THE RELATIONS BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ETHICS

Abstract

I FIND myself in fundamental agreement with Dr. Waddington, though I should base my argument on an epistemology more explicit than his own. To start off, I would aver, with Mach, that “bodies or things are compendious mental symbols for groups of sensations—symbols that do not exist outside of thought”. The basis of all knowledge is experience. So–called external objects are constructs from experience: equally the doctrine of evolution and the view of the universe summed up in the Ten Commandments are constructs from experience. Of course, the experience may be partial: elements in it may be false (that is to say, unconfirmed by the majority of our fellow–men). The activity of the mind which links together elementary perceptions and fashions the constructed symbol may be inadequate to make a symbol which shall cohere with other symbols as we try to picture some wide region of the universe in which we find ourselves. But by a process of trial and error, in which the individual constantly checks his experience by that of others, the race has gradually created, among other ideas, those which we distinguish as external objects, laws of Nature and ethical principles.