Freedom in Science and Teaching. - Ernst Haeckel (mobi reader txt) 📗

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Title: Freedom in Science and Teaching.
       from the German of Ernst Haeckel

Author: Ernst Haeckel
        T. H. Huxley

Release Date: June 6, 2008 [EBook #25711]

Language: English


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FREEDOM IN SCIENCE AND TEACHING. FREEDOM IN SCIENCE AND TEACHING. FROM THE GERMAN OF ERNST HAECKEL.

WITH A PREFATORY NOTE

By T. H. HUXLEY, F.R.S.

Der Teleolog

"Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenschöpfer der gnädig.
Als er den Korkbaum schuf, gleich auch die Stöpfel erfand."
Xenien.

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
549 AND 551 BROADWAY.
1879.

PREFATORY NOTE.

In complying with the wish of the publishers of Professor Haeckel's reply to Professor Virchow, that I should furnish a prefatory note expressing my own opinion in respect of the subject-matter of the controversy, Gay's homely lines, prophetic of the fate of those "who in quarrels interpose," emerge from some brain-cupboard in which they have been hidden since my childish days. In fact, the hard-hitting with which both the attack and the defence abound, makes me think with a shudder upon the probable sufferings of the unhappy man whose intervention should lead two such gladiators to turn their weapons from one another upon him. In my youth, I once attempted to stop a street fight, and I have never forgotten the brief but impressive lesson on the value of the policy of non-intervention which I then received.

But there is, happily, no need for me to place myself in a position which, besides being fraught with danger, would savour of presumption: Careful study of both the attack and the reply leaves me without the inclination to become either a partisan or a peacemaker: not a partisan, for there is a great deal with which I fully agree said on both sides; not a peacemaker, because I think it is highly desirable that the important questions which underlie the discussion, apart from the more personal phases of the dispute, should be thoroughly discussed. And if it were possible to have controversy without bitterness in human affairs, I should be disposed, for the general good, to use to both of the eminent antagonists the famous phrase of a late President of the French Chamber—"Tape dessus."

No profound acquaintance with the history of science is needed to produce the conviction, that the advancement of natural knowledge has been effected by the successive or concurrent efforts of men, whose minds are characterised by tendencies so opposite that they are forced into conflict with one another. The one intellect is imaginative and synthetic; its chief aim is to arrive at a broad and coherent conception of the relations of phenomena; the other is positive, critical, analytic, and sets the highest value upon the exact determination and statement of the phenomena themselves.

If the man of the critical school takes the pithy aphorism "Melius autem est naturam secare quam abstrahere"[1] for his motto, the champion of free speculation may retort with another from the same hand, "Citius enim emergit veritas e falsitate quam e confusione;"[2] and each may adduce abundant historical proof that his method has contributed as much to the progress of knowledge as that of his rival. Every science has been largely indebted to bold, nay, even to wild hypotheses, for the power of ordering and grasping the endless details of natural fact which they confer; for the moral stimulus which arises out of the desire to confirm or to confute them; and last, but not least, for the suggestion of paths of fruitful inquiry, which, without them, would never have been followed. From the days of Columbus and Kepler to those of Oken, Lamarck, and Boucher de Perthes, Saul, who, seeking his father's asses, found a kingdom, is the prototype of many a renowned discoverer who has lighted upon verities while following illusions, which, had they deluded lesser men, might possibly have been considered more or less asinine.

On the other hand, there is no branch of science which does not owe at least an equal obligation to those cool heads, which are not to be seduced into the acceptance of symmetrical formulæ and bold generalisations for solid truths because of their brilliancy and grandeur; to the men who cannot overlook those small exceptions and insignificant residual phenomena which, when tracked to their causes, are so often the death of brilliant hypotheses; to the men, finally, who, by demonstrating the limits to human knowledge which are set by the very conditions of thought, have warned mankind against fruitless efforts to overstep those limits.

Neither of the eminent men of science, whose opinions are at present under consideration, can be said to be a one-sided representative either of the synthetic or of the analytic school. Haeckel, no less than Virchow, is distinguished by the number, variety, and laborious accuracy of his contributions to positive knowledge; while Virchow, no less than Haeckel, has dealt in wide generalisations, and, until the obscurantists thought they could turn his recent utterances to account, no one was better abused by them as a typical free-thinker and materialist. But, as happened to the two women grinding at the same mill, one has been taken and the other left. Since the publication of his famous oration, Virchow has been received into the bosom of orthodoxy and respectability, while Haeckel remains an outcast!

To those who pay attention to the actual facts of the case, this is a very surprising event; and I confess that nothing has ever perplexed me more than the reception which Professor Virchow's oration has met with, in his own and in this country; for it owes that reception, not to the undoubted literary and scientific merits which it possesses, but to an imputed righteousness for which, so far as I can discern, it offers no foundation. It is supposed to be a recantation; I can find no word in it which, if strictly construed, is inconsistent with the most extreme of those opinions which are commonly attributed to its author. It is supposed to be a deadly blow to the doctrine of evolution; but, though I certainly hold by that doctrine with some tenacity, I am able, ex animo, to subscribe to every important general proposition which its author lays down.

In commencing his address, Virchow adverts to the complete freedom of investigation and publication in regard to scientific questions which obtains in Germany; he points out the obligation which lies upon men of science, even if for no better reason than the maintenance of this state of things, to exhibit a due sense of the responsibility which attaches to their speaking and writing, and he dwells on the necessity of drawing a clear line of demarcation between those propositions which they have a fair right to regard as established truths, and those which they know to be only more or less well-founded speculations. Is any one prepared to deny that this is the first great commandment of the ethics of teaching? Would any responsible scientific teacher like to admit that he had not done his best to separate facts from hypotheses in the minds of his hearers; and that he had not made it his chief business to enable those whom he instructs to judge the latter by their knowledge of the former?

More particularly does this obligation weigh upon those who address the general public. It is indubitable, as Professor Virchow observes, that "he who speaks to, or writes for, the public is doubly bound to test the objective truth of that which he says." There is a sect of scientific pharisees who thank God that they are not as those publicans who address the public. If this sect includes anybody who has attempted the business without failing in it, I suspect that he must have given up keeping a conscience. For assuredly if a man of science, addressing the public, bethinks him, as he ought to do, that the obligation to be accurate—to say no more than he has warranty for, without clearly marking off so much as is hypothetical—is far heavier than if he were dealing with experts, he will find his task a very admirable mental exercise. For my own part, I am inclined to doubt whether there is any method of self-discipline better calculated to clear up one's own ideas about a difficult subject, than that which arises out of the effort to put them forth, with fulness and precision, in language which all the world can understand. Sheridan is said to have replied to some one who remarked on the easy flow of his style, "Easy reading, sir, is—hard writing;" and any one who is above the level of a scientific charlatan will know that easy speaking is "——hard thinking."

Again, when Professor Virchow enlarges on the extreme incompleteness of every man's knowledge beyond those provinces which he has made his own (and he might well have added within these also), and when he dilates on the inexpediency, in the interests of science, of putting forth as ascertained truths propositions which the progress of knowledge soon upsets—who will be disposed to gainsay him? Nor have I, for one, anything but cordial assent to give to his declaration, that the modern development of science is essentially due to the constant encroachment of experiment and observation on the domain of hypothetical dogma; and that the most difficult, as well as the most important, object of every honest worker is "sich ent-subjectiviren"—to get rid of his preconceived notions, and to keep his hypotheses well in hand, as the good servants and bad masters that they are.

I do not think I have omitted any one of Professor Virchow's main theses in this brief enumeration. I do not find that they are disputed by Haeckel, and I should be profoundly astonished if they were. What, then, is all the coil about, if we leave aside various irritating sarcasms, which need not concern peaceable Englishmen? Certainly about nothing that touches the present main issues of scientific thought. The "plastidule-soul" and the potentialities of carbon may be sound scientific conceptions, or they may be the reverse, but they are no necessary part of the doctrine of evolution, and I leave their defence to Professor Haeckel.

On the question of equivocal generation, I have been compelled, more conspicuously and frequently than I could wish, during the last ten years, to enunciate exactly the same views as those put forward by Professor Virchow; so that, to my mind, at any rate, the denial that any such process has as yet been proved to take place in the existing state of nature, as little affects the general doctrine.[3]

With respect to another side issue, raised by Professor Virchow, he appears to me to be entirely in the wrong. He is careful to say that he has no unwillingness to accept the descent of man from some lower form of vertebrate life; but, reminding us of the special attention which, of late years, he has given to anthropology, he affirms that such evidence as exists is not only insufficient to support that hypothesis, but is contrary to it. "Every positive progress which we have made in the region of prehistoric anthropology has removed us further from the demonstration of this relation."

Well, I also have studied anthropological questions in my time; and I feel bound to remark, that this assertion of Professor Virchow's appears to me to be a