METAMORPHOSES OF SCEPTICISM 



latter.^ But this was because I could at that time see no way of including 

 the highest phases of organisation within the realm of nature without 

 subjecting them to the distortion which mechanical materialism put 

 upon them, a distortion which involved the characteristic denial I 

 could never bring myself to make, the denial of the validity of one or 

 other of the forms of human experience. Religion and art, for instance, 

 are perfectly valid forms, though they certainly do not mean what 

 their interpreters and experiencers have often thought they meant. 

 Mechanism, then, according to my view, was applicable everywhere 

 but final nowhere, and in biology this led to a position of methodo- 

 logical mechanism for which, in opposition to the neo-vitalists, I used 

 the term neo-mechanism.^ This was a way of acknowledging the 

 complexity of the high organic levels without giving up the scientific 

 method. It was also a way of acknowledging the imperfection and 

 relativity of the scientific formulations so far attained. It went with, 

 though it did not necessitate, the idea that the other forms of experience, 

 such as religion, philosophy, history and art, were alternative, also 

 imperfect, ways of apprehending the world in which we live. Owing 

 to my ignorance of any form of naturalism other than mechanical 

 materialism, my discussion of biological organicism was somewhat 

 vitiated. While sympathetic to organicism, I assumed that biological 

 organisation could not be investigated scientifically, and must therefore 

 remain a concept of purely philosophical order.^ Later I was able to 

 revise this view thoroughly, and to show that on the contrary, 

 organising relations are open to investigation.* It is precisely the 

 organisation of the various levels that constitutes their special quality 

 and gives rise to their special forms of behaviour. 



I think it is fair to say that my presentation of the main metaphysical 

 issue was never idealist.^ But I was much influenced by the trend of 

 thought originating with Ernst Mach, and agreed that the procedures 

 of science do not give us a picture of the external world as it really is. 

 While maintaining the real existence of the world (of matter) prior 

 to ourselves, I described many features of the scientific method which 

 suggest that our knowledge of it comes to us in distorted form. 

 However much one may think this distortion amounts to, as long as 

 one admits a knowable objective basis of our experience, one remains 

 a materialist. My ideas on this subject were not cleared up until I 

 read Lenin's book on the Machians, Materialism and Empirio- 



^ SB, p. 242; GA, p. loi. 2 SB, p. 38. ^ SB, pp. 83, 84. 



^ In my book Order and Life (Yale and Cambridge, 1936). ^ SB, p. 26. 



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