Chapter II

It is unfortunately true that as a science advances it grows more complex. Not only does its language depart more and more from ordinary speech by the accumulation of technical terms, but the terms in current use at any time are defined in terms of others which are defined in terms of others--something after the manner of the description of the house that Jack built. The most obvious case of this Chinese box kind of language is, of course, that of mathematics. A mathematical theorem occupying one line of type might very well occupy a volume if written out in ordinary prose in which no terms were used which were not common property. For this reason modern mathematical discoveries, except in very special instances, cannot be made intelligible except to mathematicians. To learn the language of a highly developed science like mathematics takes about as long as to learn Chinese, but the task of translation into English is very much harder. For this reason mathematicians cannot hope for intelligent popular recognition; they must be content to be regarded either as vaguely impressive figures or else as mild lunatics busied with incomprehensible and probably trifling abstractions. Compared with writers, musicians or painters, they are, for social purposes, mental outlaws. It is apparent, however, that mathematics was not always so remote. It was possible for Voltaire to take an interest which was, at any rate, enthusiastic, in the work of Newton. This was doubtless due, in some degree, to the obviously dramatic quality of Newton’s discoveries, but it was also due to the fact that his discoveries could be expressed in comparatively simple language. Again, physics and chemistry at that time, and for some years later, were not only intelligible to men without special training, but such men could actually make valuable discoveries in these sciences. As these sciences progressed their language became more and more forbidding and their fundamental notions more and more abstract. Men without special training, but with scientific curiosity, turned their attention to the biological sciences. They collected birds’ eggs and butterflies; they bought microscopes and wrote little papers on the sea-shells they discovered in a morning’s walk. But biology has now developed a technical language, and the days of the untrained observer are almost over. The one science which is still, to some extent, accessible to these amiable people is psychology. It is growing more technical, it is true, but the majority of the books dealing with psychology may still be read almost as easily as a treatise on the history of the Balkans. And the “psychological” novelist can still regard himself as being, from one point of view, a scientific man. Psycho-analysis is, as yet, a favourite subject of discussion in advanced drawing-rooms where discussions of the principle of relativity are comparatively rare.

The divorce between science and the general intellectual world is unfortunate, but inevitable. It is unfortunate both for the scientific man and for the general _intelligentsia_. The scientific man, mentally companionless except for the little circle of his immediate co-workers, becomes less complete as a human being; he fails as a humanist. He too often accepts his outlawed position and turns his special interests into his exclusive interests, as if, through some inverted generosity, he refused to take where he could not give. He may grow to ignore the other intellectual activities of his time, as Darwin, to his distress, found he had grown to ignore poetry, or he may actually become intolerant of such activities and so add contempt to the ignorance with which his preoccupations are regarded by the outside world. For the outside world, also, this divorce is unfortunate. For science, in its own way, satisfies just the same impulses as do other intellectual interests, and some of them it satisfies more completely and in a richer way. A great waste of mental energy and much inconclusive discussion would be avoided were certain scientific results more generally known, and, more particularly, were the advantages of the scientific method more widely recognised and the method itself more extensively practised. An air of superiority is often noticed in the references of scientific men to certain current discussions. It is a fault of manner, but one difficult to avoid. “Inside” information usually has this effect on the possessor, and when it is information that cannot be shared the attitude is apt to become chronic. Both sides, then, are the poorer for their lack of intercourse. But this state of affairs seems to be inevitable. The claims of the Latin and Greek literatures to attention, whether they are justified or not, have led to the study of these languages being imposed on perhaps the majority of the people in this country who are predominantly interested in intellectual affairs. It is a training which consumes several years: is a training in the sciences to be added? This is manifestly impossible. Even if our whole educational system were radically altered, only those sciences, such as biology and psychology, which may be understood with comparatively little training, could ever become objects of common knowledge. But sciences where, in addition to a severe and prolonged discipline, special aptitude is necessary, must always be the property of the few. As, every year, all the sciences grow more complex, so the difficulty of obtaining an adequate knowledge of them increases. A dead language may be learnt once for all, but the language of a science must be learnt afresh every few years. The popular article of Huxley’s day, the link between the man of science and the general public, is now the link between the more and less advanced students of the same science. A so-called “popular” account of Relativity Theory, for instance, is like an annotated edition of Pindar; a very fair knowledge of the language is assumed beforehand. It might be thought that the process of reduction, as it were, could be continued, until finally an account was prepared where no technical terms were used. But such an account would be, at best, like a translation of Greek poetry; the essential quality would be gone. Such translations have, of course, their uses, but the attraction of science for the scientific man, like the attraction of a poem for the poet, is not to be communicated in this way. In art the separation of matter and form is not really possible, and the same is true of the sciences.