Human Traits and their Social SignificanceEdman, Irwin
Philosophy
Human Traits and their Social Significance
Edman, Irwin
Social psychology
However complicated the process of inquiry may become,
the sciences remain essentially man's mode of satisfying his
disinterested curiosity about the world in which he is living.
Through the sciences man makes himself, as has been so often
said, at home in the world. He substitutes for the "blooming,
buzzing confusion" which is the world as he first knows it,
order, system, and law. Primitive man, absurd as seems to
us his belief in a world of magic, of malicious demons and
capricious gods, was trying to make sense out of the meaningless
medley in which he seemed to find himself. Through
science, modern man is likewise trying to make sense out of
his world. The more apparently disconnected and incongruous
facts that can be brought within the compass of simple
and perfectly regular law, the less threatening or capricious
seems the world in which we live. Where everything that
happens is part of a system, we do not need, like the savage
trembling in a thunderstorm, to be frightened at what will
happen next. It is like moving in familiar surroundings
among familiar people. Not all that goes on may be pleasant,
but we can within limits predict what will happen, and are
not puzzled and pained by continuous shocks and surprises.
We like order in the places in which we live, in our homes, in
our cities, in the universe.
The sciences satisfy us not only in that they bring order
into what at first seems the chaos of our surroundings, but in
that they are themselves beautiful in their spaciousness and
their simplicity. We cannot pause here to consider the
physiological facts which make us admire symmetry, but it is
fundamental in our appreciation of music, poetry, and the
plastic arts. From the sciences, likewise, we derive the
satisfaction of symmetry on a magnificent scale. There is beauty
as of a great symphony in the sweep and movement of the
solar system. There is a quiet and infinite splendor about the
changeless and comparatively simple structure which physics,
in the broadest sense, reveals beneath the seeming multiplicity
and variety of things. It is a desire for beauty as well as
a thoroughgoing scientific passion which prompts men like
Poincare and Karl Pearson to seek for one law, one formula
which, like "one clear chord to reach the ears of God,"
expresses the whole universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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