the thing, or the being, we call democracy.
But what of particular science—and herein especially of biological science ? Biology, adopting for the purpose of its mission the name of eugenics, is tending to become something of a social apostle. It is ready to prescribe a social end, which goes by the name of " fitness " ; and it is willing to suggest, as means to this end, a social policy of encouraging the propagation of the fit and discouraging that of the unfit. "Fitness" is a blessed word, which covers a whole delta of meanings. Students as they are of the natural world, in which life is simply material life and no moral questions arise; biologists are prone to interpret this " fitness " of theirs as just fitness for the purposes of material life, or in other words, pure physical health. That is what we look for in horses ; and if we argue from horses to men, that will be what we look for in men. Now, it is undoubtedly a good thing that men should be healthy, and it is equally a good thing that social policy should be directed to securing the conditions of public health. But, it is quite another thing ta suggest that social policy should be so pivoted on fitness that it seeks to affect the process of the reproduction of its members. The human world is not an animal world. Men are curiously associated dyads of soul and body. What would be unfitness in an animal may conceivably be a remark- able degree of fitness—fitness for social life and social contri- bution—in a human being. Every human society is linked together by moral bonds ; and these bonds are the most valuable things in any society. We cannot treat a human society as a sum of physical units, which should be physically fit : we must treat it as a moral order, and we must accordingly estimate the fitness of its members, in the last resort, in moral terms. It is here that we need the true and broad scientific habit of mind which looks at the "long" run tendencies of action, and looks at them all round. In a paradox, we may say that biological science—at any rate of the eugenic variety—needs an importation of science, "the cool, serious, gentle spirit of science," which sees life steadily, and sees it whole.
Can science be reconciled with democracy, or is science in its essence authoritarian ? In its deeper and broader manifestation, we may say, science can certainly be reconciled with democracy ; it can be a Mentor to the young Telemachus, who, all the same, has to find his own way. But in its par- ticular branches, we may perhaps say that science sometimes forgets that it deals with the physical, and tries to run into a world to which it does not belong. Nor do scientists always remember that the processes of social reasoning may be rational, and their conclusions valid, even if they do not follow the canons, and are not based on the lectors, which
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