C. Lloyd Morgan

“ For Spencer, as for M. Bergson, we live in a world of change. But neither is content to accept changes as facts to be linked up within a scheme of scientific interpretation. Both must seek their Source. Now to inquire into the Source or Sources of phenomena is characteristic of man as thinker. And if, in common with those whom I follow, I regard this quest as beyond the limits of science, I am well aware that such delimitation of fields of inquiry is by no means universally accepted. ”

“ Just because Spencer's interpretation is all-inclusive; because biology, psychology, sociology, ethics are, broadly considered, concerned only with incidents of the later scenes of the great mechanical drama of evolution. Are we not again and again bidden, now in forecast, now in retrospect, to look below the surface, and constantly to bear in mind that the aim of philosophy, as completely unified knowledge, is 'the interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force'? [12] It is true that the affairs of the mind give pause and seem to present something of a difficulty. ”

“ For the terms in which an answer must be given are incommensurable with the concepts with which science has elected to carry on its business as interpreter of nature. To this question therefore the man of science, speaking for his order, simply replies: We do not know. Is this, then, Spencer's answer? Far from it. The man of science here makes, or should make, no positive assertion, save in respect of the limits of his field of inquiry. If you beg him to tell you what that which he knows not is, or does, he regards such a question as meaningless. ”

“ I do not mean, of course, that there is any lack of analysis—and of very penetrating analysis—in the Psychology, the Biology, the Sociology, and the Ethics. I mean that in First Principles, which must be regarded as his general survey of the philosophy of science, there is no searching analysis of the salient types of relationship which enter into the texture of this very complex world. Such omnibus words as differentiation, integration, segregation, do duty in various connexions with convenient elasticity of meaning to suit the occasion. ”

“ Just as, in the very extended sense of the word 'knowledge', the earth knows, in gravitative fashion, the whole solar system, as does also any one of the planets, so, in the restricted sense, is knowledge co-extensive with all that is, selectively, in cognitive relationship with the organism or that part of the organism which is the locus of awareness. I speak here of the locus of awareness in just the same sense as I might speak of the earth as a locus of gravitative knowledge of the solar system. The locus of awareness is just a specialized portion of the whole relational web. ”

“ It is questionable whether any form of cognition, properly so called, is possible in their absence. Now I see no objection to labelling the fact (if it be a fact) that the cognitive process implies a physiological process in which, as in a larger whole, the cortex plays its appropriate part, by the use of some such convenient correlation-word as psycho-physical; but only so long as this does not involve a doctrine of parallelism; so long as it merely means that cognition implies, let us say, certain underlying cortical changes. Of course it implies a great deal more than cortical process only ”

“ One could wish, too, that he had devoted his great powers of thought to a searching discussion of the different types of relatedness which are found in nature, and to a fuller consideration of a synthetic scheme of their inter-relatedness. It is imperative that our thought of relations should have a concrete backing. 'Every act of knowing', says Spencer, 'is the formation of a relation in consciousness answering to a relation in the environment.' But the knowledge-relations are of so very special a type ”

“ I have confined my attention to the cognitive type of relatedness. Other higher modes supervene when the course of evolution is traced further upwards. Indeed, cognition is only part of the underlying basis implied by the richer forms of distinctively human relational life. Spencer has much to say of them in his Sociology and his Ethics, though he fails to realize that the phenomena he is dealing with involve essentially new constitutive features in man and in society. Can music or any form of art be discussed in terms of cognition only? ”

“ Now in criticizing Spencer, M. Bergson says:
'The usual device of the Spencerian method consists in reconstructing evolution with the fragments of the evolved.... It is not however by dividing the evolved that we shall reach the principle of that which evolves. It is not by recomposing the evolved with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which it is the term.' [23]
But does Spencer ever suggest that we shall thus reach the principle of that which evolves—by which, if I mistake not, M. Bergson means the Source of evolution? ”

“ For M. Bergson, as for Spencer, it is unknowable by the intellect—it can only be known by what M. Bergson calls intuition. For both thinkers, the intellect provides only a world of symbols; and Spencer's transfigured realism may be matched by what Dr. Wildon Carr calls M. Bergson's transformed realism. [24] So long as we are dealing with the evolved—which is that with which alone science attempts to deal—Spencer, M. Bergson, and the rest [14] of us are in like case. We must stumble on intellectually with our symbols as best we may. ”

“ Since, however, the philosophy of science deals only with the knowable—of which the so-called appearances with which we have direct acquaintance are the primary data—we need not here trouble ourselves with the controversy between realists and symbolists. Even on Spencer's view the world as symbolized is the real world for science. ”

“ But of course if a field of cognitive relatedness be regarded as a complex whole, any part may be related to the rest, and the rest to any part. That kind of self-awareness—if we must so call it!—is eminently characteristic of cognition in the higher forms of its development. On these terms cognition is aware of itself—though the mode of statement savours of ambiguity.
Let us next ask whether there is awareness of the underlying cortical process. If we are speaking of direct awareness, apparently not. ”

“ It seems plain enough that Spencer distinguishes, or seeks to distinguish, between those knowable effects which we call natural phenomena and their Unknowable Cause or Source. And this seems to be in line with the distinction which his critic, M. Bergson, draws between 'the evolved which is a result' and 'evolution itself, which is the act by which the result is obtained'. [22] An act implies an agent, and the agency of which the evolved is a manifestation is for M. Bergson Life, while for Spencer it is that very vigorous agency—the Unknowable. ”

“ With Spencer we have never done with the Unknowable, the Unconditioned Reality and the other aliases by which it goes. His persistence of force is the persistence of Unknowable Force. In a leading passage, at any rate, it is avowedly 'the persistence of some Cause which transcends our knowledge and conception. In asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality without beginning or end'. [16] There must, he holds, be something at the back of the evolutionary drama which we study—something that [11] is both a principle of activity and a permanent nexus. ”

“ Another very important point is that cognitive relatedness is effective. By this I mean that just as, when the earth is in gravitative relation to the sun and the other planets (the constitution of nature being what it is) , changes take place because the parts of the system as a whole are in this field of effective relatedness; so too, when the organism is in cognitive relation to its environment, changes in this system also take place just because a part of the whole system is in cognitive relatedness to the rest of the system. ”

“ Preserving the spirit of Spencer's teaching we must regard all modes of relatedness which are disclosed by scientific research as part and parcel of the constitution of nature, from whatever Source, knowable or unknowable, that constitution be derived. ”

“ Only by shutting one's eyes to the light that had been shed on the world by evolution could one fail to see how simple and yet how inevitable was the whole business.
If then differentiation be the cardinal law of evolution—for the correlative concept of integration receives no emphasis in this early essay—does not the universality of the law imply a universal cause? Just as gravitation was assignable as a cause of each of the groups of phenomena which Kepler formulated ”

“ But, whereas gravitative knowledge is reciprocal—the sun knowing the earth in the same fashion as the earth knows the sun—cognitive knowledge is not reciprocal. My cognitive awareness of a spinning-top does not imply that the spinning-top is in like manner aware of me. The part knows the whole in a way that the whole does not know the part. The relationship of the part to the rest of the whole is not reciprocal or symmetrical. This we must just accept as a given feature of cognitive relatedness. ”

“ And can we say that this conception is useless for scientific interpretation? I suppose most of us, in our student days, have passed through the phase of regarding energy as an active demon which plays a notorious part in the physical drama. Spencer loved it dearly. But some of us, under what we consider wiser guidance, hold that what we should understand by kinetic energy is nothing of this sort. It is a constant ratio of variables, conveniently expressed as 1/2mv2. That, however, it may be said, is absurd. Energy is not merely a ratio or a formula; it is something much more real ”

“ Revert now to the empirical outcome of scientific research, for as such I regard it, that new constitutive properties emerge when new modes and types of relatedness occur, and when new products are successively formed in evolutional synthesis. This, it will be said, involves the acceptance of what is now commonly called creative evolution. I am far from denying that, in the universe of discourse where Source is under consideration, the adjective is justifiable. But, in the universe of [30] discourse of science, I regard it as inappropriate. What we have is just plain evolution ”

“ The essential point to bear in mind is that the cognitive relation always involves relatedness of many terms, and that its discussion involves the analysis of what, in the higher phases of its existence, is probably the most complex natural occurrence in this complex world. ”

“ The parts get more different from each other, and they also get more effectively connected with each other; the individual whole gets more different from its environment, and it also preserves and extends its connexion with the environment; the several individuals get more different from others, while their connexion with others is retained and new connexions are established. Nowadays these central ideas may seem familiar enough; but that is just because Spencer's thought has been so completely assimilated. ”

“ It will perhaps be said that this emphasis on the philosophy of life and mind does scant justice to the range and sweep of Spencer's philosophy as a whole; and no doubt others will contend that the emphasis should be laid elsewhere; on the mechanical foundations; on evolution as a universal principle. It will be urged that Spencer widened to men's view the scope of scientific explanation. He proclaimed 'the gradual growth of all things by natural processes out of natural antecedents'. ”

“ For if, beyond the physico-chemical, a special agency be invoked to account for the presence of new constitutive properties, then, in the name of logical consistency, let us invoke special agencies to account for the constitutive properties within the physico-chemical—for radio-active properties for example. If a Source of phenomena be postulated, why not postulate One Source of all [29] phenomena from the very meanest to the very highest? There remains the case of C—the synthetic whole in which cognitive relatedness obtains. This is unquestionably more difficult of scientific interpretation. ”