We find that the field of science has been surveyed from two different
standpoints. Men of science have set out, on the one hand, to describe
the world as it would be with man left out. The result is what we call
physical science. The world of physics is colourless, toneless, neither
cold nor warm; its spaces are always of the same extent, its times are
always of the same duration, its mass is invariable; it would be just
what it is now if mankind were swept from the face of the earth. For
what is light in the text-books of physics?—a train of electromagnetic
waves; and sound is a vibratory motion of air or water; and heat is a
dance of molecules; and all these things are independent of man. But
men of science have tried, on the other hand, to describe =the world
as it is in man’s experience=, as it appears with man left in; and
the result of this endeavour is psychology. The world of psychology
contains looks and tones and feels; it is the world of dark and light,
of noise and silence, of rough and smooth; its space is sometimes large
and sometimes small, as everyone knows who in adult life has gone back
to his childhood’s home; its time is sometimes short and sometimes
long; it has no invariables. It contains also the thoughts, emotions,
memories, imaginations, volitions that you naturally ascribe to mind;
it contains, that is, so much of these things as belongs to the sphere
of observable fact. It is obviously very different from the world of
physics, though both worlds alike have been opened up to us by science,
by the impersonal and disinterested search for facts.
So we have a world of matter and a world of mind. The physicist,
however, describes and measures the various phases of energy, without
assuming any material substance in the background, any matter of which
this energy is the manifestation. Matter, if the word is to be used at
all, is simply the inclusive name for all the forms of energy. And the
psychologist, in the same way, describes and measures—so far as he
is able to measure—the phenomena of his world, without assuming any
active or perduring mind in the background; for him, mind is simply
the =inclusive name of all these phenomena=. That is the first rough
answer to our question. Much more must be said, if the answer is to be
precise; but even as it is we have travelled a long way from the little
man living inside the head!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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