Iconoclasm Up To Date
Tins book consists of a series of essays and addresses, most of which were composed for special occasions. They deal with a considerable variety of subjects ranging from John Wilkes, Parliamentarian and Pioneer of Scientific Humanism, to Havelock Ellis, and from Race and Prejudice to Marxism and the Middle Classes. All are united by the single thread of Professor Hogben's preoccupation with the problem, how can society be so organised that the vast increase of potential benefit accruing from the advance of science may be made available for the amelioration of human life? His answer is, by a combination of socialism and what he calls "scientific humanism." How is this combination to be effected? In the last resort by a complete remodelling of our educational system. Most of the essays are, accordingly, directed either explicitly or implicitly to a criticism of our educational methods at schools and universities and in the W.E.A., which Professor Hogben censures as a pale reflection of the university teaching to which it snobbishly aspires.
Professor Hogben is extremely iconoclastic ; he touches nothing from which he does not strip the adornment. He is like a little boy left alone in a drawing room, who amuses himself by throwing stones at the ornaments on the mantel- piece, with the result that throughout the book the reader's ears are deafened by the sound of breaking china. He attacks Marxism and the creed of violence which Marxists preach, capitalism and parliamentary democracy, both of which, he is convinced, are doomed to early extinction, the teaching of history, and what he calls genteel Whiggery.
From all this destruction, what emerges? It is extremely difficult to say. Professor Hogben has won fame as a popular expositor of technical subjects, and Mathematics for the Million and Science for the Citizen have been eagerly absorbed by millions of citizens. I have not read these books, but from their reputation one would presume them to be well written and clearly expressed. One would not have deduced the fact from the present volume of essays. "The art of being interesting," Professor Hogben writes, "is more im- portant than the effort of being clear." Possibly, possibly not! But the reader cannot help wishing that Professor Hogben had been willing to put himself to the trouble-"p- f making the effort. There are too many sentences which have had to read several times in order to find out what they mean, while there are some whose meaning still escapes me.
Some are vaguely woolly, others so wittily allusive that their point disappears in the allusions. Here is one of each sort in immediate juxtaposition. First, the woolly : "The retreat" (" from the beehive city of competitive indus- trialism . . . into barbarism ") "will continue unless science can foster a lively recognition of the positive achievements of civilisa- tion by reinstating faith in a future of constructive effort."
- I call this " woolly " because by itself the expression "con- structive effort" means anything or nothing. Whether efforts are bad or good depends upon what is aimed at. Efforts, then, one wants to know, to achieve what? And how can science foster a "lively recognition" of the achievements which result from scientific effort? Science gives us wireless, but it is not science which fosters the enjoyment of the music one hears over the wireless.
Professor Hogben continues: "It will not be arrested by old-school-tie Socialists fresh from the exploits of the Oxford Union or by a radical intelligentsia whose social culture is a judicious blending of flexions and genu- flexions."
I have asked a number of people what this means, and they are as baffled as I am.
It may be said that it is unfair to select a sample pair of sentences, but it is not unfair if they are typical sentences. Moreover, there is another consideration which justifies the selection. Professor Hogben is bitterly opposed to education which is based upon the culture and civilisation of the Greeks. Among much that he censures in the Greeks, he particularly objects to their view that knowledge is a good in itself and that mathematics, science and philosophy should be pursued for their own sakes. He pokes polite fun at Plato's distinction between knowledge of first principles, which is pure and fit for gentlemen, and skill in their application in technology and craftmanship, which is the impure attribute of mechanics and slaves. Put like this, the distinction sotmds snobbish enough, and with much of Professor Hogben's attack on the teaching of Greats and Modern Greats at Oxford, which d3 not even conform to the standards of " snobbish " culture which they professedly invoke, but have become vocational courses_ for aspirants to the higher Civil Service and pro- fessions, one can agree. But what would Professor Hogben put in their place? As far as I can see, the answer is science and the applications of science. His argument is that in order that science may be given its due we must have a new philo- sophy of life and a new ordering of society ; but these, he insists, we shall not get until we have produced a new genen- tion whose education has been directed not to the pursuit of pure knowledge or to the appreciation of things that are beautiful, but to an understanding of the world in which we live with a view to changing it for the better. - And, when it has been understood and changed for the better, what then? What sort of society is it to be? Here Professor Hogben is exasperatingly vague. Yet if it is to be a civilised and cultivated and not a barbarous society, it Amust surely contain some who are prepared to pursue know,ledge and value culture. And since society ex hypothest has alfeady been changed, the knowledge and the culture can no 19riger be pursued and valued because of their relation to society and their tendency to improve. They must, then, be pursued and valued for themselves. It is the recogniticn by the Greeks of the truth that some things are valuable in and for themselves which constitutes the strength of their social philosophy ; it is ignorance of the same truth that constitutes the weakness of Professor Hogben's and the flaw in his attack upon the Greeks. Professor Hogben shows the need for a new society ; we can all do that. But when we press him for an indication of the pursuits of its members, he fails us.
C. E. M. JoAn.
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