Mechanistic Biology 249 



picture of reality. This opens the door wide for the advent of a 

 " synoptic " philosophy as pictured by Merz and Hoernle, for as 

 long as scientific men were prepared to assert that the scientific 

 method alone could provide a valid approach to reality, it was im- 

 possible to hope for any common ground for discussion. Writers 

 on the scientific side in the last century such as Clifford never 

 realised that because of the very methods of science it has its 

 definite limitations, not in subject-matter, but in technique. 

 Word-symbolism, averages, approximations, statistical data, general 

 laws — in every application of the scientific method the individual 

 always escapes and we construct a world corresponding only very 

 inaccurately to the world of reality. We " fit the world on to the 

 Procrustean bed of our own intelligence." In order to correct the 

 distortions of vision which we must of necessity suffer when we 

 apply the scientific method, we must have recourse to the other 

 methods of human perception, we must philosophise, appreciate 

 beauty, and make use of our faculty for mystical experience. 



C. D. Broad first applied these criticisms to mechanistic 

 biology. If we accept the view that the scientific method does 

 not give an absolutely true picture of reality, and that the form of 

 scientific theories is almost entirely the creation of our own minds, 

 then we cannot possibly extend the sway of physics and chemistry 

 to mind, for their essence is mechanistic and we should then be 

 describing mind in terms of an emanation from itself. It is as if 

 we followed the practice of patients suffering from certain types of 

 mental diseases who are so much bound up with the happenings 

 of their dreams and fantasies that they interpret all their fully 

 waking experience in terms of their imaginary life. The creature 

 would thus sit in judgement upon the creator, and the substance 

 would be interpreted in the language of the shadow. 



Moreover, the mechanistic conception of the universe is 

 almost patently stamped with the evidences of mental origin. The 

 more one thinks about it the more one feels that whatever may be 

 the objective substrates of external things, it is only due to the con- 

 figuration of our minds that we conceive of matter and energy in 

 mechanistic fashion. Our minds are like templates in engineering, 

 they necessitate the corresponding flexion of the universe, and 

 before we can understand any set of phenomena they have to 

 be made to fit. " In a sense we are always anthropomorphic,'^ 

 says James Ward, " since we can never divest ourselves of our 



