Material Humanism
Foa the last fifty years and more, as many generalisations have been made on scientists as on almost any other group of professional workers in the world ; on the principle, apparently, that the men who produce something startling and important must be startling and important in themselveS. Mr. Wells, who would have seen through the convention it had not been a necessary part of his World's Progress, (lid a good deal towards developing the legend of those troglodyte intelligences, in their pince-nez and unspotted potted white coats, with their childlike integrity of heart and superhuman detachment of mind. The legend is, on the whole, a flattering one ; some scientists have almost come to believe in it themselves. As a matter of fact, though, it has a peculiar silliness all its own, as well as the general inadequacy that belongs to collective judgements about professions or races or anything else ; it begins by being founded on a picture of a human being fantastically impossible . for any individual, let alone a group ; and then it goes on to the added absurdity of obscuring the most valuable contribution of the scientific process itself. For the point about science is not that it has to be done by archangels, but that it is fool- proof, in the long run, for ordinary fallible men ; it is, as someone said not long ago, the only human activity where first-rate work is commonly done by people of exceptional stupidity. The detached intelligence which is part of the legend and admired from outside with an almost superstitious awe happens to be supplied by the organisation of the scientific process and not by the people who perform it. ,These may be as fair-minded as Faraday or as cloudily megalomaniac as Stark, the high-priest of Nazi physics ; in the course of time it will not matter, so long as there are enough of them doing research and the game is played according to the rules.
Scientists are actually as difficult to generalise about as most people. If you go to a scientific conference, you will find
.,an.-assembly,. of ram ..from -different classes, . _different mentalitieS, tastes, habits, aspirations and private lives.
You would be able to make a few qualified statements after this pattern : there would be less believers in organised religion than in any other kind of professional gathering, although a number would accept their religious faith intact; -there-would be more people on the political right than in a similar collection of writers (though here, rather oddly, - - would you would find strange differences from subject to subject : thus biochemists include a large body of left-wing opinion, while most pure chemists stay stolidly on the right); there would be few people—it might surprise you how few—who had any urgent conscience about the social applications of the scientific system of which they were a part.
Among them, however, you might discover several with a set of convictions that will perhaps become common soon— which indeed have already become common in Russia and which may be summarised in the name " material humanism." If one were going to form a new legend about scientists, it would probably be to those who follow this code that one would turn for models ; it would be a trifle less fantastic than the Wellsian, for there do exist a handful of scientists here and there who are somewhere near believing in it. Of their faith Professor Fur- nas's book is an exposition both passionate and sensible. He knows his facts, at least those which are relevant to his inter- ests ; he is, in a sensible way, distressed that three per cent. of Americans are feeble minded, or that the common cold costs America two thousand million dollars a year ; -he puts down what is known of the physical causes ; he proceeds to the prevention which may be expected from the scientific know- ledge of the next hundred years. In the same way he goes through biology, chemistry, physics and engineering, conscious always of how much better our material state could be, well- informed on the knowledge that already exists (some of his descriptions are brilliant, and the best things in the book), eager that everything shall be done to enlarge it. He draws a picture of a world altered materially in a short time, by science aided by social goodwill ; like the reasonable man he is, he has his doubts about the goodwill. His prophecies are not as vivid as his diagnoses ; he has not quite the constructive imagination of Wells or J. D. Bernal, and at times he under- estimates the duration of a hundred years in science ; it is a further cry from Faraday to Dirac, or from Berzelius to Robinson, than from the present to almost any of the dis- coveries he forecasts.
But it is a stimulating book, and a courageous and pleasant personality shines through it ; so that one forgives him the occasional provincialism (" To the Oxford or Cambridge man chemistry is stinks ' and is as odious as the term implies ") and the maddening facetiousness that probably is not so much his fault as a real linguistic difference between Americans and English, the difference between over-; and under-statement, perhaps equally irritating to each. It deserves reading, both for its own sake and because ofthe view of life that it expresses ; because if scientists ever take an active part in social life, it will be done in that spirit and by men like Fumas. They will not have much patience with the metaphysics of Eddington or the psychological complexities that some of us find it necessary to explore. They will not even have much use for science for science's sake : Furnas has some hard words to say about academic physics, as a pastime for classical Greeks and schoolmen. They will be too intelligent (as Furnas is) to ignore the interplay between body and mind.; but they will prefer to make the body healthy, and give it comfort and leisure, and trust that the mind will, as a result, find its own content. They will scorn the sentimentalities of liberal humanism, and want to set to_ work immediately to make an equitable division of the material potentialities of the world. They will have the bluntness, the omniscience, the steam=roller progress of J. B. S. Haldane, who is indeed their spiritual leader. Theirs is the material world, theirs is science and common sense ; many of us will not like all their aims, and yet, until we can arrange our values not to interfere with their generous and irresistible demands, they have the right to ask us for alternatives.
- C. P. Sow.
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