Essays Upon Some Controverted QuestionsHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the
universal validity of the law of causation; but that universality cannot be
proved by any amount of experience, let alone that which comes to us
through the senses. And when an effort of volition changes the current of
my thoughts, or when an idea calls up another associated idea, I have not
the slightest doubt that the process to which the first of the phenomena,
in each case, is due stands in the relation of cause to the second. Yet the
attempt to verify this belief by sensation would be sheer lunacy. Now I am
quite sure that Mr. Lilly does not doubt my sanity; and the only
alternative seems to be the admission that his first proposition is
erroneous.
The second thesis charges me with putting aside "as unverifiable"
"everything beyond the bounds of physical science." Again I say, No.
Nobody, I imagine, will credit me with a desire to limit the empire of
physical science, but I really feel bound to confess that a great many very
familiar and, at the same time, extremely important phenomena lie quite
beyond its legitimate limits. I cannot conceive, for example, how the
phenomena of consciousness, as such and apart from the physical process by
which they are called into existence, are to be brought within the bounds
of physical science. Take the simplest possible example, the feeling of
redness. Physical science tells us that it commonly arises as a consequence
of molecular changes propagated from the eye to a certain part of the
substance of the brain, when vibrations of the luminiferous ether of a
certain character fall upon {214} the retina. Let us suppose the process of
physical analysis pushed so far that one could view the last link of this
chain of molecules, watch their movements as if they were billiard balls,
weigh them, measure them, and know all that is physically knowable about
them. Well, even in that case, we should be just as far from being able to
include the resulting phenomenon of consciousness, the feeling of redness,
within the bounds of physical science, as we are at present. It would
remain as unlike the phenomena we know under the names of matter and motion
as it is now. If there is any plain truth upon which I have made it my
business to insist over and over again it is this--and whether it is a
truth or not, my insistence upon it leaves not a shadow of justification
for Mr. Lilly's assertion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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