Science from an easy chair : a second series / by Sir Ray Lankester.

  • Ray Lankester
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Science from an easy chair : a second series / by Sir Ray Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    NIGHTMARES DESTROYED BY SCIENCE 3gg science—the knowledge of the order of nature—that it does not tell us “ why we are here.” Man inevitably desires to know why he is here ; but “science,” as that word is now understood, does not profess or even seek to answer that question, although the. false hope has been raised in ignorant minds, sometimes by knavery, sometimes by honest delusion, that it could do so. By knowledge of nature mankind can escape much suffering and gain the highest happiness, but that is all that we can hope for from it. We shall never satisfy our curiosity; we shall never know in the same way as we know the order of nature, why—to what end, for what purpose—that order and not another order exists. It is very generally supposed that it is the business and profession of science “to explain ” things—that is to say, to show how this or that must and does come about in consequence of the operation of the great general pro¬ perties of matter, known as the “laws” of chemistry and physics. This is true enough, but it is equally the work of science to assert that of many things for which mankind demands “ an explanation,” there is no explanation. It is further the work and the service of science to destroy and to remove 'from men’s minds the baseless and pre ¬ tended “ explanations ” which are no explanations but causes of error, blindness, and suffering. Science, the destroyer of “ explanations,” is the purifier of the human mind, its cleanser from the crippling infec¬ tion of prehistoric error and from domination by the terrifying nightmares of our half-animal ancestry. Finally, in reference to the very ancient attempt to “ explain ” life and consciousness by the assertion that they are due to “spirits” which enter the bodies of animals and men, I must caution the reader against supposing that—for those who do not accept the belief that such spirits exist—the gravity and mystery of the
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