Of Quite Infinite Depth, Of Quite Infinite Expansion: Huxley, Mill, Carlyle, and the Authority of Natural Science as a Meta-Narrative

We discussed in class the change in worldview for the Victorians from the certainty of The Church to possible uncertainty to the new certainty of Science. I would like to examine this shift and point out the ways in which Science is a meta-narrative similar to the meta-narrative of Christianity. This is a characteristic of natural science that remained ignored really until the 1980s when Jean-François Lyotard published The Postmodern Condition in which he points out that science is also a meta-narrative with its own set of values and restrictions. Our culture, and certainly the late Victorians, tends to place science and religion at odds primarily because science can be “proven” where as religion cannot. Using Mill and Carlyle as guides, I would like to look at Huxley’s work and question his definition of certainty.

I will begin with Huxley’s assertions. As a context for looking at “On the Physical Basis of Life,” I would like to point out Huxley’s claim in “Agnosticism and Christianity”: “it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty” (537). We can assume, then, that in his lecture “On the Physical Basis of Life,” he believes that evidence which logically justifies his assertions has been produced; therefore, he can speak with certainty. Of course, this evidence is Darwin’s Origin of the Species. But what if the scientific method by which this evidence was produced could be called into question? How much more certain would Huxley’s claims be than assertions made on religious foundations?

If we return to Carlyle, we’ll see the establishment of the early Victorian conception of nature. Carlyle writes, “To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square-miles” (107). Carlyle’s view can be compared and possible considered a precursor to existentialism of the 20th century. For other philosophers who are more traditionally considered precursors to existentialism, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, experience is the only thing that human beings have to create any sort of meaning in their lives. Like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Carlyle points out here that Nature, the universe, is completely beyond human understanding. 20th century existentialists like Sartre and Camus argue that the world is completely devoid of meaning outside of what meaning humans attribute to it. This seems to line up nicely with Huxley’s discussion of protoplasm and Darwin’s later work The Descent of Man because both make the assertion that there is nothing inherently “special” about human beings. However, to assert that this is an absolute is to limit what Carlyle is saying. Carlyle specifically addresses “the wisest man” which in Huxley and Darwin’s view would certainly be the scientist. Carlyle claims that no matter how wide this man’s vision, Nature is far too vast to be explained in total. Yet Darwin’s theories certainly attempt such a totalization—and 20th and 21st century society certainly believes that his theories provide it.

In On Liberty, Mill points out how vital it is to question authority and writes that, “the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it” (252). Certainly we cannot ignore that this is precisely what Huxley and Darwin are doing—dissenting from popular opinion and for anyone to have silenced them at the time would have been wrong, as Mill points out. However, there is an underlying assumption in Huxley’s argument—that the scientific method is objective and without ideology. It is upon this underlying assumption that science has gained its massive credibility over the last 150 years. Even Mill acknowledges that nothing man-made is without any ideology. He writes that the problem with suppressing any opinion is that “the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly true. Those who desire to suppress it, or course deny its truth; but they are not infallible” (253). Therefore, why has the authority of science been so un-questionable” since the time of Darwin?

Mill defines Nature as “the aggregate of the powers and properties of all things. Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes being as much a part of the idea of Nature, as those which take effect” (314). He goes on to say that, “mankind have been able to ascertain, either by direct observation or by reasoning processes grounded on it, the conditions of the occurrence of many phenomena; and the progress of science mainly consists in ascertaining those conditions” (314). Mill delivered these statements in a lecture approximately twenty before Huxley’s lecture; however Three Essays on Religion was published about five years after. We can see that Mill’s view on science is similar to Huxley’s. For some reason, there is a disconnect between what Mill wrote in On Liberty and what he is saying here. Science is not seen as something that needs to be questioned because it is presumably based on objective conditions.

In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-François Lyotard argues that even science is based on ideological foundations. He points out that “Scientific knowledge is a discourse” (3). There is a danger in accepting all knowledge that is developed and based on scientific conclusions. Lyotard goes on to argue, “Scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge; it has always existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict with, another kind of knowledge [narrative knowledge]” (7). Lyotard does stipulate that he does not mean to suggest that narrative knowledge can prevail over scientific knowledge, rather that we must recognize the two exist together. The problem is that the language of science is self-legitimizing. We can see this in both Mill’s statement above as well as in Huxley. Huxley writes, in regard to the concept of protoplasm,

But if, as I have endeavoured to prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halting-place between the admission that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. (524)

Huxley asks the members of his audience to accept protoplasm as a universal force as long as he has convinced them of the existence of protoplasm. But this assumes that the method by which protoplasm is “proved” is completely objective—that it represents the totality of knowledge. This is how science can be viewed as a meta-narrative. In Huxley’s explanation of protoplasm, he provides a totalizing, universal account for all knowledge and experience. Does that mean that he is wrong? Not necessarily, but it is important that we recognize that such explanations are not completely objective and are not necessarily totalizing.

Works Cited

Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. 1831. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.

Huxley, Thomas Henry. “On the Physical Basis of Life.” 1869. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.

—. “Agnosticism and Christianity.” 1892. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.

Lyotard, Jean-Fransçois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. 1979. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota, 1984.

Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. 1859. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.

—. Three Essays on Religion. 1874. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958.