[78] I have confined my attention to the cognitive type of relatedness.
Other higher modes supervene when the course of evolution is traced
further upwards. Indeed, cognition is only part of the underlying basis
implied by the richer forms of distinctively human relational life.
Spencer has much to say of them in his _Sociology_ and his _Ethics_,
though he fails to realize that the phenomena he is dealing with involve
essentially new constitutive features in man and in society. Can music
or any form of art be discussed in terms of cognition only? I merely add
this note to show that I am not unaware of the patent fact that when we
have reached the cognitive type of relatedness, we are nowhere near the
top of the evolutional tree.
[79] The part which is the centre of awareness, may be spoken of as
experienc_ing_, in contradistinction to what is experienc_ed_. It is
clear that such experiencing is always correlative to what is
experienced actually or ideally (Spencer's vividly or faintly). The
centre of awareness is either the cortex, or some specific part of the
cortex, or (more generally) the organism as owning the cortex, in each
case in accordance with the universe of discourse.
[80] Few physicists would, I think, be prepared to deny that, within a
field of effective relatedness, there may be, and very often is,
guidance without work done or any change in the 'amount of energy'. What
physicists are concerned to insist on is their cardinal principle that
every physical change involves physical terms in physical relatedness.
This can be fully and freely accepted in accordance with the doctrine of
implication sketched in the text. It is when Life or Consciousness is
invoked to play the part of a non-physical term, or thing, which acts
and reacts as if it were a physical term or thing, that physicists enter
an emphatic protest. Cognitive relatedness among physical things may
well be effective in guidance. To claim its presence must not, however,
be regarded as in any sense equivalent to a denial of underlying
physico-chemical relatedness.
[81] Until those who seek to furnish evidence of the existence of
discarnate spirits can make some plausible suggestions as to the nature
of a comprehensible scheme of correlation which shall serve to link the
discarnate with the incarnate, one is forced to enter their results in a
suspense account. It is of little use to proclaim the existence of
'facts scorned by orthodox science'. The so-called facts must be
incorporated within a consistent scheme, before they can claim a place
in the fabric of scientific truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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