THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20251, 10 May 1929, Page 14

THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE.

Sir, —The thing that, struck me in your quotation from Prbfessor Bridgman, of Harvard, was the absurdity of thinking that, because physical science cannot at present penetrate any farther than electrons, there is therefore nothing beyond. Professor Eddington, in tho preface to his Gifford lectures, speaks of the "wider significance which- transcends scientific measurement"; and the Dean of St. Paul's has recently warned us not to let the scientific (physics) view of the world dominato us to the exclusion of other points of view derived from religion, • morality and art, which arc equally legitimate. He draws attention to tho "uncertainties" of modern science. What, for example, is evolution ? Bergson speaks of ' creative lution," Lloyd Morgan of "emergent evolution"; and Driesch thinks he has established a new. vitalism; Patfigm Pringle thinks he has not; and Needham says the younger biologists will hear nothing of vitalism in any shapo or form. So there is no uniform creed of science. In treating of these uncertainties tho Expository limes quotes the significant words: — Wo thought that lines were straight and euclid true: . , . God said let Einstein be. and all s askew. The trouble seems to bo that ■ many people forget that ' there arc different branches of science, or different sciences, as we usually say, : Metaphysics is justas valid a method of investigation as physics; and theology as scientific as psychology; so that one science must not dictate to another; though, of course, consistency between them is essential to a right view of the whole. Bosanquet once said that we could never arrive at truth while there was so much "lowgrade thinking and second-hand inference" ; and it is . wonderful the way bogies will vanish before clear and consistent thought. May it be so in this discussion; for even such a mathematical philosopher as Bertrand Russell admits in his "Mysticism and Logic that there are other sources of information besides strict scientific investigation. It is very illuminating to know that the late Sir W. Barrett, F.R.S., for many years a professor of physics, wrote a nistory of psychic research, and a recor of "death-bed visions as evidence of tho reality of the spiritual Dargaville Vicarage.