To the many new readers, welcome! Most of my posts are rather nerdy about political theory, history and philosophy of science, and what is known as ‘meta-philosophy.’ Usually, they have non-trivial number of typos and other infelicities; I try to copy-edit my pieces later in the day, so if you ever wish to quote a Digression please do so from the Substack site not the one that shows up in your mail-box.
Before I get to today’s post, a bit of self-advertising. Martin Lenz’s book *Socializing Minds*, inspired this little piece in BJHP, "Locke’s Humean conventionalism," which may be notable to folks interested in the pre-history of (say) convention and spontaneous order (and the philosophy of language).
Just before he fell fatally ill, Stephen Gaukroger and I had an outdoor lunch at the Wells Tavern in Hampstead back on May 19th. Amongst other topics, we spoke about his new research on the relationship between classics (and humanities) and science(s) in Victorian England. He sent me a word for windows document of “The shaping of character” that turns out to have been published online also on May 19th (I am unsure if Stephen realized that).
In Gaukroger’s piece is a passage attributed to T.H. Huxley that caught my attention:
A century later, in 1866, Thomas Huxley writes of science saving civilisation from barbarism, talking of a ‘new nature’ created by science and manifested ‘in every mechanical artifice, every chemically pure substance employed by manufacture, every abnormally fertile race of plants, or rapidly growing and fattening breed of animals’. This new nature, we are told, is ‘the foundation of our wealth and the condition of our safety from submergence by another flood of barbarous hordes; it is the bond which unites into a solid political whole, regions larger than any empire of antiquity; it secures us from the recurrence of pestilences and famines of former times; it is the source of endless comforts and conveniences, which are not mere luxuries, but conduce to physical and moral well-being’.
Gaukroger cites volume 1, p. 51, of Huxley’s Collected Essays, where this material can indeed be found. But the passage is originally from Huxley’s The Progress of Science: 1837-1887, which was first published in 1887 (not 1866—not sure what caused the confusion for Gaukroger).
Huxley’s essay is a remarkable work previously unknown to me. The piece is aimed at an informed public, and really showcases Huxley’s amazing ability to make complex material across a great diversity of sciences seem self-evident, while being rather alert to the changing nature of the of the so-called ‘research frontier.’ In fact, Huxley clearly has a version of that concept available to him, “But, even while the cries of jubilation resound and this floatsam and jetsam of the tide of investigation is being turned into the wages of workmen and the wealth of capitalists, the crest of the wave of scientific investigation is far away on its course over the illimitable ocean of the unknown.” (p. 21)*
Now, Huxley explicitly resists the idea that the cognitive or epistemic division of labor within the sciences drives the sciences apart. In fact, one of his more important claims in the work is that developments in the sciences (and technologies) mutually illuminate, scaffold, and constrain each other. There is, thus, in his argument the sense that unity of nature and the unity of science mutually entail each other. He strongly resists the thought that the different sciences have different methods:
Physical science is one and indivisible. Although, for practical purposes, it is convenient to mark it out into the primary regions of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, and to subdivide these into subordinate provinces, yet the method of investigation and the ultimate object of the physical inquirer are everywhere the same.—p. 31. (He acknowledges a debt to Herbert Spencer’s “Synthetic Philosophy” on p. 98. And he quite clearly presents himself as a kind of successor to that other great polymath, Whewell.)
Okay, so much for set up. One of the most fascinating features of Huxley’s essay is the implied cosmogony he offers. The argument starts from the discovery in chemistry that there is a kind of “periodic law of recurrent similarities.” (emphasis in Huxley) Huxley puts it as follows, “If the sixty-five or sixty-eight recognised 'elements' are arranged in the order of their atomic weights-from hydrogen, the lightest, as unity, to uranium, the heaviest, as 240--the series does not exhibit one continuous progressive modification in the physical and chemical characters of its several terms, but breaks up into a number of sections, in each of which the several terms present analogies with the corresponding terms of the other series.” (pp. 56-7) Huxley then adds the following observation:
This is a conception with which biologists are very familiar, animal and plant groups constantly appearing as series of parallel modifications of similar and yet different primary forms. In the living world, facts of this kind are now understood to mean evolution from a common prototype. It is difficult to imagine that in the not-living world they are devoid of significance. Is it not possible, nay probable, that they may mean the evolution of matter from a primary undifferentiated matter?…At present, it may be said to be the burning question of physico-chemical science .(58-9)
Huxley himself draws attention to the analogy with Aristotelian prime matter (pp. 59-60; see also on Aristotelian forms on p. 87). But he illuminates what he has in mind with reference(s) to Descartes cosmology (p. 59 & p. 89) and Kant’s cosmogony (p. 89). In particular, Huxley speculates in the following manner:
If the material units of the existing order of nature are specialised portions of a relatively homogeneous materia prima --which were originated under conditions that have long ceased to exist and which remain unchanged and unchangeable under all conditions, whether natural or artificial, hitherto known to us-it follows that the speculation that they may be indefinitely altered, or that new units may be generated under conditions yet to be discovered, is perfectly legitimate. Theoretically, at any rate, the transmutability of the elements is a verifiable scientific hypothesis; and such inquiries as those which have been set afoot, into the possible dissociative action of the great heat of the sun upon our elements, are not only legitimate, but are likely to yield results which, whether affirmative or negative, will be of great importance. The idea that atoms are absolutely ingenerable and immutable 'manufactured articles' stands on the same sort of foundation as the idea that biological species are 'manufactured articles' stood thirty years ago…It seems safe to prophesy that the hypothesis of the evolution of the elements from a primitive matter will, in future, play no less a part in the history of science than the atomic hypothesis, which, to begin with, had no greater, if so great, an empirical foundation.—pp. 60-2
So, Huxley treats the periodicity of the periodic table as evidence for the idea that chemical elements descent from a common origin of homogeneous matter. At first, it may seem that Huxley has in mind something like either Descartes’ idea that in the beginning there was just matter, and then God (like a cosmic billiard ball player) put the original vortex into motion and then matter differentiated itself. Of course, Huxley himself is an agnostic, and so he brackets God’s role in this.
This may seem the end of the Matter, and Huxley turns to other topics. But once he has expounded Darwin, he returns to his account of the evolution of matter. This turns out to presuppose that the laws of nature remain fixed:
The doctrine of evolution, so far as the present physical cosmos is concerned, postulates the fixity of the rules of operation of the causes of motion in the material universe. If all kinds of matter are modifications of one kind, and if all modes of motion are derived from the same energy, the orderly evolution of physical nature out of one substratum and one energy implies that the rules of action of that energy should be fixed and definite. In the past history of the universe, back to that point, there can be no room for chance or disorder.—pp. 98-99
So, Huxley’s narrative is compatible with the idea that the original, homogeneous substratum of matter either existed for all time or (we are at the threshold of a modern kind of big bang) itself came into existence at a particular time due to an unknown cause and (eventually) evolved into the present differentiated universe by fixed rules.
Huxley then adds a twist, which blew me away (and anticipates an idea that I associate with Dan Dennett’s speculative cosmological Darwinism as a universal acid):
But it is possible to raise the question whether this universe of simplest matter and definitely operating energy, which forms our hypothetical starting point, may not itself be a product of evolution from a universe of such matter, in which the manifestations of energy were not definite-in which, for example, our laws of motion held good for some units and not for others, or for the same units at one time and not at another - and which would therefore be a real epicurean chance-world?—p. 99
That is, the starting point of our universe with its laws of nature may itself be the contingent effect of an earlier cosmic evolutionary process that included, perhaps, different laws altogether or a wider diversity of laws and forms of matter (including our own). Huxley himself treats the earlier cosmic evolutionary process as instantiating epicurean chance, whereas our own universe is more compatible with either Spinozism or Deism. However, that there can be multiple kinds of universes in succession of each other also has a Stoic provenance (see Seneca’s account in his work on Comets).
Historically, in debates over the nature of the source of ordered-ness of the cosmos, there are three rival and usually thought of as mutually conflicting hypotheses: epicurean chance, god’s design, or (eternal) Spinozistic necessity. Huxley’s speculation appeals to features of all three of these and integrates them into a new kind of cosmogony.
Okay, that’s enough for today. I intend to return to the passage that Gaukroger cites in his work before long.
All my references are to the (1887) US edition of The Progress of Science: 1837-1887, which can be found here.