Essays on the use and limit of the imagination in scienceTyndall, John
Science
Essays on the use and limit of the imagination in science
Tyndall, John
Science
But how inferred? It is at bottom not a case of logical inference
at all, but of empirical association. You may reply that many of
the inferences of science are of this character; the inference, for
example, that an electric current of a given direction will deflect a
magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ in this, that
the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is
thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical
solution of the problem. But the passage from the physics of the
brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable.
Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in
the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual
organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us
to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one to the other. They
appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so
expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and
feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all
their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if
such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding
states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the
solution of the problem. ‘How are these physical processes connected
with the facts of consciousness?’ The chasm between the two classes
of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the
consciousness of _love_, for example, be associated with a
right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the
consciousness of _hate_ with a left-handed spiral motion. We
should then know when we love that the motion is in one direction, and
when we hate that the motion is in the other; but the ‘WHY?’
would remain as unanswerable as before.
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