John Passmore

Why Philosophy of Science

Most of the time, we engage in activities without asking ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. Whether as philosophers, scientists, politicians, teachers, doctors, mechanics or artists, we inherit a complex tradition. We seek to solve problems which satisfy that tradition’s concept of what it is to be a problem; we tackle such problems by professionally approved methods; our aim is to find a solution which will stand up to the sort of criticism our problem-solving community takes seriously. Of course, such traditions are neither monolithic nor unchanging. In and of themselves, they generate dissidents, heretics, whose unorthodoxies for the most part fade into oblivion as ‘lost causes’ but sometimes turn the tradition in a new direction. The traditional concept of what constitutes a problem may then alter, accepted procedures may be modified, new forms of solution may be demanded. The locus of seriously-taken criticism may correspondingly shift. But for the most part, the participants in an activity can accommodate themselves to quite revolutionary changes without being forced to reconsider the general thrust of their activity or, even, its professional standards. Although Einstein’s relativity theory, to say nothing of quantum mechanics, came as a shock, it in no way disrupted the tradition of physical science. Or, at least, neither innovation so disrupted that tradition as to compel physicists to ask themselves: ‘Why are we doing physics?’

Evidence for the Past

Book reviewed in this article: The What and the Why of History: Philosophical Essays By Leon J. Goldstein

The Perfectibility of Man

ly, as authority, the young experience concretely as violence.) 12. Tropic of Capricorn, ed. cit., p. 11. 484 THE PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN eral, modern life is extraordinarily dependent on time. No doubt, there are still areas of freedom. We have not yet reached the point described in J. G. Ballard’s story ‘‘Chronopolis,’’ 13 in which, to avoid traffic problems, every detail of everyone’s daily life is governed by a rigid time-table. The narrator of Zamiatin’s wholly time-dominated We can look back with astonishment to our own era as one when men were still free to walk in the streets, or to have sexual intercourse, at times of their own choosing. But the fact remains that whereas not until the late Middle Ages were there town-clocks, modern life would be unimaginable without what the English language significantly calls ‘‘a wrist-watch.’’ It is by no means surprising, then, that the ideal of timelessness—of inhabiting a world in which nobody ever says ‘‘you’ll be late’’—should have its appeal. Nor is it at all surprising that the ideal of pure enjoyment should be resuscitated. For a great many people, life in our society—as, admittedly, in any other society—has been sheer toil, not at all a ‘‘game,’’ let alone an exercise of ‘‘loves.’’ This is perhaps particularly true of the executive classes, from the ranks of whose children the new mystics are so largely recruited. As for play, simple carefree enjoyment, that has threatened to vanish. Forced to postpone enjoyment, the middle-aged generation, as the young can see for themselves, find it unattainable when at last they ‘‘have time’’ for it. They seek for enjoyment, no doubt, but what they find, often enough, is only a new form of toil. Even games in the narrower sense of the word have come to be reserved for those who play them well; and merely to play, as distinct from playing games, is thought of as undignified, unworthy of the ‘‘serious man.’’ (There is an extraordinary contrast, at this point, between the attitude of the Japanese—in so far as they are still not wholly converted to 13. Included in J. G. Ballard: The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (London, 1963; paperback ed., Harmondsworth, 1965). The New Mysticism: Paradise Now 485 Western ways—and the attitude of the West; the idea of relaxation as ‘‘play’’ still survives in Japan. But it is conjoined, it would seem, with an attitude of mind for which work is mere toil, not enjoyment with care.) 14 If the old Puritanical attitudes to sexual play have broken down—this has happened only in part—they have often been replaced by new forms of anxiety, deriving from ‘‘sex manuals’’—anxieties about ‘‘sexual adequacy,’’ anxieties about inhibitions. Whole books are now written on ‘‘the sexual responsibility’’ of the man or of the woman. Sex has become almost as serious a matter, as little spontaneous, as business. ‘‘Sexual play’’ is now, at its best, a ‘‘game,’’ but at its worst, dutiful toil, no longer the spontaneous flowering of tender sensuality, but an applied technique. The intentions behind such manuals are often humane; they are attempts to turn sexual activity into a form of love which involves the cherishing of each sexual partner by the other. Many of them take as their starting-point a growing concern for women, the refusal to regard them as mere objects of enjoyment. But every ‘‘love,’’ like every ‘‘game,’’ can easily be converted into a form of anxiety-ridden toil. ‘‘We turn lovemaking into a compulsory sport,’’ writes the novelist Stephen Vizinczey in his In Praise of Older Women, ‘‘an etiquette of technique or a therapeutic prescription.’’ And then in reaction from this, as he goes on to point out, we ‘‘haste to succumb to joy’’; we take the libertine as our hero.15 (The libertine lives in an ‘‘Everlasting Now’’ by deliberately refusing to pay any attention to the future of the woman he seduces.) That kind of love which is neither a game nor a form of toil, which rests on enjoyment with care but cherishes its object is what seems to lie beyond our capacities. One can only too easily understand why, when ‘‘loves’’ 14. David and Evelyn Riesman: Conversations in Japan (New York, 1967), pp. 188, 195. 15. Stephen Vizinczey: In Praise of Older Women (London, 1966; Pan Books ed., 1968),