Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Volume II. Spencer Herbert

through the second, but also directly – it is directly instrumental with respect to the third, and the third supplies it directly with subject-matter. Their relations can thus only be truly shown by branches diverging from a common root on different sides, in such a way that each stands in juxta-position to the other two. And only by a like mode of arrangement, can the relations among the sub-divisions of each group be correctly represented.

      The foregoing exposition, highly abstract as it is, will by some readers be less readily followed than a more concrete one. With the view of carrying conviction to such I will re-state the case in two ways: the first of them adapted only to those who accept the doctrine of Evolution in its most general form.

      We set out with concentrating nebulous matter. Tracing the re-distributions of this, as the rotating contracting spheroid leaves behind successive annuli and as these severally form secondary rotating spheroids, we come at length to planets in their early stages. Thus far we consider the phenomena dealt with purely astronomical; and so long as our Earth, regarded as one of these spheroids, was made up of gaseous and molten matters only, it presented no data for any more complex Concrete Science. In the lapse of cosmical time a solid film forms, which, in the course of millions of years, thickens, and, in the course of further millions of years, becomes cool enough to permit the precipitation, first of various other gaseous compounds, and finally of water. Presently, the varying exposure of different parts of the spheroid to the Sun’s rays, begins to produce appreciable effects; until at length there have arisen meteorological actions, and consequent geological actions, such as those we now know: determined partly by the Sun’s heat, partly by the still-retained internal heat of the Earth, and partly by the action of the Moon on the ocean? How have we reached these geological phenomena? When did the astronomical changes end and the geological changes begin? It needs but to ask this question to see that there is no real division between the two. Putting pre-conceptions aside, we find nothing more than a group of phenomena continually complicating under the influence of the same original factors; and we see that our conventional division is defensible only on grounds of convenience. Let us advance a stage. As the Earth’s surface continues to cool, passing through all degrees of temperature by infinitesimal gradations, the formation of more and more complex inorganic compounds becomes possible. Later, its surface sinks to that heat at which the less complex compounds of the kinds called organic can exist; and, finally, the formation of the more complex organic compounds takes place. Chemists now show us that these compounds may be built up synthetically in the laboratory – each stage in ascending complexity making possible the next higher stage. Hence it is inferable that, in the myriads of laboratories, endlessly diversified in their materials and conditions, which the Earth’s surface furnished during the myriads of years occupied in passing through these stages of temperature, such successive syntheses were effected; and that the highly complex unstable substance out of which all organisms are composed, was eventually formed in microscopic portions: from which, by continuous integrations and differentiations, the evolution of all organisms has proceeded. Where then shall we draw the line between Geology and Biology? The synthesis of this most complex compound, is but a continuation of the syntheses by which all simpler compounds were formed. The same primary factors have been co-operating with those secondary factors, meteorologic and geologic, previously derived from them. Nowhere do we find a break in the ever-complicating series; for there is a manifest connexion between those movements which various complex compounds undergo during their isomeric transformations, and those changes of form undergone by the protoplasm which we distinguish as living. Strongly contrasted as they eventually become, biological phenomena are at their root inseparable from geological phenomena – inseparable from the aggregate of transformations continually wrought in the matters forming the Earth’s surface by the physical forces to which they are exposed. Further stages I need not particularize. The gradual development out of the biological group of phenomena, of the more specialized group we class as psychological, needs no illustration. And when we come to the highest psychological phenomena, it is clear that since aggregations of human beings may be traced upwards from single wandering families to tribes and nations of all sizes and complexities, we pass insensibly from the phenomena of individual human action to those of corporate human action. To resume, then, is it not manifest that in the group of sciences – Astronomy, Geology, Biology, Psychology, Sociology, we have a natural group that admits neither of disruption nor change of order? Here there is both a genetic dependence, and a dependence of interpretations. The phenomena have arisen in this succession in cosmical time; and complete scientific interpretation of each group depends on scientific interpretation of the preceding groups. No other science can be thrust in anywhere without destroying the continuity. To insert Physics between Astronomy and Geology, would be to make a break in the history of a continuous series of changes; and a like break would be produced by inserting Chemistry between Geology and Biology. It is true that Physics and Chemistry are needful as interpreters of these successive assemblages of facts; but it does not therefore follow that they are themselves to be placed among these assemblages.

      Concrete Science, made up of these five concrete sub-sciences, being thus coherent within itself, and separated from all other science, there comes the question – Is all other science similarly coherent within itself? or is it traversed by some second division that is equally decided? It is thus traversed. A statical or dynamical theorem, however simple, has always for its subject-matter something that is conceived as extended, and as displaying force or forces – as being a seat of resistance, or of tension, or of both, and as capable of possessing more or less of vis viva. If we examine the simplest proposition of Statics, we see that the conception of Force must be joined with the conception of Space, before the proposition can be framed in thought; and if we similarly examine the simplest proposition in Dynamics, we see that Force, Space, and Time, are its essential elements. The amounts of the terms are indifferent; and, by reduction of its terms beyond the limits of perception, they are applied to molecules: Molar Mechanics and Molecular Mechanics are continuous. From questions concerning the relative motions of two or more molecules, Molecular Mechanics passes to changes of aggregation among many molecules, to changes in the amounts and kinds of the motions possessed by them as members of an aggregate, and to changes of the motions transferred through aggregates of them, as those constituting light. Daily extending its range of interpretations, it is coming to deal even with the components of each compound molecule on the same principles. And the unions and disunions of such more or less compound molecules, which constitute the phenomena of Chemistry, are also being conceived as resultant phenomena of essentially kindred natures – the affinities of molecules for one another, and their reactions in relation to light, heat, and other modes of force, being regarded as consequent on the combinations of the various mechanically-determined motions of their various components. Without at all out-running, however, this progress in the mechanical interpretation of molecular phenomena, it suffices to point out that the indispensable elements in any chemical conception are units occupying places in space, and exerting forces on one another. This, then, is the common character of all these sciences which we at present group under the names of Mechanics, Physics, Chemistry. Leaving undiscussed the question whether it is possible to conceive of force apart from extended somethings exerting it, we may assert, as beyond dispute, that if the conception of force be expelled, no science of Mechanics, Physics, or Chemistry remains. Made coherent, as these sciences are, by this bond of union, it is impossible to thrust among them any other science without breaking their continuity. We cannot place Logic between Molar Mechanics and Molecular Mechanics. We cannot place Mathematics between the group of propositions concerning the behaviour of homogeneous molecules to one another, and the group of propositions concerning the behaviour of heterogeneous molecules to one another (which we call Chemistry). Clearly these two sciences lie outside the coherent whole we have contemplated; separated from it in some radical way.

      By what are they radically separated? By the absence of the conception of force through which alone we know objects as existing or acting. However true it may be that so long as Logic and Mathematics have any terms at all, these must be capable of affecting consciousness, and, by implication, of exerting force; yet it is the distinctive trait of these sciences that not only do their propositions make no reference to such force, but, as far as possible, they deliberately ignore it. Instead of being, as in all the other sciences, an element that is not only recognized but vital; in Mathematics and Logic, force is an element that is not only not vital, but is studiously not recognized. The terms