Materialism

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17953, 3 December 1932, Page 9

Materialism

pROFESSOR J. S. Haldane, C.H., F.R.S., the veteran scientist, has gathered together some recent essays and addresses in a book, “Materialism." He does not accept the suggestions made by some famous scientists that the universe is running down. He is equally emphatic in other directions.

“My own work in pure science," ho asserts, “can bo summed up in the conclusion that the mechanical conceptions of physical science break down irretrievably when we endeavor to apply them to life and conscious behavior, both of which arc just a part of what we call Nature. “We cannot in the long run dispense with the spiritual conception of Nature; and the mere economic conception of industrial life breaks down equally hopelessly when we try to apply it to such an industrial undertaking as a British coal mine. Tho more physical and economic conception of reality seems to leave us with a conscious life made up of grim drab experience, variegated by passingsensations and thrills such as those of inferior cinemas, sensational literature, and newspapers, and windy oratory, forgotten next day. “Such a conscious life is nothing but that of a degenerate. The more carnost-mindcd men who accept the supposed realism, but rightly despise tho world it represents, are, it seems to me, the real moving spirits in labor unrest; and they are striving after what scorn to us to be Utopias. Wltero they really fail, however, is in not seeing to what an extent there is already a spiritual world around them, realised in the comradeship of dail£ life,”