The Act of Creation (28 page)

pp 240-6
); and scientific
controversies about the interpretation of experimental results have been
just as passionate and subjective as controversies between theologians
or art critics. If a hunch is drastically contradicted by experiment, it
will of course be abandoned. But, by and large, scientists are inclined
to trust their intuitions; and if confronted with experiments which give
ambiguous or divergent results, either to declare -- as Einstein once did
-- that 'the facts are wrong'; or -- as Hobbes did -- that 'the instance
is so particular and singular, that 'tis scarce worth our observing';
or to resort to the standard phrase that the unfavourable experimental
result is due 'to unknown sources of error' -- hoping that some day,
somehow, it will all work out. Modern theoretical physics lives to a
large extent on that hope. Thus verifiability is a matter of degrees,
and neither the artist, nor the scientist who tries to break new ground,
can hope ever to achieve absolute certainty.

 

 

 

Premature Linkages

 

 

I have mentioned discoveries which were the happy outcome of a comedy
of errors. No less frequent are those tragedies in the history of
thought, where the right kind of intuition begets wrong results --
faulty integrations, premature births.

 

 

The first attempt to describe physical reality by mathematical relations
was made in the sixth century B.C. by the Pythagorean Brotherhood --
a religious, scientific, and political Order which wielded great power
in the south of Italy. They succeeded in explaining musical quality by
quantitative laws, and believed that ultimately 'all things are numbers'.

 

 

But they translated this prophetic intuition into a premature synthesis
between 'things' and 'numbers', based on the assumption that a line
consisted of a definable number of tiny dots, a plane of a definable
number of these lines, and so on. They soon discovered, however,
that the length of a line such as the diagonal of a square cannot be
defined by any countable number of dots; one can draw the diagonal in
a jiffy, but to write down the number defining its length one would
have to use an infinite series of decimals. To make the scandal worse,
numbers of this kind could be shown to be neither even nor odd -- or
both. Pythagoreans called these numbers
arrhetos
, unspeakable (we
call them, more politely, irrational numbers), and tried to keep their
existence secret, because they were convinced that their assertion of
a harmonious mathematical order behind the untidy world of appearances
was true and correct; when a member of the Brotherhood, Hippasos, let
the secret leak out, he was reportedly put to death. The failure of
this premature attempt at a synthesis brought the quantitative approach
to nature into discredit. The physics of Aristotle, which ruled Europe
for two thousand years, paid no attention to quantity or measurement;
physics remained divorced from mathematics until the scientific revolution
in the seventeenth century A.D. brought them together again.

 

 

Another premature synthesis, which I have already mentioned, was the
Keplerian cosmology, in which the sun sweeps the lazy planets round their
orbits with invisible heavenly brooms. But, in this case, the error was
a fertile one: physics and astronomy, once 'shaken together' even though
in the wrong way, could never again be separated. Equally fertile was
the alchemists' right intuition, supported by wrong arguments, of the
transmutability of chemical elements. On the other hand, the phrenology
of Franz Josef Gall had the opposite effect. Gall thought that every
mental faculty is seated in a definite region on the surface of the
brain, and that a person's abilities and character could be assessed
by the bumps on his skull. It was the first, premature, and naïve
attempt to correlate psychology with brain-physiology. Though phrenology
was highly fashionable around A.D. 1800, it brought such discredit in
its wake that for a century or more psychologists would have nothing to
do with speculations about the structure and function of the brain.

 

 

Thus the premature integration of matrices which are not yet sufficiently
consolidated has in some cases a wholesome effect, by stimulating more
mature attempts in the same direction; while in other cases it acts as
a deterrent and carries the stigma of superstition or 'un-scientific
thinking'. Taken in a wider sense, the category of premature intuitions
accommodates the whole body of folk-wisdom -- herbal knowledge,
weather-lore, psychosomatic healing by hypnosis, suggestion, shock, and
abreaction -- down to Jenner's diarymaid who 'would not take the pox'. We
have learned to recognize in these intuitive insights and techniques the
forerunners of our more mature discoveries and rediscoveries; and we thus
arrive at a progression in several stages. In the first stage the two
matrices which will participate in the ultimate synthesis are tentatively
and inadequately joined together by the logic of the unconscious. In the
second the haphazard connection is severed again, and a reaction may set
in which keeps them apart for a considerable time. In the final stage,
after the definite merger, the previously separate matrices become
mentally inseparable, and we marvel at our former blindness.

 

 

 

Snowblindness

 

 

'The mind', wrote Wilfred Trotter, 'likes a strange idea as little as
the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It
would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most
quickly acting antigen known to science. If we watch ourselves honestly
we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even
before it has been completely stated.' [5]

 

 

I shall not dwell on the martyrology of genius; the title of this
section refers to that remarkable form of blindness which often prevents
the original thinker from perceiving the meaning and significance
of
his
own discovery. Jealousy apart, the anti-body reaction
directed against new ideas seems to be much the same whether the idea
was let loose by others -- or oneself. The defence mechanisms which
protect habits against the intrusion of novelty accounts both for our
mental inertia -- and mental stability.

 

 

Copernicus was an orthodox believer in the physics of Aristotle,
and stubbornly clung to the dogma that all heavenly bodies must move
in perfect circles at uniform velocities. In the fourth chapter of
the Third Book of the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
,
the original manuscript of the book contains the following lines:

 

It should be noticed, by the way, that if the two circles have different
diameters, other conditions remaining unchanged, then the resulting
movement will not be a straight line but . . . what mathematicians
call an ellipse. (my italics)

 

This is actually not true, for the resulting curve will be a cycloid
resembling an ellipse -- but the odd fact is that Copernicus had hit on
the ellipse which is the form of all planetary orbits -- had arrived at
it for the wrong reasons and by faulty deduction -- and having done so,
promptly dropped it: the passage is crossed out in the manuscript, and
is not contained in the printed edition of the
Revolutions
. The
history of human thought is full of triumphant eurekas; but only rarely
do we hear of the anti-climaxes, the missed opportunities, which leave
no trace.

 

 

Kepler, too, nearly threw away the elliptic orbits; for almost three years
he held the solution in his hands -- without seeing it. His conscious
mind refused to accept the 'cartload of dung' which the underground had
cast up. When the battle was over, he confessed: 'Why should I mince my
words? The truth of Nature, which I had rejected and chased away, returned
by stealth through the backdoor, disguising itself to be accepted. Ah,
what a foolish bird I have been!' [6]

 

 

Poor Kepler, he was even more foolish than he thought: he actually
discovered universal gravity -- then rejected it. In the Preface to
the
New Astronomy
he explains that the tides are due to the
attraction of the moon, and describes the working of gravity -- even that
the attracting force is proportionate to mass; but in the
text
of that book, and of all subsequent works, he has -- incredible as it
sounds -- completely forgotten all about it. I have given elsewhere a
detailed account of this remarkable case of snowblindness. [7]

 

 

Galileo revolutionized astronomy by the use of the telescope; but he
refused to believe in the reality of comets and declared them to be
optical illusions. For he too believed that heavenly bodies must move
in perfect circles; and since comets moved in very elongated elliptical
orbits, they could not be heavenly bodies.

 

 

Freud's revered master, Professor Brucke at the Vienna Medicine Faculty,
discovered, in 1849, a technique to illuminate the retina of the eye;
but the idea of
observing
the illuminated retina through a lens
did not occur to him! It was his friend Helmholtz who hit on the idea
-- while preparing a lecture on Brucke's work -- and thus became the
inventor of the ophthalmoscope.

 

 

Freud himself had two narrow escapes, as it were, from achieving world
fame in his twenties. In the course of his physiological researches at
Brucke's Institute 'he was trembling on the very brink of the important
neurone theory, the basis of modern neurology'; but, as Ernest Jones
said, 'in the endeavour to acquire "discipline" he had not yet perceived
that in original scientific work there is an equally important place
for imagination'. [8] It is strange indeed to hear the founder of
psychoanalysis being accused by his pupil and biographer of having in
his early years suffered from lack of imagination; but there it is --
and worse to come.

 

 

The fantastic character of the 'Cocaine Episode' in Freud's life can be
appreciated only by comparing the silences in Freud's autobiography with
the revelations in Jones's biography. In the spring of 1884, Freud -- then
twenty-eight -- read in a German medical paper that an Army doctor had
been experimenting 'with cocaine, the essential constituent of coca leaves
which some Indian tribes chew to enable them to resist privations and
hardships'. He ordered a small quantity of the stuff from a pharmaceutical
firm, tried it on himself, his sisters, fiancée, and patients,
decided that cocaine was a 'magical drug', which procured 'the
most gorgeous excitement', left no harmful after-effect, and was not
habit-forming! In several publications he unreservedly recommended the
use of cocaine against depression, indigestion, 'in those functional
states comprised under the name of neurasthenia', and during the
withdrawal-therapy of morphine addicts; he even tried to cure diabetes
with it. 'I am busy', he wrote to his future wife, 'collecting the
literature for a song of praise to this magical substance.' One is
irresistibly reminded of Aldous Huxley's songs of praise to mescaline;
but Huxley was neither a member of the medical profession nor the founder
of a new school in psychotherapy.

 

 

Two years after the publication of his first paper on the wonder-drug,
Knapp, the great American ophthalmologist, greeted Freud 'as the man
who had introduced cocaine to the world', and congratulated him on the
achievement. In the same year, 1886, however, cases of cocaine addiction
and intoxication were being reported from all over the world, and in
Germany there was a general alarm. . . . [9] The man who had tried
to benefit humanity or at all events to create a reputation by curing
"neurasthenia" was now accused of unleashing evil on the world.' Among
Freud's personal patients one died as a result of a large dose of the
drug; another -- his close friend Fleishl -- whom he tried to cure
from morphine addiction, became cocaine-addicted instead, and developed
'a delirium tremens with white snakes creeping over his skin'. [10] A
leading neurologist, Erlenmeyer, described cocaine as 'the third scourge
of humanity' -- the other two being alcohol and morphine. [11]

 

 

I have said enough about the disasters of this episode. And yet Freud's
dabbling with cocaine became a blessing to humanity -- but not in
the way in which he had thought of it. Two of his colleagues at the
Medical Faculty, Koller and Koenigstein, both ophthalmologists, both
of incomparably smaller stature than Freud, read his 1884 paper,
experimented with cocaine, and saw almost at once what Freud's
snowblindness prevented him from seeing. Freud was not interested in
surgery; it did not enter into his habits of thought. He was fascinated
by the possible
internal
uses of cocaine, and, above all, its
effects on nervous disorders. Only in the final paragraph of his paper
did he casually mention some possible 'additional uses' of cocaine as a
pain-deadener in local infections; its uses as an anesthetic in minor
surgery never occurred to him. He and Koller both noticed that after
swallowing cocaine their mouths and lips went numb -- the familiar
sensation after the dentist's injection. Koller took the hint -- Freud
did not. Freud suggested to Koenigstein that cocaine could be used to
alleviate the pain in certain eye-diseases; but it was Koenigstein who
thought of using it as an anaesthetic in eye-operations. Among the first
of these, incidentally, was an operation on Freud's father for glaucoma
-- carried out by Koenigstein, with Koller administering the cocaine,
and Freud assisting. . . .

 

 

But even at that stage Freud still considered the tremendous benefits
of local anaesthetics as merely 'one more of the outlying applications
of which his beloved drug was capable. It took a long time before he
could assimilate the bitter truth that Koller's use of it was to prove
practically the only one of value and all the rest dust and ashes.' [12]