The Kingdom of Man

Front matter

EXTENSION DIVISION UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

The Kingdom of Man BY RALPH VARY CHAMBERLIN Professor of Biology University of Utah

The Second Annual Frederick William Reynolds Memorial Lecture

Prefatory Note

The following lecture by Dr. Ralph Vary Chamberlin is the second in a series initiated by a memorial association founded in 1936 to perpetuate the memory of the late Frederick William Reynolds.

As the organizer and first director of the University of Utah Extension Division, F. W. Reynolds had probably sponsored more public lectures of importance than any other person in the state. It is also safe to assume that no one on the faculty had been more stimulating to his associates in the field of public lectures and discussion. No attainable memorial seemed so fitting, therefore, as a permanent lectureship—with the speaker chosen annually from the University faculty.

In 1937 an agreement was entered into between the University and the Memorial Association providing for:

An annual lecture on the University Campus by a member of the Faculty, on a topic chosen by him and arising out of his research or thought, which shall make available to the public some important accomplishment in the field, or the results of some distinctive body of knowledge.

The lecturer to be chosen by a committee constituted as follows: The Director of the Extension Division, a member of the Board of Regents appointed by the Chairman of the Board, a member of the Faculty appointed by the President of the University, the President of the Alumni Association, and the President of the Student Body.

The lecture, a pretentious and important yearly offering of the University, to be free to the public.

The University and its Extension Division have generously responded to a widespread public request by sponsoring the publication of this Bulletin. Acknowledgment and appreciation are graciously extended to President George Thomas, the Board of Regents and the Extension Division for this response, and for their very substantial contribution to the entire enterprise.

Foreword

The distinctive feature of modern times is that the world, both in its material and in its personal aspects, is in a state of increasingly rapid transition. The time span of important changes has been so much shortened that it becomes ever more difficult to enjoy the illusion of fixed conditions. Almost before our eyes, time-honored beliefs, customs and institutions are dissolving or being so transformed as to leave only the superficial semblance of the earlier state. The marked differences in the rates of change in various fields and phases of life have resulted in serious disharmonies that have made the practical problem of personal conduct and social adjustment increasingly difficult. The era of change, furthermore, is no temporary phase in the history of thought and may be expected to continue at an increasing tempo.

The characteristic changes of modern times,—those that have largely confirmed in the minds of men the idea of progress so wholly lacking in ancient and mediaeval thought,—have risen entirely during the three centuries since the emergence of science. The theme of the present lecture is that since the growth of science has been clearly the true and ultimate source of the creative impulses making for change, and the basis of man's increasing achievements in control, the fundamental need in the world today is for the wide and thorough diffusion of a knowledge of the nature of the revolution that is taking place and of the scientific method and spirit.

The time is ripe for a full realization of this role of science in our civilization and of the major results it has reached, especially those now so clearly demonstrated as to the true relation of man to Nature. Such knowledge must soon be made the basis and guide in planning for social development and government, if we are to avoid ultimate catastrophe. Such procedure would abate many persistent evils that now flow from neglect of this knowledge, such as those resulting from futile efforts made under the perennial illusion that progress depends upon economics and social regulations. The habit of a scientific attitude and approach, in place of emotionalism, among a larger proportion of the people would be the only effective defense against insidious propaganda and falsification and thereby a preventive against the ceaseless repetitions of "the struggle to liberate mankind from the clutches of its most recent liberators, crowd devouring crowd, mass movements marching to Utopia down blind alleys."

R. V. Chamberlin

University of Utah, February, 1938.

Introduction

Lhere is much in the stirring world scene of today to justify the definition of man as the animal who spends sixteen hours a day in mischief and only eight hours a day in innocence. Certainly a detached survey reveals a none too creditable history. He has been throughout an aggressively selfish creature continuously engaged in raising Gehenna for himself and all creation; for, not content with dominion over the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air, he long ago began preying on his own fellows on the principle that it is easier to seize power and wealth than to create them. Yet a quality of altruism, paradoxically enough, early grew out of man's selfishness when he found that in union there is strength.

After developing a settled manner of life, his evolution became a social process in which there is need for the social virtues. From that time on his life has been involved in a struggle, periodically violent, between the primeval urge of brute predaciousness and the humane, benevolent impulses engendered by social experience and struggle. Hence, as Louis Pasteur once said: Two opposing laws seem today to be in combat—a law of blood and death, which, daily devising new weapons of war, compels the people to be prepared always for the battlefield; and a law of peace, work and welfare, which is concerned only with the delivery of humanity from the scourges which beset it. The one seeks only violent conquests; the other the relief of mankind. The one places a human life above all victories; the other would sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives to the ambition of one man."

Since the achievement of group coherence, the forces of human evolution have acted on the social organism rather than upon the individual, and the products have been in the main such social media as ideas, opinions, habits, relations, traditions and institutons. Biologically speaking, ideas and beliefs have various sorts of utility aside from any question of their objective validity or truth, an important one being the securing of group cohesion and mass action. Historically, people have preferred the security or stability of being one with the group, and there has been, along with a ready credulity, the age-old disposition to assign divine sanction to traditional beliefs and customs. The agency of ideas and beliefs, therefore, has proved a means of power wielded by leaders more potent beyond comparison than all the agencies at the disposal of individual man.

Through many centuries of human history ideals of justice and brotherly love have so influenced the activities of men that we have seemed at times about to enter the millenium, only to witness the disintegration of this altruism under political and economic stress. When a leader or ruler abandons these ideals, however, he commonly feels bound to give to his action the flavor of morality. "Man must convince himself that he can rape in right and murder in magnanimity. He insists on playing the game, not only with an ace up his sleeve, but with the smug conviction that God has put it there." History is filled with instances comparable with that of Japan, among whose people the argument prevails today that since Japan has the only divinely established government, and is governed by a living deity, it is her manifest right and duty to rule the world. The defenders of slavery rarely admitted that they favored the system because it was profitable; they argued rather that it was better for the slave, that they were executing the will of God, or serving the best interests of the country. Man would seem to be the only creature who through superior intelligence is able to persuade himself that things are not as they are but as he wishes them to be.

But the really great game man has had to play has not been within his own ranks, where subtle acts of intellectual deception and propaganda have often prospered; it has been an incessant one with Nature who from time to time chastens him and restores his sanity by bringing him back to earth. For Nature can be neither deceived nor wheedled. Her ways are set, her justice even and dependable but adamant. Hence the greatest effort of thinking man since the beginning of history has been to find a reasonable, set of answers to his own questions about the nature of the world and his place in it. His fundamental beliefs as to these questions have been the great moving forces behind all his activities and with them all subsidiary thought systems, inclusive of the explanations and extensions made in the interests of authority and institutions, have had to harmonize. The significant processes of human life consist in the passage from one thought system to another, and the true history of mankind is the history of ideas. Emerson once wrote: "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon this planet. Then all things are at risk. There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not any literary reputation that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the religion of nations, the manner and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization."

The basic idea that has determined our modern civilization and set it off from all others is the scientific idea. This is unquestionably the age of science; but if we have in mind the people rather than the movement, this statement must be strongly qualified. Our age stands for certain achievement, for a certain mentality which few of us exhibit. It is remarkable that so few even among scientists themselves maintain the scientific attitude outside their own limited subjects, but in such fields as religion, morals and politics reveal an extraordinary inertia of early habit. Scientific beliefs, that is, beliefs we have some reason to hold because of an evidenced relationship to reality, are all too rare among the general run of humanity. Most beliefs have come through contagion and involve reason only by way of apology or justification.

The mass and influence of these apologies and rationalizations are so vast and they are involved with emotions so overwhelming that modernity appears as little more than a veneer, a veneer laid on prejudices proceeding, not from primal human nature itself, but from deliberately inculcated educations intended to produce men of some special creed or type. In fact, it has been said, "Every phase of evolution from the Stone Age onward is repeated in the population of the twentieth century world, Victorians, Tudorians, ghosts surviving from the Middle Ages, and multitudes whose minds properly belong to paleolithic times, far outnumber the people who truly appertain to the twentieth century," Never at any one time before has there been such a wealth of mutually contradictory beliefs and opinions. A common resultant attitude is expressed in Mr. Dooley's hibernicism: "One man's opinion is as good as another's, or even better," Some take the position of the Chinese laundryman who during a time of strife between Romanists and Orangemen placed this sign in front of his shop: "Me no religion at all, me only wash clothes."

In spite of the resistance opposed by the preponderance of contradictory systems of thought, science has transformed the world because it has been able continuously to justify itself by its works. Men may and do ignore logic, but they cannot long ignore the compulsion of concrete events and demonstrations. Science has made our civilization, as manifested in material things, in progressive thought, in individual and social emancipation, and especially in all that falls under the heading of rational control. By the free and confident use of his own intelligence man has succeeded in devising a control over the conditions of his existence quite unthinkable in earlier times. His achievements in many ways far transcend the situation in the Regnum hominis or Kingdom of Man foreseen by Francis Bacon and vividly pictured by him to an incredulous age. Today the physical difficulties, the lack of exact, usable knowledge and of self assurance, which necessarily prevented the practical realization of Bacon's schemes, have all been overcome.

And yet civilization faces a crisis. The social situation today to some men, such as Professor Einstein, reveals unmistakable signs of degeneration and decay. However interpreted, it is so obviously one of general confusion, instability, and widening conflict, both between and within nations, and the immediate future is so beclouded, that the need of an early, coherent evaluation of man's nature and behavior is insistent if we are to turn from a course which, in spite of our invincible American optimism, some able thinkers believe is leading toward the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind—the end of modern civilization.

For this perilous situation science itself has been widely blamed. My thesis is that the profound and tragic difficulties in the world today result from man's failure to extend science and the scientific attitude far enough, especially to himself and his immediate affairs, where he finds great difficulty in disentangling his intelligence from his hopes. Not too much science but too little science is at the root of our troubles. We have spent much effort and wealth upon the science of matter; but the greater our success here, the greater must be our failure unless we, at long lost, make a corresponding advance in the science of man. Man has proceeded so far in his interference with extra-human nature, he has produced for himself such a special state of things by his successful defiance of Nature's earlier dispositions, that he must go on and acquire still firmer control of conditions or perish miserably by "the vengeance certain to fall on the half-hearted meddler in great affairs."

Man has in many respects abrogated the laws of Nature by which he was formerly restrained; but along with the advantages he has thereby gained, he has opened himself to new dangers and disasters on every side. These perils already make him wince, and there are many who, blaming science and the machine age, openly suggest a return to a simpler life. But such reversal is impossible. As Bertrand Russell notes, Lao-Tze, said to have lived before Confucius in the 6th century B. C, "is just as eloquent as Ruskin on the subject of the destruction of ancient beauty by modern mechanical inventions. Roads and bridges and boats filled him with horror because they were unnatural; he speaks of music as modern high-brows speak of the moving-picture. He objects to the taming of horses, and to the arts of the potter and carpenter." Return to Nature, if taken as meant by Lao-Tze, "would involve the death by starvation of some 90 per cent of the population of civilized countries. Industrialism as it exists at the present day undoubtedly has grave difficulties, but they are not to be cured by a return to the past." The liquidation of the older order of life is irrevocable.

THE ORIGIN OF SCIENCE

The idea that was finally to flower in the scientific method issued from the Ionian Greeks whose minds developed not so much because of their innate superiority as because circumstances conspired to make them intellectually the freest people of whom we have record. This idea is simply that Nature is a world of system and order comprehensible to the rational mind and that Nature itself constitutes the ultimate standard or authority for belief. The power of rational thought depends upon two elements, its method and its data, and in the end the Greek missed science because he slighted the second element. He failed to see, except spasmodically, the point at which philosophic speculation so far outruns fact as to become unprofitable. He did not acquire a solid anchorage in concrete knowledge in time to save his world, but he gave the intellectual impulse that was to determine the mind of Europe and remake the world through science.

Historically the stream of rational thought from Greek philosophy divided, one branch running through Rome, the other through Alexandria. In the first, the effort at natural explanations made by the worldly Greeks dried out completely, the other-worldly Christians seizing upon the religious aspects of philosophy for the rational justification of their society. The mediaeval scholars maintained the Greek ideal of completeness and logical consistency, their efforts culminating in the 13th century, the century of the schoolmen, one of the most intensely intellectual periods of history. The growth of scholasticism provided the occasion for long training in close, logical thinking, which, while not used upon materials that to us seem profitable, tempered the mental weapons to be used in the later battles of intellectual liberation. "To the schoolmen," J. S. Mill observes, "we owe whatever accuracy of thought and lucidity of logic we can boast."

The second stream, running through Hellenistic Alexandria, bore the only thing like experimental inquiry carried on in the classical world. The Arabs, with a pronounced predilection for this type of work, had there quickly assimilated what the Greeks had to offer on this side, as they also had important acquisitions of the Hindus at a time when interest in Nature had wholly died out in Europe. These things they introduced into the schools of southern Europe. They brought with them three world-transforming inventions—the mariner's compass, gunpowder and paper, as well as the Hindu or Arabic system of numeration, algebra, and the forerunners of modern surveying instruments, the beginnings of chemistry, and most of the ideas of the later Middle Ages at any value in mathematics, astronomy, geography, medicine and natural history.

With the reuniting of the two streams of Greek thought, both enriched by special contributions, there arose the conflict of Arabic experimentalism, with its interest in "stubborn and irreducible facts," and scholastic rationalism, with its critical acumen and Greek gift for generalization. The outcome was that balance between the two that is the scientific spirit and method; the method that provides the effective technique for getting answers to our questions from Nature.

Science first arose in and spread from the universities of southern Europe. Roger Bacon and others in the 13th and 14th centuries showed the dual heritage and exhibited the mental balance and final reliance on experiment that are the pillars of science.

With the 15th century, the change in conditions and ideals, and, above all, the slow accumulation of facts that would not be denied, produced a wide and obvious discontent with the entire mediaeval social and cosmic scheme. There were various significant movements accompanying the beginnings of science at this time and contributing circumstances that made its emergence and open, victorious career possible. I may merely mention the rise of commerce and industry, with widening freedom in economic pursuits and the spread of wealth and leisure; Columbus; Vasco da Gama; Copernicus; the expansion of universities; and the discovery of printing. The emancipation of the individual was the most important contribution of this period of the so-called Renaissance. The real rise of science coincides with the reawakening of individualism.

That universal genius da Vinci showed an almost perfect apprehension of the new method; "Those sciences are vain and full of errors" he tells us, "which are not born from experience, the mother of all certainty, and which do not end with one clear experiment. Science gives certainty and science gives power. Those who rely on practice without science are like sailors without rudder or compass." Had the results of his work and thought been published, instead of being preserved only in note books, science might have gained a full century. The freedom and humanism of his day, however, soon passed away and science was later compelled to make a fresh start in the face of repression and persecution.

As it was, the 17th century was to prove the crucial one in the development of the new interest, for by virtue of a handful of men of unparalleled genius, who followed one after another, that century was to see the greatest single intellectual achievement the race has yet won. Galileo prepared the way for the miracle, but it was Newton who formulated finally the laws of motion, the law of gravitation and the basic physical ideas which have served so well ever since as the foundation of astronomy and mechanical science. This achievement was the final step needed for establishing in the minds of men the idea of universal law, of the uniformity of nature, and placed science on a foundation where it has been able to follow its open path independently of national boundaries and of social and political changes. Hence the publication of Newton's Principia in 1687 "made that date pivotal in the history of science and a turning point in the history of mankind."

The Newtonian principles and methods proved astonishingly successful in dealing with the problems of chief interest in that epoch; and the 18th century devoted itself with unbounded confidence to the analysis of the universe. Science now separated itself from philosophy and has since maintained its course untrammeled by extraneous motives. Thinkers became convinced that the scientific method could be equally well brought to bear in all realms whatsoever, and rendered tremendous service in establishing in the minds of men a new confidence in the stability of the world and in the human reason. The Age of Reason which they so optimistically anticipated has not yet arrived; but science has continued its advance without interruption and pours out its products in ever increasing volume. We cannot now conceive of any retrogression that could possibly bring back the pre-scientific attitude.

THE GROWTH OF SCIENCE

Encouraged by the successes of the 17th and 18th centuries, students turned their attention to the inductive study of the phenomena of the earth's surface, and found more and more in these phenomena the same harmony and the same reign of law that they had first found in the heavens. Never was enterprise more justified of her children. Each discovery opened the way for many others and scientific knowledge and its applications increased in geometric ratio.

"The invention of the method of invention was the greatest invention of the 19th century," for it provides the means of constant progress and reconstruction. What was earlier a sporadic and personal attitude "has become an organized social effect which moves mankind more profoundly than anything else in human affairs." As Pasteur once said: "In our century science is the soul of the prosperity of nations and the living source of all progress. Undoubtedly the tiring discussions of politics seem to be our guide—empty appearances! What really leads us forward is a few scientific discoveries and their application."

Today the world is being transformed so rapidly by science that the next few years may add enormously to knowledge and insight even though we can never precisely forsee the next important discovery or advance. Progress has become conscious, and men base their hopes less on inventions already enjoyed than on those they expect in the future.

From the outset of the 19th century men, in their new liberty, devoted themselves to the pursuit of wealth and were quick to see the practical applications of the new knowledge. More and more Nature rather than Providence seemed to be the immediate source of power and the control and exploitation of Nature through increasing knowledge of her ways has been the most conspicuous feature in the history of our civilization during the last 125 years. All recognize that, in its material aspects, this civilization today is technological, characterized by power-driven machines that have revolutionized the manner of human life. The general picture, from Watt's steam engine down to the automobile, vacuum cleaner and electric dishwasher is familiar to all. Most of what we regard as necessities and luxuries of modern civilizations have come through the application of science to everyday problems. The luxury of today becomes the necessity of tomorrow. Progress is continuous, and haphazard methods have been abolished.

Practical recognition is now widely given to the fact that science is continuous with technology and begets modern industry. The value of science in modern industry, commerce, medicine and agriculture is so generally appreciated that all large industrial organizations maintain their own research laboratories with their own staffs of highly trained investigators. There are more than 1500 such industrial laboratories in America, spending $300,000,000 annually and employing 40,000 research men, and many of these do research in pure science rather than directly upon problems of application.

The distinction between pure science and applied is wholly illusory. But motives of the scientist are intellectual advancement and not the making of something from which financial profit may be expected; and most of the investigations upon which modern industry has been built would have been abandoned at the outset if the standard of immediate practical value had been applied to them. Gladstone, on seeing one of Faraday's famous experiments terminate in an effect which to the non-scientific mind was very uninspiring, asked what possible use his discovery could be, "Why, Mr. Prime Minister," answered Faraday, "you will soon be able to tax it." On another occasion, in reply to a similar question from an elderly lady, he quoted Benjamin Franklin, "Madam, of what use is a new-born child?"

The seemingly useless knowledge about the laws of force and motion developed by Galileo and Newton and first applied to the seemingly useless matters of the motions of the heavenly bodies was the essential basis for the design of power machines of every sort as well as for many other things. This knowledge preceded the steam-engine, a century of experience with which led to a knowledge of the laws of heat engines in general, which was essential to the development of the internal combustion engine, which in turn made the airplane possible although this outcome was in no way predictable. Leonardo da Vinci is said to have devoted far more time to the problem of flying than he did to painting, but it was necessary to wait several centuries before the development of the gasoline engine, primarily for use in automobiles, made flying possible. Thus the solution of one problem very often has to await the solution of another with which it did not seem to be connected.

The radio and the arts based upon it, today involving commercial values running into billions, are even younger than the automobile, the whole industry having developed since 1910 upon the basis of investigations in pure science principally done on the seemingly useless problem of electronic discharges in high vacuum. The perfection of glass technology made possible the Michelson interferometer, which in turn resulted in an experiment that formed the basis of Einstein's theory, a theory which has revolutionized not only our understanding of physics, but also our entire philosophy. As to research on seemingly useless biological subjects, Professor Thomson says: "A few years ago zoologists were laughed at who solemnly counted the hairs on the backs of flies and quarreled over the specific distinctions between one gnat and another. And could there be for able-bodied men a waste of time more scandalous than cutting sections of entrails of ticks? Yet it has been this sort of knowledge of flies and gnats and ticks that made it possible to open up Africa and complete the Panama Canal." In unforseen ways every truth seems sooner or later to find its application.

APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE

Every new invention tends to generate a new industry giving employment to large numbers of men. Think for a moment of the development within the last 30 years of the industries based upon such inventions as the automobile, the airplane, the motion picture, the radio, and rayon, employing together 10,000,000 men or more. The automobile was unknown except as a costly toy before the turn of the century. Today there are 30,000,000 motor vehicles on the roads of the United Stales alone. Within four decades it has done such sweeping and revolutionary things to human work and play and life in general that the whole of the modern world has been reconditioned.

There is, as is well known, in every industry following its successful launching, a period of demand and rapid growth, with creation of thousands of new jobs, a settling down with the efficiency engineer working to increase production and decrease costs by mechanizing and stabilizing the processes of manufacture. The result of the cheapening of units by mass production is to make the products often an economic necessity, the number demanded sometimes depending, as in the case of the watch, almost solely upon the population. As a result of the cheapening of products, it is possible for more people to have them and the general standard of living rises. Machines have progressively taken the load off the muscles of the workman, relieved him of drudgery, increased his productiveness and thereby his wages while shortening his hours of work. Before the World War, the average worker turned out $2,343 worth of products in a year, for which he was paid $726. Since then industry has been mechanized more and more. The worker now produces $5,130 per year—and gets paid $1,345 for it. Our per capita wealth has risen from $383 in 1850 to about $3,500 at the present.

In 1900 not one family in a hundred owned a horse and buggy; today three out of four have cars—more than have bathtubs. In 1900 less than 500,000 homes had electricity while 21,000,000 today are wired, the electricity providing many servants for doing tedious tasks at little cost, the per capita use of electricity having increased 15 times as fast as the population growth of the country. 22,000,000 homes have radio receivers, wholly unknown at the earlier period. A mere catalog of improvements and innovations that have come into common use even within the last 20 years would fill volumes, these running from improved rayon, the consumption of which is up 3500% and is breaking down class distinctions, to cheap Diesel engines and baby diets improved so much that dentists and doctors are doomed to less work per 1000 of population. And the prospect for the future is that the same trend will continue at an even faster rate. In viewing the results, can it be questioned that, despite temporary periods of inconvenience and trouble, the modern methods of mass production are desirable?