Man in Search of Himself

Physics and the Importance of Man

By way of conclusion to this rapid survey, let us try once more to bring together the most salient facts that have been set before us.

In the first place, we have been struck by the importance of man — an importance not arising from any anthropocentric pretensions, but an importance deduced from an objective inquiry into phenomena.

In our descriptions of Nature, science has always taught us to beware of our spontaneous tendency to put ourselves at the centre of phenomena; and the advance in knowledge achieved through avoiding this egocentric outlook has been considerable. And then suddenly, when physics had penetrated deeply enough into the heart of the phenomena under study, it became clear that the description we could give of our external world threw more and more light upon man himself in proportion as we tried to make this description independent of man.

This is, in my opinion, the great event in physics since the beginning of the century (and one made largely through unitary theories). Suddenly, this physics blazed forth above all the other learned disciplines and threw light upon them — rather like fireworks, which not only spread their marvellous colours across the sky but also light up the nocturnal scene in which human life is set. We have seen how the whole domain of the so-called human sciences, from biology to psychoanalysis, from the behaviour of individual man to his behaviour in society, across the frontiers that divide pure science from art and religion — all that is directly connected with man today — appears in a radically new light thanks to the contribution made by recent results in the natural sciences, and more especially in physics.

No doubt the findings of physics have been noted and applied to the human field for several centuries. But up to this point, it was above all the physico-chemical implications that had been appreciated. Hence ideas about the mechanisms of chemical reactions, about atomic and molecular structure, and about the physical and chemical properties of elements, were introduced into biology as soon as they had been clarified and defined in physics. But man, just because he is man, is a great deal more than the simple outcome of physico-chemical reactions! The real questions that concern man, far beyond his purely material aspect, are the mechanism of life, the nature of psychism, the part played by man in evolution, and the basis of the artistic and religious sentiments. It is clear to any really thoughtful man that he is not on Earth simply to survive, but rather to live; and one must consider the deep significance of this. Why should one live? This question certainly does not exclude the other problem: How should one live? But it seems plain that when we have a clearer appreciation of why we are alive, we shall know better how we ought to live.

Until quite recently, it seemed that the great advances made by physics could be but little help on all these fundamental problems. But then came what we believe to have been the event of supreme importance for this latter part of the second millennium, the realisation that Nature is a veritable 'mirror' of man, and that a study of the external world can yield the most valuable information about man himself.

Physics and the Importance of Language

The names of Alfred Korzybski [1879-1950, Polish Amercican philosopher of language. — Ed.] and Kurt Gφdel [1906-78, Czech American logician and mathematician. — Ed.] are closely associated with the first steps in this modern discovery of the importance of language. But Albert Einstein, with his insistence upon the relative nature of our observations and his demonstration that scientific theory arose far more from a priori reasoning than from experiment, should also be deemed to have played an essential part in the understanding of the true significance of language.

Language can never — as is commonly supposed — express things as they actually are. It is always a logical structure built up on a number of postulates, that is to say, on bases which it is agreed to accept, although they are never true in an absolute fashion. True, this procedure hardly causes any prejudice or semantic limitations when it is a question of everyday language. If I say 'This object is red', I shall be generally understood (though not universally, for we must remember the Daltonians). It is of little consequence that I should remember the strict dependence of this affirmation on a postulate which assumes a correspondence between my sensation of red and the word 'red'. But a problem might arise if I were tomorrow to wake up as a Daltonian, and went on matching my new colour-sensations with my unchanged postulates. I might find myself arguing with my neighbour, who would claim to be seeing something as red which I was 'certain' I saw as green. You might say that this was not a very serious matter, especially as this is an exaggeratedly extreme case. But the matter becomes more serious when we are dealing with words like 'beautiful', 'just', 'bad'; for none of these words has any meaning 'in itself', but simply as it relates to the logical structure in which it occurs for the speaker or the listener. These logical structures are, in their turn, based on the initial postulates we have mentioned, but which are rarely the same for two different people. This is where the fundamental difficulties of language come to a head, and its inherent imprecision is revealed.

This is not always very serious provided we are always fully conscious of the limitations of language. However, if this is not borne in mind, lack of understanding may become the source of difficulties even in ordinary daily life by creating unreal problems for all of us. After all, do not legal disputes which may end in physical fights between human groups often arise from the possible 'double meaning' that may be attached to a particular form of words?

This becomes a crucial problem, to be treated with the utmost seriousness, when we are considering the language of science. Problems such as: 'continuous or discontinuous'; 'the universe — finite or infinite, created or uncreated?' — these are essentially dilemmas arising from linguistic difficulties. Let us remember Kurt Gφdel's demonstration of how two languages built upon postulates that were merely complementary (and not contradictory) might end in clashing with regard to one and the same phenomenon, where one language would call 'black' what the other would call 'white'.

It is therefore of first importance for each of us, and particularly for the scientific researcher, to be well aware of the semantic limitations of language.

But there is an equally important positive side of this fundamental aspect of language. By a judicious choice of its postulates, language almost uniquely has the power to stand aside from observation (at least for the time being) and yet increase our knowledge in the realm of the exact sciences. Einstein's General Relativity is a magnificent example of this power of language. It is the foundation of all our modern knowledge of the infinitely small and the infinitely great. Starting from three carefully chosen postulates, and from these only, Albert Einstein proceeded to 'unroll' the logical structure of the language of Relativity; and this method, by virtue of its verified predictions, yielded more knowledge of Nature than had previously been obtained by thousands of observers.

In this book we have tried to show how this power of language might in the same way be applied to our knowledge of man, both biologically and physically. Modelling ourselves upon the fruitful methods of General Relativity, we put forward a field language for the study of the mechanisms of life, to replace the corpuscular language at present in use. We then saw the need for a mnemonic field, 'branching out' in some way from the material structure, to give it its living characteristics. To make sure that this idea was not simply a question of submerging the problem in words, we attempted to deduce in outline the principles of the 'elementary' living structure in such a field language. We saw that this brought us to a structure very close to what gives rise in physics to the phenomenon of crystalline luminescence (semi-conductors).

But then we found that this field language was itself inadequate for arriving at a deeper knowledge of this living structure. Just as in physics the arrival of unitary theories mean a transition from a field language to a geometrical language, so was it necessary to pass from a field language to a topological language in order to analyse and describe the transition from matter to the living structure, and from the living structure to the psychic structure. We reached the conviction that the three great stages of evolution — matter, life, man — biologically correspond not to simple elaboration of the links between material elements but to a topological change which, by virtue of a new form, made it possible to establish links that had been impossible under the old form.

In my opinion, it is the topology, and not simply the linkages, of the DNA molecule that gives it the first of its fundamental characteristics, that of making life possible. The second step needed to make this molecule really alive appears to be to link it up with the already existing mnemonic field — in fact, to a structure which is already alive.

I find it difficult to believe that the vast quantity of information needed for life could be written into a chemical structure, however complicated it might be. It seems to me that in the final event, it is time that proves to be the essential element of life. It is through time spanning thousands of millions of years, and in the course of many attempts at creating life, that there has been constructed this mnemonic field which is indispensable to life — even at a stage as rudimentary as that of the bacteria.

Even when the constituents and linkages of the DNA molecule have been accurately identified and even when it has been provided with a topology suitable to life, we shall still have an organism that is only 'potentially' alive. In order to behave like something really alive, it will have to be linked up — if only for a few moments — with another living organism, which will put it in touch with a mnemonic field cunningly elaborated over the course of time.

The Importance of Language in Psychoanalysis

The archetypes are 'unformulated' entities, and can influence each of our unconscious selves only if they are first translated by means of symbols. These symbols are pictures which must find their proper place in the ordering of all our conscious imagery, that is to say, in our language. It is supremely important that man should be able to 'give birth' to his own unconscious archetypes by giving them conscious symbolic expression. We saw that serious psychic or psychic-somatic disturbances could result from an archetypal blockage (when an archetype fails to find adequate symbols for emergence into the subject's conscious mind), or from a symbolic imbalance (when an archetype finds such intense symbolic expression that the whole conscious self is subordinated to this one archetype).

Psychoanalysis is still very much in the tentative experimental stage; but we have glimpsed great future developments of this science. For surely man is, above all else, a psychic being, all his actions being essentially conditioned by his psychism. Are not all the main trends of evolution latent in the human psyche? If we are not to reduce the universe to a meaningless and mindless thing, it is surely in the study of psychism that we shall find a better understanding of man's true vocation in the cosmos.

One fact that has stood out clearly in the preceding pages is the prime importance of art and religion along with science. They are not merely means of knowledge that are complementary to science (and theoretically just as valid), but they are absolutely necessary to man for the harmonious development and balance of his existence. A scientist who is incapable of deep religious feelings is like a tree without roots; and a religious man who would ignore the recent findings of science is like a tree without leaves, passing nothing on to others. Art will always be the best language for giving man a certain balance; for it combines the beauties of our known scientific world with the depths of the world which religion seeks to probe, enabling man to be aware both of the marvels hidden beneath the surface of knowledge, and of the depths of knowledge hidden beneath the apparently irrational.

The Evolution of the Word

Our examination of evolution led us to note that language (in the widest sense, which includes thought and action) is not only the pencil that draws the universe for us, but is in fact the universe itself.

Never before had the profound meaning of the Biblical phrase 'In the beginning was the Word' come home to us so fully. The whole universe is Word, and nothing but Word. This Word is a free act of Nature, ranging from matter to man; but this Word can only express Being, rather like a river which has a 'choice' of ways from higher to lower, but which cannot avoid coming continually nearer to its final destination down below in the plains. What is not Word, or no longer Word, is necessarily part of Being. But there is no sense in trying to define Being in terms of the Word, since every Word is an expression of Being (even two contradictory expressions), and no Word can be more than an infinitely incomplete expression of Being.

It is very interesting to see to what extent the analysis of these basic problems — even on an avowedly scientific level — leads to the same results intuitively suggested by the religions of every age and every land. Here, then, is one more proof — if proof were needed — of the unity of science and religion if only one digs down deep enough in either of these fields of human knowledge.

Sense of Human Purpose

Surely the same kind of progress will take us across the threshold separating man from a wider humanity. For this step, we shall need not merely isolated pieces of information but complete languages. But, as things are, there is hardly any communication between different languages, and it will be difficult for them to link up with one another. There are the languages of mathematics, of physics,of chemistry, of biology, of psychology, of sociology; there is the language of art, and the language of religion. There are national languages, differing not only in vocabulary, but also in their concepts and their ideologies. And — on a simpler level — there is each man's personal language, our personal ways of judging phenomena in the light of our individual past experience and of the material and social environment in which we live.

There can surely be no doubt of the immense progress that will be made when all these languages are able to communicate more freely with each other and join harmoniously to create 'the language embracing all languages'; when we pass from human knowledge to a more all-embracing but less analytical planetary wisdom; when human love and creation rise to a higher, more world-wide, more cosmic level. This is what will come to pass in the humanity of the future, which will have discovered how to rise beyond the stage of divisive separate languages to the unifying stage of a language embracing all languages. Then indeed it will have reached the 'noosphere' whose premonitory signs were so clearly discerned by Teilhard de Chardin. What great prospects will be within the reach of this humanity when it has learned to build up a 'planetary' language from the most original and most profound elements in each of us! And in return, what new powers and new qualities will be conferred on each man who is a member of this new 'being', humanity!

For anyone who has eyes to see, this new humanity is already on the horizon — the vast horizon opened up by man, stretching from the depths of his unconscious self to the extraordinary successes achieved by science. The young people of our planet seem to be particularly sensitive to this transformation of our ancient structures; they are intuitively aware of a fresh wind of 'renaissance' beginning to blow across our Earth, from pole to pole and from meridian to meridian. They are loud with impatience to see the accomplishment of this change for which the whole of evolution has prepared the way. There is a clear vision of the future written upon the hearts of those who will shoulder the responsibilities of tomorrow; and it is high time we all embarked on the way they see ahead: a way that will lead us all to greater freedom because we shall all share in a greater unity.