The Pocket Baedeker to Modem Thought Guide to Modem Thought.
By C. E. M. Joad. (Faber and Faber. 6s.) GUIDE-800s to the countries of the mind are not so easy to obtain as those to other countries, which may be one of the reasons why the travellers there are so few. Mr. Joad. has here attempted to give the tired business man or the graduate-in-the-street a satisfactory orienting account of the topography of modern thought in Western Europe and. America, to indicate to him the best routes and the pleasantest hotels, and to warn him of some of the dangers attending unguided excursions there. The guide-book opens with a not inaccurate description of nineteenth-century materialism or scientific naturalism, and then passes at once to what Mr. Joad calls modern materialism, but what is, in effect, the conclusion of the behaviourists, whether of the school of Watson or Pavlov. Here his guidance seems sure and he does not attempt to disguise his conviction that whereas behaviourism as a media operandi in psychology is satis- factory, as a philosophical doctrine it is self-contradictory, since it can give no reason why it should be truer itself than any other doctrine.
We are next conducted to the world of modern physics,. and pass through the observatories and laboratories to the accompaniment of judicious comments from the guide,: whose final verdict on the metaphysical speculations of certain modern physicists is that idealism may very well be true, but that if it is, modern science affords no new reasons for thinking it to be so. We are here given a good and plain treatment of such questions as the abstractive character of scientific method, the implications of quantum mechanics, the second law of thermodynamics, and the physicist's account of perception. A reviewer may, however, be permitted a cry of pain_ at the guide's capitulation to ti at. irritating habit, now so common, of speaking of mathematical formulations as " mysterious " (p. 64). Mathematics .do. not create mystery, they abolish it, and they only seem to be mysterious in the sense that a Greek .newspaper seems mysterious to those who can only read English. Whe,‘ further, the mathematical formulation is " reified" or put into metaphor—a habit for •which Sir Arthur Eddins-ban is unfortunately largely responsible—confusion - becernes worse confounded, and the circumlocutions of common-. sense laiiguage are accused of being absurd or mysterious. Still, the t.b.m. may feel fairly safe with Mr. Joad on physics..
It is a pity, however, that the guide-honk was not prefaced. by. Abp., aradshavian comment that the. compilers lake no responsibility. for. inaccuracies due to alteration of the time. tables. , For when we come to, biology,. Hermes stumbles, and the unsuspecting traveller is diatinetly in. danger of missing the 'bus or taking the wrong one. Mr. toad's rather out-of-date vitalistic prejudices lead to a concentration on emergence, hormism, Bergson and Drieseh, with the result that his section on the "philosophical significance of modern biology " is thoroughly misleading. His easy assumption that the principle of organization in living matter must be something immaterial and soul-like that cannot be dealt with according, to scientific method is deplorable in the extreme. His errors here are probably due to an under- valuation of Whitehead's philosophy, and hence an ignorance of, e.g., Kohler's Anorganische Gestalten. Nor can recent criticism permit of so important a place for the theory of emergence. It must be admitted, however, that a kind of caveat is introduced as " author's bias " on page 108, but while this may save Hermes from blame, it will hardly save the souls from error.
With the transition from biology to psychic investigations, We tread on surer ground again, and the treatment of modem psychic research is much to be commended. Still more valuable is the long section on psycho-analysis and its effects on modern thought. Mr. Joad does a great service to his charges in pointing out how far-reaching is the effect of a fundamental belief in a vast unconscious or sub-conscious underlying and conditioning the conscious life of ratiocination. Reason is sapped in the modem world, and argument is dead, for opinions contrary to our own are explained psychologically, not answered. The whole of literature, as Mr. Joad shows, is invaded by this attitude through the psychological novel, possibly to its detriment, and certainly to the detriment of the common reader. But the argument which holds against Behaviourism holds also against Psycho-Analysis in so far as these doctrines are treated as ultimate. " If the psycho- analyst," says the modern Virgil, addressing his party on the edge of the abyss, " can reason disinterestedly in accordance with fact, so can other people." Reason cannot always be the mere tool of instinct. But as yet we lack a principle enabling us to distinguish the cases in which it is working freely from those in which it is not.
Prospective rubber-necks purchasing round-trip tickets will doubtless wish to know how much Virgil leaves out. The answer, it must be confessed, is not a little, Though living in 1933 he can treat of materialism without so much as a mention of dialectical materialism. Referring to religion from time to time, he can omit completely all mention of such thinkers as- Otto and Tennant, though why they should be considered as of less importance than non-theological thinkers remains obscure. The East is represented by a single passing reference to " yogi." But none of these drawbacks, severe though they may be, should deter the traveller from putting his Joad in his pocket. There is no other such guide available. He will catch the right train much more often than the wrong one, and when he has worked through his Joad, he will be able to make up its deficiencies on his second visit. Let us hope for thirty editions in the next thirty years, and crowded boat-trains for more and better thought.
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