JULIAN HUXLEY’S CREED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 30

JULIAN HUXLEY’S CREED

PLEA MADE FOR SCIENTIFIC HUMANISM COMMON SUPERSTITIONS Profcssor Julian Huxley, great grandson of the great T. H. Huxley, ::t delivering his presidential address at London to members of the Social and Political Education League, spoke on “Scientific Hpmanism as the New Social Outlook.” It was a plea, or so it seemed to at least one of his bearers, for a synthesis of science and religion. He began with a warning against the dogmatism and intolerance of science, or rather of some scientists. No scientific investigation, he said, could do away with the fact of religious experience. Human values touched only a very small portion of space and time, but science found no values elsewhere. Was the universe an electronic dance-hall in which meaningless figures were executed? Prayers For Rain Then came a warning against magic. He found not only in the roumbo-jumbo of the African savage, but in three men refusing to light their cigarettes with one match, in sailors objecting to sail on Friday, or in prayers for rain. Quacks who talked glibly of mysterious processes of electricity exploited the belief in magic. We must extend the use or scientific method to every field in which it could be applied, in spite of sanctities and of susceptibilities. A case in point was that of human populations. It was a simple matter of arithmetic that population could not increase indefinitely. It was a matter of observation that a people on or below the borderline between normal and subnormal increased faster than tbe fully normal. Yet we did nothing. There was a danger of civilisation becoming divided against itself because of the divergence between religious minds and scientific minds. The scientific mini)* tended to intellectualism, to an over-emphasis on “practical” things and to a contempt for feeling and for emotion. Scientific humanism was needed to unjfv the two currents. The universe could not be divided into two compartments, the natural and the supernatural, as the earth was divided into land and water. There were not two regions of reality, one within the realm of science and one beyond it. Yet, though there was only one reality, there were two ways of approaching it. Aims Of Science “Theology,” the speaker added, “is i.ot religion, but science. In most of its orthodox forms it is very poor science.” He added that there was just as much reason to say that the religious attitude was an obstacle to materialism as to voice the common complaint that materialism was an obstacle to religion. It was a dangerous thing when scientific hypertrophy led to religious atrophy and vice versa. We did not r.eed to follow the example of the Lees and the ants with their extreme specialisation. Man's progress had been on different lines. Science he described as a means, not an end. The aims of scientific humans might he summed up as to

have power and to have it more abundantly. Some men found new capabilities in the human spirit; others extended our control over nature. We had no policy of values, such as the Middle Ages had. The mania for assuming- that what mattered was the number of people in a town irrespective of what kind of people, they were or what. they did, was not confined ro America. Clarifying Ideas After glancing references to “blatantly irrational politics,” and to the “puerile ideals of public school life,” Professor Huxley said that we had to agree on what were the valuable things in life before we could realise them. There was a reserve of the angelic in ordinary men which was unused and often unsuspected. We were apt to be shy about it. Scientific humanism was a protest 'against supernaturalism. Our dominant task was to clarify our ideas. Science dealt with facts; religious experience with the impact of the outer universe on our minds.