Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



Machine-view of Science. It is curious (and yet 

 I think it will presently be seen that it is quite 

 what might have been expected) that during this 

 century or so, in which Machinery has played 

 such an important part in our daily and social life, 

 mechanical ideas have come to colour all our 

 conceptions of Science and the Universe. Modern 

 Science holds it as a kind of ideal (even though 

 finding it at times difficult to realise) to reduce 

 everything to mechanical action, and to show each 

 process of Nature intelligible in the same sense 

 as a Machine is intelligible. Yet this conception, 

 this ideal, involves a complete fallacy. For the 

 moment you come to think of it, you see that 

 no part of Nature really even resembles a 

 machine. 



What is a machine in the ordinary sense } It is 

 an aggregation of parts put together to fulfil 

 certain definite actions and no others. A sewing- 

 machine fulfils the purpose of sewing, a watch 

 fulfils that of keeping time, and they fulfil those 

 purposes only. All their parts subserve those 

 actions, and in that sense may be completely 

 described — as far as just their mechanical action 

 is concerned — the same by a thousand mechanicians. 

 But I make bold to say that no object in Nature 

 fulfils just one action, or series of actions, and no 

 others. On the contrary, every object fulfils an 

 endless series of actions. 



Let us take the Human Eye. And I choose 

 this as an instance most adverse to my position, 

 for there is no doubt that the Human Eye is one 



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