Adieu, Arithmetic !- •
Gallio, or the Tyranny of Science. By J. W. N. Sullivan, (Kegan Paul. 2s. 6d.) " I WOULD not hold it as impossible," says Mr. J. W. N, Sullivan, " that the human mind may come to realize, imagin.
atively as well as logically, the four-dimensional space-time continuum. But it seems that the mind of the physicist, at any rate, will have to do more than become familiar with
relativity theory. It will have to accommodate itself somehow to the quantum theory, . . . We must learn to think in a different way, and what the consequences of that new way of thinking will be no one can say. We know very little of the possibilities of the development of the human con- sciousness. . . . The next step upward . . will not be achieved by either slovenly credulity or slovenly scepticism, but only by a terrifying mental travail."
What are these theories to which the author alludes, what is to be borne of this labour between the cold stars and pulsing atoms ? The quantum theory and relativity are subjects about which the average man is very haiy. The rumours we hear of them are disturbing. The ground seems to slip under our feet. The "-iron laws of the Victorians " have been broken. Newton under his tree to-day might say that he hit the apple, and not vice versa. Space has strange kinks in it. Two and two do not always make four. The universe, as we conceive it, is very likely irrational, and the attempt to describe it mathematically may have to be aban- doned. Such is the river of thought in which we find ourselves, with Euclid and Newton and other flotsam being carried to the ocean of eternity. But Mr. Sullivan throws us several life-lines.
Professor Eddington, whose work on relativity in a properly educated age would " be given more newspaper headlines than Tutankhamen," says we may have reached the limit of mathematical science. The world may not be reducible to any formula. But if this be so, there is no reason for despair ; indeed there should be cause for rejoicing among the poets. In order to progress, we must return within ourselves, perhaps like the Brahmins, perhaps in some new fashion, to cozen from our consciousness new faculties of mind with which to track Reality to her lair.
- This is the sum of Mr. Sullivan's remarkable monograph : we must break with old habits of thought, make fresh contacts, revise our concept of the world in the light of the new phenomena presented to us (or rather presented to the very few who understand them) by the incomprehensible yet discernible behaviour of .electrons. If we would cut our way out of a tangle of words, we. may quote not a scientist, but that derelict darling of the gods, Francis Thompson :---- " The angels keep their ancient places, Turn but on stone and start a wing 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces That miss the -many-splendoured thing."
Physics, says Mr. Sullivan, suffers from inadequate abstrac- tions. We have not gone deep enough into life. Just a-; the early economists set up a ghastly economic man to haunt and harass the next generation in its adjustments between capital and labour ; or (to quote one of the author's examples) as a soldier was conceived in the War to be a biped supporting stomach and weapons, so physicists imagined a world where - time and space were two separate things and matter a third independent entity. They glided too easily on the surface of appearances. Time and space are not composed of independent volumes and instants ; on the contrary, every conceivable or inconceivable volume of space has reference to the whole cosmos and every moment of time refers both to the past and future. Matter is but an aspect or appearance of one truth : things are not, quite literally, what they seen), and the present, instead of being a series of diskinet ins. tants
reeled off on the Screen of memory like the pictures in a cinema, is in Reality both the past and the future; a stream of living water on which Spirit moves.
I will not attempt to follow the author in his briiliant restatement of what is_ virtually the ancient Aryan theory of devastatingsummary of •materialism, his insight into the puerilities of many psycho-analysts,_nor his-plea for is as being the true seers while " the man of science, taking pale abstractions for realities, dwells in dreamland." either Mr. Sullivan's matter nor his manner admit of precis a paraphrase ; indeed, I may have already misrepresented 1, rushing into the perilous borderland of speculation where
m angels hesitate. This pocket Novum Organum suggests r more than it states : it will come as a catalyst to many Inds prepared for its message.
The stage is set for another act in the miracle-play of man. stein, Eddington, Whitehead . . . we may hardly predict e names of the chief actors, but certain it is that our age Is the unfolding of the plot of human progress. Mr. livan has twitched aside a corner of the curtain of the lure.
F. Y.-B.
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