It is our aim, as it should be the aim of every writer, to say what we have to say as precisely as possible and in such a way that we may give as little trouble as possible to the reader. If neglect to define the place of our own point of view in the general body of philosophical doctrine has caused us to fail in this aim, we deserve his reproaches.
We might, of course, throw ourselves on his mercy and plead our ignorance of philosophy, but this would not exonerate us. We are writing as an engineer, but not exclusively for engineers. We must study all those who are interested in our theme. Our ignorance could be remedied and would have to be remedied if clarity could be increased by an excursion into those regions of philosophy which have been explored by the leading thinkers of our civilization. What we put into these pages and what we leave out must not be settled by the limitations of our own reading. In deciding how much space we shall devote to the links of our own thought with that of others we must, like every author, be influenced only by a careful balance of the gains and losses to the reader.
There is a gain in the appeal to the authority of the great men of the past, but at the cost of demanding the effort to recall exactly what other philosophers have said. Our experience has shown that this effort is often a considerable burden, while the gain from the appeal to authority is of doubtful value whenever various interpretations of the meaning of the mighty dead exist. This uncertainty applies particularly to the great philosophers of ancient Greece. We have read in one book, for instance, that Plato [c.428-c.348 BCE, Greek philosopher. — Ed.] appreciated the significance of change, in another that he ignored it. One person has told us that Zeno of Elea, the one who originated the famous paradoxes, was a subtle thinker who demonstrated brilliantly how inadequate the philosophical systems of his contemporaries were. Another person has told us that Zeno propounded silly riddles which any schoolboy could solve. To quote any philosopher of the golden age is, therefore, not enough. One must refer in addition to the interpretation of the philosopher in question as given by this or that commentator.
That such various interpretations are possible need not surprise us. When we read Plato, for instance, we can never be sure that his words mean the same to us as they did to the students who walked with him and talked with him in the gardens of the Academy on the outskirts of Athens. Plato found the perfect way of saying what he had to say to those to whom he said it. But these were men who lived in different surroundings from ours and had a different cultural background. They knew when their teacher was to be understood literally and when metaphorically. They could take to a nicety the measure of Plato's irony. They knew when the point of his argument was scientific and when dialectic, when poetical and when ethical. But it is difficult for us to know with certainty.
We must also remember that the profoundest thinkers of the past, particularly those of ancient Greece, do not seem to have given a great deal of attention to the problems with which we are concerned. They did much to elucidate the distinction between concepts and the things conceived, between the general and the particular, between order and chaos, between reason and sensation, between good and evil, between virtue and sin, between the eternal and the temporal, between permanence and change. They were interested in the nature and the limitations of thought, in questions of conduct, in justice, in the value of discipline.
But in this book we are not concerned with any of these things. We are concerned with the distinction between material and non-material reality in general, and the question whether Life is material or non-material in particular. Those whose contributions to philosophy have been great and lasting have not ignored these problems, but they have usually treated them as incidental to problems in ethics, religion or psychology. Even our great contemporary, Bergson [Henri Bergson, 1859-1941, French philosopher and Nobel Prize winner. — Ed.], who has done more than others to illuminate the very problems with which we are concerned, has approached them from a different angle. What use would it, therefore, be for us to define our attitude to Bergson, let alone to Plato or Kant [Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, German philosopher. — Ed.] or Hegel [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831, German philosopher. — Ed.]? In doing so, we should merely be saying what we think on subjects which have little or nothing to do with the theme of this book, and we should tempt the reader to identify us with the label attaching to this or that school while we want him, instead, to follow our arguments with an open mind. We are very anxious that he shall consider what we do say, and not what his knowledge of other writers may lead him to fancy that we are going to say.
Plato taught that, in addition to the world of sense perceptions, there is a world of ideas, each idea being the counterpart of something which we know by experience. He said, in effect, in The Republic, Book X: "There are many beds and many tables; but there is only one eidos of a bed and one eidos of a table. And the artificer who makes each of these pieces of furniture looks to the eidos of a bed or a table, and so makes the beds and the tables which we use. The man does not make the eidos, he only copies it".
Had Plato said nothing more we should, indeed, have to conclude that he meant the same thing as specification. We can devise a modernized passage on parallel lines: "If there are many beds and many tables, there are also many Ford cars; but there is only one specification for each model. And a workman in Mr. Ford's factory who helps to make the cars looks to the specification so that he may know what to do. The man in the shops does not make the specification; he only copies it, for it has been prepared in the office."
So striking a correspondence between the two concepts proves that our argument can gain in clarity only if we follow up the comparison. We will, therefore, now proceed to discuss in detail what a specification is and what it is not, and we will contrast it with the Platonic eidos whenever it seems useful to emphasize a distinction. It will then become apparent how little true resemblance there is.
There is a difference already in the things to which the two words apply, for in Plato's view everything which appeared to him significant had its counterpart in an eidos, whereas only some things have their counterpart in a specification. Plato taught that there are ideas for such abstractions as beauty, truth and goodness. He declared that the idea of the Good was pre-eminent over all the others and embodied them all. He thus established a bridge between his doctrine of ideas and his ethics.
But it is clearly meaningless to speak of the "specification" of any abstraction. One can specify beautiful things and good things, but not beauty or goodness unattached to any material reality. The word "specification" applies only to the measureable attributes of concrete things: to their shape, their size, their structure, their number, their physical properties, their durations, their order in time and space.
Even when applied to concrete things, eidos is a wider concept than specification. Plato would have said that there is not only an idea for a bed and one for a table and one for each other manufactured article. He would have also said that there is one idea for a mountain, and one for a river, and one for a star, and one for a crystal. But there is no specification for any of these things. They have merely shaken down under the unco-ordinated action of Matter on Matter. As we explained in the last chapter, there is no need to invoke a specification in order to explain those things which have merely shaken down. The laws of physics and chemistry suffice. Only those things are specified which are prevented from shaking down, and there is always a specification for these.
It would also be arbitrary if we were to limit the use of the word to those things to which we can attach some dignity or which have a conspicuous practical significance or some measure of permanence. In the most insignificant events, a specification is followed provided only that things are prevented from shaking down. The cook who boils our breakfast egg places it in water at a specified temperature and leaves it there for a specified three minutes. With varying success, a golfer sends the ball in a specified direction. When eventually it does reach the eighteenth hole this is not a result of shaking down. When we say that a cookery book specifies the way to prepare a meal and the plan of a golf course specifies the way the players are to proceed, we do not arbitrarily stretch the meaning of the word. We use the word in its literal sense with the meaning which everyone attaches to it. We surmise, however, that Plato would have deemed some of the things which are specified to be too trivial to be worthy of a place in his world of ideas.
In their duration as well as in their universality, Plato's ideas differ from our specification. The world of ideas was conceived as eternal and changeless. Nothing could ever be lost to it, nothing added, nothing modified. Ideas were believed to have started their existence at the beginning of time and to go on unchanged till the end of the world. Had Plato consulted the Oracle at Delphi and been told that, in due course, a Mr. Ford would found a motor-car factory, he would have declared that the eidos of a Ford car existed already.
But we can all agree that there was no specification for motor-cars in those days. Specifications come and go. They are altered from time to time and adapted to developing needs. When we say, therefore, that a living organism conforms to the requirements of a specification, we do not mean that this has always been in existence. We do not suggest that in the days of the Dinosaur, there was a specification for Arab steeds or that there is still one for Dinosaurs to-day. We mean that the specifications for living organisms occur, like those for buildings and machines, as and when occasion arises.
When we speak of the specification for a living organism, we obviously do not mean a man-made specification. Neither do we necessarily mean anything made by a superhuman intelligence, nor even by a superhuman mind which is lacking in intelligence. Why should we? We know of nothing which could lead us to believe that anything in the nature of Mind makes the specifications to which living organisms conform. We neither know what makes them nor by what process, and scientists cannot tell us. All that they have been able to discover is a little about the process by which the specifications, once they exist, come to be modified. But this belongs to a chapter on genetics and will be discussed in its proper place on some future occasion.
Anyhow, the origin of specifications, interesting though the subject is, belongs to another field of investigation. We are concerned here only to draw conclusions from the bare fact that there are specifications for living organisms. These conclusions would be the same whether the specifications were due to a God, or a Demiurge, or a Life Force, or Entelechies, or a World Intelligence, or a Super-Mind, or a Sub-Mind, or some influence with no Mind at all. We can be sure of one thing only: they are not due to the unaided action of Matter on Matter. For, let us repeat, it is not in the nature of Matter unaided to produce specifications or to follow them when produced. So vitalism is justified provided only it be proved that the specifications exist, no matter how they may originate.
But a specification does not call for perfection. In the interests of the shareholders, the specifications prepared by motor-car manufacturers do not require anything better than can be produced at the price at which the cars are to be sold. Steel is never specified to be unbreakable but to have a tensile strength of, say, thirty tons per square inch. A measuring instrument is not required to give perfect accuracy, but to read within a specified margin of permissible error. The cook is not told to boil our breakfast egg for exactly three minutes but for about three minutes. Suppose it were necessary to specify that something was to be circular and that a small departure from a true circle mattered. The proper way of doing so would not be to say that the circle was to be perfect. If the specification were drafted very scientifically, it would mention instead to how many decimal points its specified measurement was to be observed.
This brings a specification into the same relation to anticipation which a historical record bears to memory and suggests an interesting field for metaphysical study which we have no space to explore here. We will only point out that, while philosophers have had much to say about the relation between past and present, they have dealt far less exhaustively with the relation between future and present.
Bergson, for instance, has dealt in a profound manner with "Matter and Memory". But no one has yet given equal study to "Matter and Anticipation". Perhaps someone will do so some day. Then the word "specification" will be useful: for as we learn what has happened from a study of history, so do we learn what is going to happen from a study of specifications.
It goes without saying that a specification calls only for things compatible with the laws of physics and chemistry. If it did not, it would be useless, for it could never be followed. And it also goes without saying that a specification does not demand that the laws of physics and chemistry shall be followed. To do this would, again, be useless, for these laws will be followed whether specified or not. The requirements in a specification are all additional to those imposed by the laws of physics and chemistry. They demand a choice between alternatives, all of which are physically possible. There are many ways in which clay can be moulded, but the specification in the mind of the potter allows it to be moulded only in one of these ways. To say that the structure of a living organism conforms to the requirements of a specification is to say that the substance forming it could have been assembled in a variety of ways, all physically possible, but that the specification permits only one of these to be adopted. We come back again to our oft-reiterated contention that, according to vitalism, living substance does not possess greater freedom than lifeless substance, but less.
In excluding the laws of physics and chemistry from its requirements, a specification differs radically from a Platonic idea. Professor A. Wolf has gone so far as to suggest in The Outline of Modern Knowledge, on page 10, that Plato's ideas may have been intended to represent the eternal laws of nature. Remembering what Plato has said about the eidos of a bed and the eidos of a table as well as what he has said about the ideas of beauty, truth and goodness, we doubt whether many commentators would interpret their Plato as Wolf does, but we are sure that all would agree to include the laws of physics and chemistry among the Platonic ideas.
Concerning Platonic ideas, the answer to these questions is easy. Plato's philosophy had that hard, clear outline which characterized all Greek thought and all Greek art. He had no doubt that ideas were not subjective in the sense of being peculiar to an individual, but that they were objective in the sense of being independent of individuals. This is apparent from the remark: "The man does not make the eidos, he only copies it".
We are sure that, for Plato, ideas were also non-material and, therefore, without location — though, according to one authority we have read, Plato said so in a metaphorical and rather paradoxical way. For it appears that he did declare that the world of ideas exists somewhere. However, he chose a place which, for him and his contemporaries, symbolized nowhere. He taught that the world of ideas was a long way off, beyond the firmament and, moreover, in that part of the heavens which never appeared above the horizon at Athens. To the comparatively untravelled Greeks, whether or not they were believers in a flat earth, this was a region of the sky which no man could ever set eyes on. An admittedly perfunctory search has not enabled us to find this statement in Plato, but it seems to us quite consistent with his method of teaching. Certainly Plato did not mean that the position of the world of ideas could be defined in terms of miles and degrees of latitude and longitude. He meant that this world was doubly inaccessible to our observation and, therefore, as good as nowhere. This was Plato's way of making it clear that an eidos could neither be felt, nor seen, nor heard; that our senses could never discover it by any means whatever, direct or indirect; in a word, that it was non-material. We are convinced that Plato knew well enough that a thing which is non-material lacks all the attributes of Matter, including those which can be measured in terms of distances and angles and that he, therefore, did not mean his geographical statement about the world of ideas to be taken literally.
Perhaps Plato would have been less perfectly understood if he had expressed himself with a more pedantic accuracy. Had he said that the world of ideas was nowhere, his students might have thought that there was no such world. The distinction between "nowhere" and "not" may have presented great difficulties to the ancient Greeks. It certainly presents great difficulties to us moderns.
When we leave Platonic ideas and come to consider specifications, we find that it can be argued with plausibility both that they are subjective and that they are objective; both that they are material and that they are non-material.
We say rightly that a thought is subjective. It cannot be without a thinker; its existence depends on an individual. In this sense, the specifications for buildings and. machines would have to be called subjective. They arise out of the thoughts of individuals and their existence depends on individuals. The one to which St. Paul's Cathedral was built originated in the mind of Sir Christopher Wren.
But once this specification had come into being, it led an existence independent of its creator; so much so, indeed, that it could have been effective even if commencement of the work had been delayed for years; even though Sir Christopher had died or retired before the work was completed. We have to conclude that, in one sense, a specification has an objective existence.
Yet this suggestion can be justified quite convincingly and without recourse to hair-splitting metaphysical niceties. One need only remember that one and the same specification can exist in a variety of different ways. It is the same specification whether it is written on different paper in different characters; whether it is translated into another tongue; whether its requirements be presented in words, drawings or models, or only in the condition of the cerebral cells of some person. Yet we all know that one and the same material thing cannot exist simultaneously in a variety of shapes.
And here is another similar argument. The specification may be preserved in a number of copies. One of these may be kept in the architect's office, another with the builder, and a third with the clerk of works. Yet there is only one specification. Here we have one in three and three in one in a different sense to that used by theologians. But the allusions may not be wholly irrelevant, for the solution of the puzzle concerning the Church's conception of the Trinity is based on the fact that God is non-material. In the same way, we are led to assert that a specification is non-material. A material object cannot be in three places at once; and a non-material thing can, by definition, not be anywhere at all.
No doubt the contradictions can be resolved and the questions answered. We might attempt to do so ourselves. But we should not be satisfied with the result. We distrust facile ways out of a logical dilemma and, in our opinion, the riddles and questions we have just propounded belong to an important section of metaphysics with which we are not qualified to deal.
Neither do we need to do so. For our argument does not depend on our ability to prove either the subjective or the objective aspect of the specifications to which the organic world conforms, or whether they are material or non-material in character. We are content to concede that these specifications are just like those with which architects and engineers are acquainted and that they can be effective only if they are represented as material records of the work to be done. If we conclude that living organisms are specified, we must adopt vitalism whether the specifications exist as material objects or not.