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MODERN

MODERNITY

MODERNISM


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Modernisation

Renewal or Innovation

Convention or Tradition


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Modernisation

Charles Darwin-The Origin of Speciesby Means of Natural Selection or

the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859)

William JamesPsychology (1892)

Henri BergsonMatter and Memory (1896)

Sigmund Freud-The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)

Max PlanckQuantum Theory (1899)

Albert Einstein - Special Theory of Relativity (1905)


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The Origin of Species

That many and grave objections may be advanced against thetheory of descent with modification through natural selection, I donot deny. I have endeavoured to give to them their full force. Nothingat first can appear more difficult to believe than that the morecomplex organs and instincts should have been perfected not bymeans superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but bythe accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for theindividual possessor.Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearingto our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if weadmit the following propositions, namely, -- that gradations in theperfection of any organ or instinct, which we may consider, either donow exist or could have existed, each good of its kind, -- that all

organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable, -- and,lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to thepreservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. Thetruth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.


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All the individuals of the same species,

and all the species of the same genus, or

even higher group, must have descended

from common parents.


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Man does not actually produce variability; he only unintentionallyexposes organic beings to new conditions of life, and then natureacts on the organisation, and causes variability. But man can anddoes select the variations given to him by nature, and thusaccumulate them in any desired manner. He thus adapts animalsand plants for his own benefit or pleasure.He may do this

methodically, or he may do it unconsciously by preserving theindividuals most useful to him at the time, without any thought ofaltering the breed. It is certain that he can largely influence thecharacter of a breed by selecting, in each successive generation,individual differences so slight as to be quite inappreciable by anuneducated eye. This process of selection has been the greatagency in the production of the most distinct and useful domesticbreeds. That many of the breeds produced by man have to a largeextent the character of natural species, is shown by the inextricabledoubts whether very many of them are varieties of aboriginalspecies.


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There is no obvious reason why the principles which have acted soefficiently under domestication should not have acted under nature.In the preservation of favoured individuals and races, during theconstantly-recurrent Struggle for Existence, we see the most

powerful and ever-acting means of selection.[] More individualsare born than can possibly survive. A grain in the balance will

determine which individual shall live and which shall die, -- whichvariety or species shall increase in number, and which shalldecrease, or finally become extinct. As the individuals of the samespecies come in all respects into the closest competitionwith eachother, the strugglewill generally be most severe between them; itwill be almost equally severe between the varieties of the samespecies, and next in severity between the species of the samegenus. But the struggle will often be very severe between beingsmost remote in the scale of nature. The slightest advantage in onebeing, at any age or during any season, over those with which itcomes into competition, or better adaptation in however slight adegree to the surrounding physical conditions, will turn the balance.


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On the view that species are only strongly

marked and permanent varieties, and that

each species first existed as a variety, we

can see why it is that no line ofdemarcation can be drawn between

species, commonly supposed to have

been produced by special acts of creation,and varieties which are acknowledged to

have been produced by secondary laws.


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As natural selection acts by competition, it adaptstheinhabitants of each country only in relation to the degreeof perfection of their associates; so that we need feel nosurprise at the inhabitants of any one country, although

on the ordinary view supposed to have been speciallycreated and adapted for that country, being beaten andsupplanted by the naturalised productions from anotherland. Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances innature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect;

and if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness.[] The wonder indeed is, on the theory of naturalselection, that more cases of the want of absoluteperfection have not been observed.


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Glancing at instincts, marvellous as some are, they offer no greaterdifficulty than does corporeal structure on the theory of the naturalselection of successive, slight, but profitable modifications. We canthus understand why nature moves by graduated steps in endowingdifferent animals of the same class with their several instincts. []Habit no doubt sometimes comes into play in modifying instincts; but

it certainly is not indispensable[] On the view of all the species ofthe same genus having descended from a common parent, andhaving inherited much in common, we can understand how it is thatallied species, when placed under considerably different conditionsof life, yet should follow nearly the same instincts; why the thrush ofSouth America, for instance, lines her nest with mud like our Britishspecies. On the view of instincts having been slowly acquiredthrough natural selection we need not marvel at some instinctsbeing apparently not perfect and liable to mistakes, and at manyinstincts causing other animals to suffer.


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Looking to geographical distribution, if we admit that there has been duringthe long course of ages much migrationfrom one part of the world toanother[], then we can understand, on the theory of descent withmodification, most of the great leading facts in Distribution. We can see whythere should be so striking a parallelism in the distribution of organic beingsthroughout space, and in their geological succession throughout time; for inboth cases the beings have been connected by the bond of ordinarygeneration, and the means of modification have been the same. We see thefull meaning of the wonderful fact, which must have struck every traveller,namely, that on the same continent, under the most diverse conditions,under heat and cold, on mountain and lowland, on deserts and marshes,most of the inhabitants within each great class are plainly related; for theywill generally be descendants of the same progenitors and early colonists.[]Although two areas may present the same physical conditions of life,

we need feel no surprise at their inhabitants being widely different, if theyhave been for a long period completely separated from each other; for asthe relation of organism to organism is the most important of all relations,and as the two areas will have received colonists from some third source orfrom each other, at various periods and in different proportions, the courseof modification in the two areas will inevitably be different.


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The existence of closely allied or representative species in any twoareas, implies, on the theory of descent with modification, that thesame parents formerly inhabited both areas; and we almostinvariably find that wherever many closely allied species inhabit twoareas, some identical species common to both still exist. Wherevermany closely allied yet distinct speciesoccur, many doubtful forms

and varieties of the same species likewise occur. It is a rule of highgenerality that the inhabitants of each area are related to theinhabitants of the nearest source whence immigrants might havebeen derived. We see this in nearly all the plants and animals of theGalapagos archipelago, of Juan Fernandez, and of the other

American islands being related in the most striking manner to theplants and animals of the neighbouring American mainland; andthose of the Cape de Verde archipelago and other African islands tothe African mainland. It must be admitted that these facts receive noexplanation on the theory of creation.


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Several eminent naturalists have of late published their belief that amultitude of reputed species in each genus are not real species; butthat other species are real, that is, have been independentlycreated.This seems to me a strange conclusion to arrive at. Theyadmit that a multitude of forms, which till lately they themselvesthought were special creations, and which are still thus looked at by

the majority of naturalists, and which consequently have everyexternal characteristic feature of true species, -- they admit thatthese have been produced by variation, but they refuse to extendthe same view to other and very slightly different forms.Nevertheless they do not pretend that they can define, or evenconjecture, which are the created forms of life, and which are thoseproduced by secondary laws. They admit variation as a vera causain one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning anydistinction in the two cases. The day will come when this will begiven as a curious illustration of the blindness of preconceivedopinion.


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Nevertheless all living things have much incommon, in their chemical composition, theirgerminal vesicles, their cellular structure, andtheir laws of growth and reproduction. We seethis even in so trifling a circumstance as that thesame poison often similarly affects plants andanimals[]. Therefore I should infer fromanalogy that probably all the organic beings

which have ever lived on this earth havedescended from some one primordial form, intowhich life was first breathed.


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A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on thecauses and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effectsof use and disuse, on the direct action of external conditions, and soforth. The study of domestic productions will rise immensely invalue. A new variety raised by man will be a far more important andinteresting subject for study than one more species added to the

infinitude of already recorded species. Our classifications will cometo be, as far as they can be so made, genealogies; and will thentruly give what may be called the plan of creation. [] We possessno pedigrees or armorial bearings; and we have to discover andtrace the many diverging lines of descent in our natural genealogies,by characters of any kind which have long been inherited.Rudimentary organs will speak infallibly with respect to the nature oflong-lost structures. Species and groups of species, which are calledaberrant, and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid usin forming a picture of the ancient forms of life. Embryology willreveal to us the structure, in some degree obscured, of theprototypes of each great class.


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When we can feel assured that all the individuals of thesame species, and all the closely allied species of mostgenera, have within a not very remote period descendedfrom one parent, and have migrated from some one

birthplace; and when we better know the many means ofmigration, then [] we shall surely be enabled to trace inan admirable manner the former migrations of theinhabitants of the whole world. Even at present, bycomparing the differences of the inhabitants of the sea

on the opposite sides of a continent, and the nature ofthe various inhabitants of that continent in relation totheir apparent means of immigration, some light can bethrown on ancient geography.


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Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with theview that each species has been independently created. To my mindit accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matterby the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past andpresent inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondarycauses, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.

When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the linealdescendants of some few beings which lived long before the firstbed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me tobecome ennobled.[] As all the living forms of life are the linealdescendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, wemay feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation hasnever once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated thewhole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a securefuture of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selectionworks solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal andmental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.


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The Theory of Relativity

interpreted

What is the Theory of Relativity?article by Albert Einstein (1919)

(The London Times, November 28)


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It has, of course, been known since the days of the ancient Greeks

that in order to describe the movement of a body, a second body is

needed to which the movement of the first is referred.The

movement of a vehicle is considered in reference to the earth's

surface, that of a planet to the totality of the visible fixed stars. In

physics the body to which events are spatially referred is called the

coordinate system. The laws of the mechanics of Galileo and

Newton, for instance, can only be formulated with the aid of a

coordinate system.


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A coordinate system which isadmitted in mechanics is called an "inertial system." The state ofmotion of an inertial system is according to mechanics not one that isdetermined uniquely by nature. On the contrary, the followingdefinition holds good: a coordinate system that is moved uniformly and in astraight line relative to an inertial system is likewise aninertial system. By the "special principle of relativity" is meant the

generalization of this definition to include any natural event whatever:thus,every universal law of nature which is valid in relation to a coordinatesystem C, must also be valid, as it stands, in relation to a coordinate systemC', which is in uniform translatory motionrelatively to C.

The second principle, on which the special theory of relativity rests,is the "principle of the constant velocity of light in vacuo." This

principle asserts thatlight in vacuo always has a definite velocityof propagation (independent of the state of motion of the observer orof the source of the light).


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Both the above-mentioned principles are powerfully supported byexperience, but appear not to be logically reconcilable. The specialtheory of relativity finally succeeded in reconciling them logicallyby a modification of kinematics -- i.e., of the doctrine of the lawsrelating to space and time (from the point of view of physics). Itbecame clear that to speak of the simultaneity of two events had no

meaning except in relation to a given coordinate system, and thattheshape of measuring devices and the speed at which clocks movedependon their state of motion with respect to the coordinate system.


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Note: Some of the statements in your paper concerning my life andperson owe their origin to the lively imagination of the writer. Hereis yet another application of the principle of relativityfor thedelectation of the reader: today I am described in Germany as a"German savant," and in England as a "Swiss Jew." Should it everbe my fate to be represented as a bte noire, I should, on the

contrary,become a "Swiss Jew" for the Germans and a "German savant" forthe English.

footnote:

* this criterion has since been confirmed


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The Quantum Theory

Even the Greeks had already conceived the atomistic nature of matter andthe concept was raised to a high degree of probability by the scientists ofthe nineteenth century. But it was Planck's law of radiation that yielded thefirst exact determination - independent of other assumptions - of theabsolute magnitudes of atoms. More than that, he showed convincingly thatin addition to the atomistic structure of matter there is a kind of atomisticstructure to energy, governed by the universal constant h, which was

introduced by Planck. This discovery became the basis of all twentieth-century research in physics and has almost entirely conditioned itsdevelopment ever since. Without this discovery it would not have beenpossible to establish a workable theory of molecules and atoms and theenergy processes that govern their transformations. Moreover, it hasshattered the whole framework of classical mechanics and electrodynamicsand set science a fresh task: that of finding a new conceptual basis for

all physics. Despite remarkable partial gains, the problem is still far from asatisfactory solution.(Albert Einstein, on Quantum Theory, 1950)


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The Interpretation of Dreams

When I wrote this book in 1899 there was as yet no"sexual theory,"and the analysis of the morecomplicated forms of the psychoneuroses was still in itsinfancy.

From my own experience, and the works of Stekel and

other writers, I have since learned to appreciate moreaccurately the significance of symbolism in dreams(orrather, in unconsciousthought).

Dream- interpretation must seek a closer union with therich material of poetry, myth, and popular idiom, and it

must deal more faithfully than has hitherto been possiblewith the relations of dreams to the neuroses and tomental derangement.

(Preface to the Third Edition, 1911)


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In this volume I have attempted to expound the methods and resultsof dream-interpretation; and in so doing I do not think I haveoverstepped the boundary of neuro-pathological science. For thedream proves on psychological investigation to be the first of aseries of abnormal psychic formations, a series whose succeedingmembers- the hysterical phobias, the obsessions, the delusions-

must, for practical reasons, claim the attention of the physician. Thedream, as we shall see, has no title to such practical importance, butfor that very reason its theoretical value as a typical formation is allthe greater, and the physician who cannot explain the origin ofdream-images will strive in vain to understand the phobias and theobsessive and delusional ideas, or to influence them by therapeuticmethods.


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Consideration of the methods of dream- interpretationwill show whythe dreams recorded in the literature on the subject, or thosecollected by persons unknown to me, were useless for my purpose; Ihad only the choice between my own dreams and those of thepatients whom I was treating by psychoanalytic methods. But thislater material was inadmissible, since the dream-processes were

undesirably complicated by the intervention of neurotic characters.And if I relate my own dreams I must inevitably reveal to the gaze ofstrangers more of the intimacies of my psychic life than is agreeableto me, and more than seems fitting in a writer who is not a poet but ascientific investigator. To do so is painful, but unavoidable; I havesubmitted to the necessity, for otherwise I could not havedemonstrated my psychological conclusions.

(Introductory Note to the First Edition)


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Matter and Memory

THIS book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality ofmatter, and tries to determine the relation of the one tothe otherby the study of a definite example, that ofmemory. It is, then, frankly dualistic. But, on the other

hand, it deals with body and mind in such a way as, wehope, to lessen greatly, if not to overcome, thetheoretical difficulties which have always beset dualism,and which cause it, though suggested by the immediateverdict of consciousness and adopted by common

sense, to be held, in small honour among philosophers.


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These difficulties are due, for the most part, to theconception, now realistic, now idealistic, whichphilosophers have of matter. The aim of our first chapteris to show that realism and idealism both go too far, that

it is a mistake to reduce matter to the perception whichwe have of it, a mistake also to make of it a thing able toproduce in us perceptions, but in itself of another naturethan they. Matter, in our view, is an aggregate of`images.'And by 'image' we mean a certain existence

which is more than that which the idealist calls arepresentation, but less than that which the realist calls athing;-an existence placed half-way between the `thing 'and the `representation.'


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This conception of matter is simply that of common sense. It wouldgreatly astonish a man unaware of the speculations of philosophy ifwe told him that the object before him, which he sees and touches,exists only in his mind and for his mind, or even, more generally,exists only for mind, as Berkeley held. Such a man would alwaysmaintain that the object exists independently of the consciousness

which perceives it. But, on the other hand, we should astonish himquite as much by telling him that the object is entirely different fromthat which is perceived in it, that it has neither the colour ascribed toit by the eye, nor the resistance found in it by the hand. The colour,the resistance, are, for him, in the object : they are not states of ourmind ; they are part and parcel of an existence really independent ofour own. For common sense, then, the object exists in itself, and, onthe other hand, the object is, in itself, pictorial, as we perceive it:image it is, but a self-existing image.


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[] memory-we shall try to prove it in the course

of this work-is just the intersection of mind and

matter.

Any one who approaches, without preconceivedidea and on the firm ground of facts, the

classical problem of the relations of soul and

body, will soon see this problem as centering

upon the subject of memory, and even moreparticularly upon the memory of words.


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Speaking generally, the psychical state seemsto us to be, in mostcases, immensely wider than the cerebral state. I mean that thebrain state indicates only a very small part of the mental state, thatpart which is capable of translating itself into movements oflocomotion.

He who could penetrate into the interior of a brainand see what

happens there, would probably obtain full details of these sketched-out, or prepared, movements ; there is no proof that he would learnanything else. Were he endowed with a superhuman intellect, did hepossess the key to psycho-physiology, he would know no more ofwhat is going on in the corresponding consciousnessthan weshould know of a play from the comings and goings of the actorsupon the stage.


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That is to say, the relation of the mental to the cerebral isnot a constant, any more than it is a simple, relation.

According to the nature of the play that is being acted,the movements of the players tell us more or less about

it: nearly everything, if it is a pantomime; next to nothing,if it is a delicate comedy. Thus our cerebral statecontains more or less of our mental state in the measurethat we reel off our psychic life into action or wind it upinto pure knowledge.

There are then, in short, diverse tonesof mental life, or,in other words, our psychic life may be lived at differentheights, now nearer to action, now further removed fromit, according to the degree of our attention to life.


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In short, when we speak of the modern world, wedo not simply mean a world that is modern onlybecause we live in it. We mean a world that is,we feel, historically unique, evolving to new

principles, the principles of what we callmodernisation. And modernisation means notsimply the unparalleled scale of modern change,but the kind of change it is and the direction in

which it is going. For modernisation [] is theproduct of science, reason and industrialism.

Malcolm Bradbury, The Social Context of Modern English Literature

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