Psychological conceptions in other sciences : the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford 14 May, 1929 / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychological conceptions in other sciences : the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford 14 May, 1929 / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    We no longer feel so satisfied that adequate light is thrown on the nature and significance of Evolution by such Spencerian phrases as the passage from homogeneity to heterogeneity, or the change from incoherence to coherence or from indefiniteness to definiteness; or that any real assistance is rendered by drawing analogies between the cells, or the circulatory, nervous, and other systems of more complex living organisms, on the one hand, and the struc¬ ture of advanced human societies, on the other. In Spencer’s time the philosophical problem presented itself usually in the form of a dilemma—Are we to express ‘mechanical’ Motion in terms of ‘spiritual’ Mind, or ‘spiritual’ Mind in terms of ‘mechanical’ Motion ? Spencer fully realized that both the objective activity of Matter and the subjective activity of Mind are unknowable, and that we can only describe them by the use of symbols. He has recorded his conviction that behind Mind and Matter lies one and the same Power manifesting itself to us as both. We see, then, he says, ‘ that the whole question is at last nothing more than the question whether these symbols should be expressed in terms of those or those in terms of these—a question’, he curiously adds, ‘scarcely worth de¬ ciding’.1 But he did decide; and most of Spencer’s work arose out of his determination to interpret all phenomena in terms of matter and motion. Despite this determination, he confessed that ‘it seems easier to translate so-called Matter into so-called Spirit, than to translate so-called Spirit into so-called Matter’.2 And despite this determina¬ tion he realized that ‘Matter and Motion are concretes built up from the contents of various mental relations’.3 Indeed he admitted that our experiences of Matter and Motion are resolvable into and constructed out of our ex¬ periences of Force, and that our experiences of Force are unique and ultimate, not derivable from anything else.4 Our self-activity becomes thus for Spencer the fundamental source of our conceptions of Matter and Motion. 1 Cf. Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 159. 2 Ibid., p. 161. 3 First Principles, p. 169. 4 Ibid., pp. 167, 169.