ISSN 0014-1690 The Ethical Record Vol. 99 No. 1 £1 January 1994

A PERSONAL TESTIMONY Anthony Freeman 3 THE NATURALISTIC ETHIC OF ORGANIC WHOLENESS Mae-Wan Ho 8 A SPECTRUM OF PHILOSOPHY 1793-1993 Peter Heeles 12 THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE Brenda Colloms 19 VIEWPOINTS Jim Addison, Paddy Smith, Tanya Korobova 23 ETHICAL SOCIETY PROGRAMME 24

EDITORIAL — TIME TO END OUR NUCLEAR MACHISMO

The end of the cold war should, rationally, have seen the UK cancelling its Trident submarine programme, the ostensible reason for which was to deter the Russian hordes allegedly anxious to overrun us. We shall not cancel it, because in these matters we are governed not by logic but by emotions of pride and status. We shall therefore continue to claim to need an 'independent' nuclear force, so that even without US involvement we could ourselves make a conventional war nuclear — which is why we have never promised not to be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict. The reason given for our need to target 500 nuclear warheads on the USSR was that otherwise we should be 'sheltering under the American nuclear umbrella', which would be just too shameful, (although apparently perfectly honourable for all the other members of NATO).

The independence is, of course, a pretence. Although its submarines are built here, the Trident missiles they fire have to be sought from the US, which will sell them to us thanks to our 'special relationship' with that country. If he really wishes to slow the arms race, President Clinton should ignore our pleas and axe the whole Trident project.

The 'special relationship' between the US and us has, at times, been very dangerous for the UK. The government which allowed American cruise missiles to be based at Greenham and Molesworth committed treason, because those bases made this country a target should war have broken out between the US and the USSR over Nicaragua; the USSR, quite legitimately, had sent a few Migs to enable it to fight the US-backed Contras. This enraged the US which regards the whole of America as its back-yard.

Both our main parties (and maybe most voters) have been guilty of nuclear chauvinism. It was Attlee, Bevin and Morrison who first decided to.make a UK bomb. Nye Bevan famously remarked that without our own bomb we would 'go naked into the conference chamber' —but although we kept the bomb we've never been near the conference chamber! Neither we nor the French take part in the START talks between Russia and the US. We modestly maintain that we have too few bombs to be worth counting. Nevertheless we, and the French, told the Americans that on no account are they even to add our bombs to the west's total of nuclear weapons — which ploy stalled arms reduction negotiations nicely for years.

continued on page 2 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY

Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WCI R 4RL. Telephone: 071-831 7723

Appointed Lecturers Harold Blackham, T.F. Evans, Peter Heales, Richard Scorer, Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe, Nicolas Walter. Officers Honorary Representative: Nicolas Walter. General Committee Chair: Diane Murray. Vice Chair Barbara Smoker. Treasurer: Don Liversedge. Editor, The Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac. Librarian: Edwina Palmer. Registrar: Marion Granville. Secretary to the Society: Nina Khare. Tel: 071-831 7723 Hall Staff Manager-Stephen Norley. Tel: 071-242 8032 for Hall bookings. Head Caretaker David Wright.

SPES FEATURES IN LORDS' DEBATE ON HUMANISM IN SCHOOLS

The 1980 case (Barralet and Others v. Attorney-General), in which it was determined that the South Place Ethical Society was not a religious charity, was taken by Government spokesman Viscount St. Davids to give guidance on what is meant by religion (Lords' Hansard for 17 December 1993, 1497-9, viewable at Westminster Reference Library). The debate was on Humanism and the School Syllabus.

Lord Dormand had asked whether HMG would include humanism in the religious education syllabus for schools. Viscount St. Davids replied that each syllabus is agreed locally, and as humanism is not a religion, there is no requirement that it be included. He added, significantly, that a syllabus might deal with non-theistic ways of life such as humanism.

He refused to be drawn by St. John of Fawsley's (Stevas) question, "Is it not better to descibe humanism as inhumanism, and call a spade a spade?", saying that he was not permitted to make personal observations.

SEA OF FAITH NETWORKmeets in Conway Hall every 3rd Tuesday at 12.30 pm. Next meetings: Jan 18 Feb, 15. Anyone interested may attend.

continued from front page We hypocritically lecture the newly independent states of the former USSR for their laggardliness in not handing over their nuclear weapons to Russia immediately. We pretend to condemn nuclear proliferation, but in reality we signal to everyone that greatness depends upon one's readiness to inflict a horrible death on innocent multitudes. If we bother to give any reason today for retaining the bomb, it is said, ludicrously, to be because of tyrants like Saddam presumably we have now targeted Baghdad.

The usc of nuclear weapons is immoral. No regime is so vile and so long-lasting that the use of the bomb is justified to overthrow it or to avoid being subject to it. It is not better to be dead than red ask anyone from the former communist world.

The views expressed in this journal are not necessarily those of the Society

2 EthicalRecord January, 1994 PERSONAL TESTIMONY

Rev. Anthony Freeman* Lecture to the Ethical Society. 5 December. 1993

This afternoon I have been invited to speak to you unashamedly as a Christian priest. Not to convert you to Christianity, but to explain why a person who has taken leave of the traditional theistic understanding of God should wish to remain in the Church. In order to do this I shall be inviting you to put yourself into my shoes and to see the world through my eyes. What I offer is not a universal prescription for all, but rather a personal testimony.

In this decade of evangelism the Church has been called upon by its leaders to make a special effort to present the gospel to the young generation. If we are to be heard and understood, we must speak the language of our contemporaries. If we are to convince and convert we must win their hearts and minds. Furthermore, we have to start where people are, in many cases standing alongside them in their situation of having rejected the Christian message. I have no desire to water down the gospel. I have a great desire to proclaim it in a way which is accessible to people both in its challenge and its comfort. That means removing all unnecessary stumbling blocks to faith.

Positively this involves showing that Christianity belongs in the world of every day life. There are positive things which can be said about the concept of 'God' which do not conflict with the world framework of the twentieth (soon to be twenty-first) century. The Christian story needs to be recast and retold in the language of this world in which we live here and now.

Negatively, the removal of unnecessary stumbling blocks means not saying more than we ought. In particular, it means avoiding reliance on unsubstantial claims to special information from supernatural sources. Even the Bible. Christians must always be willing to subject their own claims and doctrines to the same rigorous scrutiny as they would the claims of other religious sects and teachers.

So I try to take as my starting point only such statements as could be accepted by anyone of moderate intelligence and goodwill who wished to hear a Christian talking about God.

Three Attitudes towards the Concept of God There is today a spectrum of attitudes towards the concept of God. For convenience I shall group them into three, which I shall label theism, atheism and non-atheism.

By theism I mean the belief that God is personal, self-existent, necessary Being, transcending creation and in relationship with it. To be fair to the subtleties of some theistic belief I have carefully avoided using such expressions as a person or a being. There are still scholarly theists who are quite prepared to abandon such caution in order to make clear their robust belief in an objective God. Professor Richard Swinburne, for example, on the opening page of his book, The Coherence of Theism, defines God as: 'a person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the universe.'

*Author of God in Us — A Case for Christian Humanism, SCM Press (1993).

Ethical Record, January, 1994 3 By atheism I mean the belief that the term 'God' is a concept which is meaningless and/or harmful and is to be rejected. Please note that I have tried to define what atheists do believe rather than what they do not. In the past atheism has often been used in a very negative way (often as a smear word) to mean disbelief in a particular God or gods. Thus — to give a well-worn example — we are told that early Christians were called atheists because they refused to acknowledge the gods of imperial Rome. This negative way of defining atheism, simply as 'not believing in God', I have avoided because I wish to distinguish carefully between atheism and my third category, non-theism.

By non-theism I mean the belief that God is not to be defined as above by theism, but is none the less a concept with meaning and value. An historical example of such non- theistic belief would be the English deists of the eighteenth century. Modern (and very different) exa mples of non-theists would be the American existentialist Paul Tillich or the Cambridge theologian Don Cupitt.

Christianity has traditionally been regarded as theistic both by its adherents and detractors. Atheism has generally been regarded by its opponents and adherents as incompatible with Christianity. The open debate concerns what I have called non-theism: is it a viable midway position, or is it bound to fall into either atheism or theism? My belief is that non-theism is a proper attitude for Christians, including the clergy and those engaged in theology.

Doing Theology Doing theology is, at its simplest, talking about God. Professor John Macquarrie, in the opening sentence of his majestic Principles of Christian Theology, has set out the aims and method of theology rather more fully as follows: 'Theology may be defined as the study which, through participation in and reflection upon a religious faith, seeks to express the content of this faith in the clearest and most coherent language available.' He is adamant that theologians 'are not expressing a private faith, but have become spokesmen for their community.' The theologian 'speaks out of the community of faith' and is to be distinguished from the philosopher of religion who 'is an individual investigator' (Principles of Christian Theology, pp. If). I accept this distinction. I do my own theology within the Christian community of faith. However, for me that does not simply mean passing on received truths, it involves challenging and remaking received doctrine at every level.

There is one way of looking at doctrinal debate which sees 'Christian Truth' as a package of given doctrines which are passed on from one generation to the next like a precious family heirloom. A more energetic analogy for the same idea might be the baton passed on by each member of a relay team in athletics. The last runner proves to be in a direct line of successiori from the first by possession of the baton. As a preacher and teacher I prove my orthodoxy and my direct line of descent from the first Christians by continuing to use their Bible and their creeds.

This is an attractive picture but it is a false one. 'Orthodoxy' emerges at the end of theological debate, it is not fed in at the start. When Anus and Athanasius were first locked in combat over the nature of Christ's divinity, no impartial observer could have claimed that A thanasius was right and Anus wrong. Indeed it seemed to the majority at the time that Arius was right; and if one works simply from the biblical evidence as it was understood at the time, then most scholars today would agree that Arius had the better case. Yet today the Church calls Athanasius a saint and great Teacher of the Faith while Arius is a byword for heresy. This is because eventually, after years literally in the wilderness, A thanasius came back and won both the political and doctrinal argument by

4 Ethical Record, January, 1994 bringing in a new and non-biblical concept: the Father and Son were held to be 'consubstantial'. He also brought a mob of monks from the desert who effectively terrorised the opposition into submission!

Modern Doctrinal Development I offer you an alternative and I believe more accurate, model of doctrinal development. The tradition does not give us the answers, in the sense of pre-packaged solutions to doctrinal problems. It gives us the vocabulary to frame the questions. To be Christian, theology must centre on the person ofJesus Christ; it must find a place for the concept of God; it must carry a message of good news and some guidance to the living of a fulfilled human life. It will speak of sin and grace and salvation. What it does not have to do is to accept the solutions or the boundaries proposed by earlier centuries. Nicea, Constantinople, Chalcedon: they are all provisional statements in the doctrinal pilgrimage. They are temporary resting places, as the oasis of Kadesh was for the ancient Israelites; they are not the Promised Land itself.

The doctrinal definitions of the first Christian centuries arose out of the bringing together of the biblical tradition with that of Greek philosophy. The universal God of the later Hebrew Bible was already a long way removed from the tribal deity of the earliest Old Testament strata. But he was still a personal and intervening God, quite different from the philosophical abstraction of the Greek tradition. Small wonder that the attempt to weld these two together in the infant Christian Church gave rise to many conflicting proposals; smaller wonder that even the best of their ideas fit very uneasily into our post-enlightenment (never mind post-modernist) world.

Talking about God (doing theology) today must involve no less a creative handling of the received traditions and current perceptions than vie can see the early Church engaged in. Here we have no abiding city. The doctrines we receive and the suggestions we pass on are alike provisional. Absolute Truth is beyond our ken. The practical business of living well is our challenge and task; it is that which our theology must address. My approach to talking about God inevitably raises a number of questions, some of which I may anticipate.

Questions Arising One concerns revelation. I do find the concept of revelation as the imparting of absolute truth/values/knowledge from 'beyond' fraught with difficulties. I much prefer the late Ian Ramsey's notion of 'disclosure situations', moments at which the `penny drops' and I `see something for the first time'. With this approach we are able to retain the very proper idea that we do not and cannot work out everything by logical argument, without abandoning ourselves to quite irrational claims. There is a giftlike quality about some of our perceptions which makes the expression `revelation' seem apt, without demanding a belief in supernatural information or knowledge imparted to certain favoured groups or individuals.

A second question which has been raised with me is my arrogance in saying (apparently) that because I do not understand something, therefore it must be false or meaningless or worse. This is a charge which may well have been levelled against yourselves also by religious believers. I hope that I do practise what one of my correspondents calls `a reverent agnosticism'. The trouble is that an anglican priest, daily reciting the creeds, is assumed to regard them, if not as literally true;then at least as descriptive of objective truth, unless he says otherwise. Thus it is only by declaring plainly that I do not understand the creeds in this way that the decks can be cleared for

Ethical Record, January, 1994 5 agnosticism (reverent or otherwise). This is one reason why my book perhaps appears more negative than in fact I am.

A third question I am asked is: How much may doctrine be changed and the result still be called Christianity? When the boy at Rugby School picked up the football and started running with it, he was judged to have changed the rules so much that it had become a different game from soccer. A legitimate game, certainly. But a different one. Should I not accept that my version of Christianity is so fundamentally changed as to have become a different religion or philosophy? A bishop interviewing me some weeks ago implied this when he said, 'We are not concerned with whether what you say is true but whether it is Christian.' This leads us into deep waters. However, if the Church is to maintain, in any degree, its traditional claim to be the uniquely sure way of life for all humanity, then its boundaries must surely be drawn as widely as possible.

A closely related question which has been put in a variety of ways boils down to this: How do you have the brass neck to carry on taking your pay and living in a Church house when you deny the chief tenets of the organisation which employs you? As Allison Pearson put it in The Independent on Sunday, 'It's a bit like having a conscientious objector who wants to stay in the army because he likes the marching.' That is not quite how I see it. More like a soldier who considers the armed services to be more about peace-keeping than war-making, and who is unwilling to hand over completely to the hawks!

Priestly ministry is traditionally concerned with reconciliation between a holy God and a sir ful creature. Reconciliation today will mean helping to bridge a number of gulfs including that between our ideals and aspirations (God) and the reality of our (sinful) lives. Other divides which I am personally concerned to bridge are: that between the world view of our (received) religion and the world view of our everyday lives; that between those who appreciate the symbolic (metaphorical) nature of all religious language and those who do not; and that between those who acknowledge religious authority as external and dogmatic and those who find it by inner questing. Such a ministry, like all priestly ministry, is costly and infinitely worthwhile.

Religion and Morality A final area of concern I should like to mention is morality. John Major has called us 'back to basics' in our personal and social values. Government ministers have accused the churches of failing to give adequate moral guidance to the young. The BBC is sufficiently interested to give prime radio time to the question, 'Who is now setting the moral agenda — religious leaders or politicians?' From my point of view, religion is a human creation and has no business trying to impose divine moral absolutes. Yet if religion has any value at all, surely it must have some role to play in enhancing the quality of our lives?

A traditional prayer for those trying to live the good life puts the matter thus: 'Grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do; and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.' Human beings need both to know what is good and right and to have the strength of will to carry it out. We are like musicians who require both an understanding of the score in front of them and the practical skill to turn it into music; or like sportsmen who need to know the rules of their game and also have the physical stamina to play through to the end. I believe there is still a place for religion on both the theoretical and practical sides of morality, but especially on the latter.

Determining what is right is half the battle, and has.been the traditional task of moral

6 Ethical Record, January, 1994 theology. There is much accumulated wisdom in its teaching which will outlast the doctrinal background out of which it grew. Developing the moral fibre to carry through our good intentions has been the role of ascetical theology (named from the training of Greek athletes). Here it seems to me, though you may well correct me, is where purely secular society has nothing equivalent to offer its members. Here, if anywhere, is a geniune need which can still be met by religion, using its inherited resources, providing it is willing to be imaginative and undogmatic.

The three classic weapons in the fight to live holy lives are prayer, fasting and alms-giving. All three disciplines run across the boundaries of particular faith traditions. None of them requires belief in any particular doctrine of God. Their primary concern is the development of morally mature persons. Their method is to work on the individual for the ultimate benefit of all. They avoid the opposite dangers of a selfish individualism and a suffocating socialism. Under rather different names they are acknowledged as valuable today by many who would not perhaps call themselves religious and who may not be fully aware of the potential of these practices for moral growth.

It was the positive practice of such exercises, rather than preaching hellfire and damnation for the wicked, which made the saints of old. When politicians accuse the churches of preaching too little on judgement and by implication of encouraging wickedness, they simply show their own ignorance. Yet the churches are not blameless. They will need to care less for supernatural dogma and more for personal spiritual development if they are truly to help the individuals and society which they profess to serve.

Conclusion One criticism of my approach to religion is that while it may make it possible for some existing Christians to remain in the Church with integrity, the kind of Christianity I preach lacks the cutting edge to have much converting appeal — even if it were accepted by the hierarchy as a legitimate expression of the faith. People have rejected the old supernaturalism (except at the superstitious level to which we are all prone from time to time). But they will not flock back into church unless we meet them at some point of perceived need on their part. Nothing in the book 'God in Us' will do that. It is too personal, middle-class and elitist (to quote one critic) to be a manifesto for reconstruc- tion. So what is the point of it all?

Part of the answer I believe to lie in what I have just said in relation to morality. More generally I have to confess to just taking one step at a time. I see the role of Don Cupitt at Cambridge, and those of us who are inspired by him, not as something final but rather as a preparatory one for some future positive development. We are John the Baptists in the desert. Our task is one of cleansing and purging old pathways without being able to see where it is all leading. Moreover, I have no doubt of the rightness and the urgency of the task. •

CENTRAL LONDON HUMANISTS SINGLE PARENTS - WORTHY OF SUPPORT OR BLAME? Robbi Robson, ex-Director of Gingerbread January 20, 7.30pm at Conway Hall.

Ethical Record, January, 1994 7 THE PHYSICS OF ORGANISMS AND THE NATURALISTIC ETHIC OF ORGANIC WHOLENESS

Mae-Wan Ho* Lecture to the Ethical Society, 21 November. 1993 The Fall from Grace The biblical account of our common ancestors' fall from grace has always held a special fascination for me, because it can be read in so many ways. One reading is a parable of our estrangement from nature, as the result of which, we are forever condemned to know her from the outside. Cartesian mind-matter dualism, at the basis of western science, did begin by separating mind from body and isolating observer, as disembodied mind, from 'objective' nature observed. It has resulted in a knowledge of alienation, which is reductionist, fragmented, devoid of value and meaning, indeed divorced from life.

Another, more interesting, reading is that, in the beginning, our ancestors were happy and content in the garden of Eden (i.e., nature), in a mindless, innocent sort of way, until Eve tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge and discovered reason. Presumably, she began to think for herself, telling Adam he should do likewise, thus bringing upon them the wrath of God, a benevolent despot who likes to keep humanity innocent and happy. So he castigated them both, told them they were shameful, guilty and sinful, then shut them out of nature forever. He admonished them not to think for themselves, but instead, to have faith, to bear children, to atone for their sins and wait for redemption.

The irony is that once Eve has tasted the forbidden fruit — knowledge — which enables her to know nature more intimately, she and her children are seduced into doing it ever since. I believe it is possible for her children to find their way back to the garden of Eden through knowledge. Perhaps, God, being really a decent sort of fellow, knows that anything forbidden is bound to be seductive, and has actually meant for us to know, to redeem ourselves through reason and imagination.

Redemption through Knowledge So it is that the same tradition of western science, now pushed to its limits, is leading us c back to a participatory knowledge that is probably universal to all traditional indigenous cultures worldwide. My book' is an attempt to outline a participatory 'indigenous western science' which is fully contemporary. It is `participatory' because the knower places her undivided being — body and mind, intellect and feeling — squarely within the known, which is all of nature. Furthermore, it is 'indigenous' because, like all knowledge gained through immersing onself within nature, it is an unfragmented whole — encompassing science, humanities and art, ethics and religion — that we live by, that gives meaning and value to life. In these respects, I part company with perhaps the majority of scientists for whom science holds no meaning for life and must be divorced from personal experience in any event, to maintain its 'objectivity'.

The Theory of Organisms and Organic Wholeness I take, as my starting point, Whitehead's view that we cannot understand physical reality unless we have a theory of the organism. I draw on many areas of contemporary physics from nonequilibrium thermodynamics, condensed matter physics to quantum optics as well as physiology and biochemistry in order to illuminate the nature of the organism. I then show how there is no separation between the so-called 'hard' sciences such as physics and chemistry and the 'soft' sciences such as psychology and philosophy; furthermore, that understanding the organism holds the key to understanding ourselves

'Reader in Biology, Open University 8 Ethical Record, January, 1994 and our relationship with nature.

The theory of the organism is about perceiving organic wholes, perceiving ourselves as such and at the same time, an integral, inseparable part of a greater whole that is ultimately all of nature. The organic whole is something very special, as Whitehead and Bergson both tried to tell us. It is a plurality that is singular, a unity that is multiplex and diverse, an actuality that contains within it all potentials. It differs radically from the conventional notion of the 'whole' that belongs in the mechanical era — a collective or cooperative with a division of labour — a whole that can be taken apart, like a car-engine, and put back together again.

Even the notion of nested hierarchies, or Arthur Kocstler's holons, fails to capture the essence of an organic whole, for nested hierarchies imply that the 'higher' controls the 'lower', like the line-management that the present Government has foisted on our universities, many of which are in grave danger of congealing into a solid mass of bureaucratic, apathetic immobility.

An organic whole, in contrast to a mechanical whole, has no controller nor parts which are controlled. It is dynamic and fluid, its myriad activities are self-motivated, self- organising and spontaneous, engaging all levels simultaneously from the microscopic, molecular, to the macroscopic. Instead of 'control', a more accurate description is 'communication'. An organic whole is a system maximally communicative so that adjustments, responses and changes can propagate 'upwards', 'downwards', 'sideways' in all directions at once in the maintenance of the whole.

An organism is always thick with activities at all levels — all coordinated and constitutive of the whole. The organism has therefore no preferred level. We may choose to define hierarchies and to restrict our description to the 'social', 'behavioural', 'biological', 'biochemical' or 'genetic' level, but only with the realisation that the whole will always elude us.

The organic whole has no decomposable parts or levels, it is a coherent whole. This does not mean we cannot break it up to study the pieces, as we have been doing for several centuries in the west; but the isolated part is a mere shadow of its life in the whole. An enzyme molecule, for example, has a rich and diverse `cytosocial' microenvironment within the cell — consisting of other enzymes, proteins, ions, and metabolites — in which it expresses its full potentials. It is only within the past decade that enzymologists are realising how we have been misled by their work on single, purified enzymes in dilute solution.

The Coherent Wholeness of Being The coherence of organisms that I am talking about has all the properties of the ordinary meaning of the word: correlation, connectedness, a consistency in the system, and something much more. Think of the 'I' that each and everyone of us experience of our own being — a consciousness that is resolutely and concretely singular. Although we know we are made up of innumerable cells and astronomical numbers of molecules of all kinds, we never experience ourselves in the plural, nor as a mixture of separate states.

This experience of a singular 'I' is none other than the intuition of our own organic wholeness, our inner process with its dynamic heterogeneous multiplicity of succession without separateness, a succession of qualitative changes which melt into and permeate one another with no definite localisation or boundaries, each occupying the whole of our

Ethical Record, January, 1994 9 being within a span of feeling that Bergson refers to as 'pure duration'. The intuition of organic wholeness as pure duration is quite precisely captured by the notion of coherence within quantum theory.

The quantum coherent state is a 'pure state' — an indivisible, indecomposable unity that contains within it the potential of all states, each permeating the whole. It is a seemingly paradoxical state that maximises both global cohesion and local freedom. For coherence does not mean uniformity, or that everybody is doing the same thing all the time; quite the opposite is the case. The coherence of the organism is radically and quintessentially pluralistic and diverse and at every level; from the structured, multi- enzyme complexes inside cells, the organisation of diverse cells into tissues and organs and the polymorphism of natural populations, to the variety of species that make up natural ecological communities and the kaleidoscopic, multicultural earth which makes life enchanting and exciting for us all.

Think of a particularly good performance of a grand ballet, or better yet, a large jazz band in which everybody, by doing his or her own thing, is perfectly in tune, in step with the whole, with the audience also participating in the occasion, becoming one with the performers in the music and the art. When we multiply such a performance as many times over as we can, increasing the number and range of performers and stretching tempo much, much further, in both directions, we come close to imagining what happens in an organism such as ourselves.

Within our body, the grandest ensemble of song and dance goes on, ranging over 70 octaves, from localised chemical-bonds vibrating, molecular wheels turning, micro-cilia beating, waves propagating on all scales, to fluxes of electrons and protons, flows of metabolites and ionic currents within and between cells and tissues — activities spanning 10 orders of magnitude of space, yet all constituting a coherent whole. The individual and the collective are one, with all the potentials of the pure state open to it. It is very likely that sustainable social and ecological communities function in the same way, over larger space-time domains.

The coherent state is also a state of 'non-locality' of space and time. For, within the volume in which coherence holds, there is no time-separation, so changes can 'propagate' in no time at all; similarly, within the coherence time, there is no space-separation, so distant sites become neighbouring. This is very far removed from the ordinary commonsensical and mechanical notion — to which most of us have been thoroughly schooled — that objects are separate from one another, each of them having definite boundaries and outlines, and a simple location in linear, homogeneous space and time.

Instead, the organic space and time of real processes are heterogeneous, nonlinear, multidimensional and nonlocal, hence thoroughly entangled with one another. As Whitehead says, "each volume of space, or each lapse of time includes in its essence aspects of all volumes of space, or of all lapses of time." It will take us a long while to recover the full intuition of nonlocal organic space-time, which I believe our common ancestors used to have and a number of traditional indigenous cultures have retained to the present day.

The Naturalistic Ethic of Universal Mutual Entanglement An organism is a domain of coherent activities, perceiving, generating and structuring space and time. Its boundary is dynamic and fluid, extending and contracting with the extent of coherence. An organism could be an individual, a society, or indeed, the whole

10 Ethical Record, January, 1994 earth and beyond. Each organism, in the act of becoming itself, enfolds the environment consisting of other organisms into a unity residing in a 'sell, while aspects of the self are communicated to others. The realisation of 'self' and 'other' are thus completely intertwined. The individual is a distinctive enfoldment of its environment, so each individual is unique. But it is also constituted of others in its environment and simultaneously delocalised over all individuals.

The society is thus a community of organisms mutually delocalised and mutually implicated, or entangled. Individuality is relative, for an organism can be part of the life history of some larger, more complete entity. Ultimately, the entire universe is one, organic, whole constituted of a convocation of organisms that are mutually entangled in a multi-dimensional, nonlocal space-time of organic processes. That, and that alone can provide the rational basis of a naturalistic ethic: for any act against others is inevitably an act against the sell

The awareness of mutual entanglement — the organic oneness of all being — is the guide to coherent, or moral action. It also defines for each and everyone a unique role in a participatory universe from whom we draw comfort and strength, and to whom we direct our creative action and love, which is at the same time, the fulfilment and love of self. We are, so to speak, at home in the universe.

The naturalistic ethic is thus integral to participatory knowledge, which is a way of life. Ethics is not something separate, to be grafted on to a knowledge system divorced from life, which therefore vehemently denies there can be such a thing as a naturalistic ethic. The currently dominant ideology is neo-Darwinian sociobiology. It tells us in no uncertain terms that we are really selfish bastards even when we are apparently good. Freudian psychology dovetails neatly with that view, and both are completely in line with the usual interpretation of the biblical account of the fall from grace: we are all branded with Original Sin.

So, how can we be good? We can only frighten our children into submission, into behaving as if they are good by threatening them with punishment from father, and ultimately, God the Father. Fortunately, people are really good, and even though they have been misled into evil by alienation and ignorance — and organised religions of all kinds have a lot to answer for that — they can recover their indigenous 'goodness' through knowledge that they can feel and think out for themselves, and not just depend on the pronouncements of prophets or gurus.

The most significant development of contemporary western science is thus a reaffirmation of indigenous participatory knowledge at the 'fundamental' level of physical reality. It is the knowledge of universal, organic wholeness which is consonant with individual as well as collective experience and that is how meaning is possible. Meaning depends on something deeply felt, that is communicable to other beings entangled with our own being.

Words are not for naming or defining things. They are potent signs for invoking a shared reality which we never cease to participate in creating. Also as reality is created and enriched, so too is meaning. A significant sign shapes and reshapes its content, which in turn conjures new signs. Reality is meaning and meaning, reality. There is no 'objective' reality apart from us, just as we have no meaning apart from nature.

The participatory knower, therefore, acknowledges her power to shape and transform

Ethical Record. January, 1994 II reality and hence also her responsibility for the knowledge, always guided by an ethic of universal oneness that needs no external schooling. There is no piety involved in participatory knowledge, for it is above all, joyful, playful and spontaneous. It is always innocent, because it has no motive other than that it stems from our desire to know the breadths and depths of nature ever more intimately, and in countless ways to express the deep delight of mutual entanglement which is the well-spring of all creative action and understanding.

Participatory knowledge knows no bounds nor boundaries. There is no fragmentation into disciplines, no demarcation into secular versus sacred domains: it is at once sublime and practical. It is one, and integral to life. By living our life as parent, builder, gardener, labourer, artist, scientist, all, we participate in celebrating and creating reality.

Acknowledgement I thank Peter Saunders for commenting on earlier drafts and for suggestions to improve the manuscript. • ' Ho. Mae-Wan (1993). The Rainbow and the Wartn - The Physics of Organisms. World Scientific, Singapore.

A SPECTRUM OF PHILOSOPHY 1793-1993

Peter Heales Summary of a Lecture to The Ethical Society. 6th June 1993

As in most other forms of human activity, the past two hundred years have seen an acceleration of the processes of change. At the beginning of that period, when the Universalist chapel came into being in Bishopsgate, philosophers were refining their approach to problems that had already exercised them for two centuries.

'Modern' philosophy is often said to have begun with Descartes.lt might be more informative, though, to say that modern philosophy originated in a new and vital interest in science. Its core problem was how to work this new interest into the scheme of things.

The Rationalist Tradition The approach favoured by Descartes was to absorb the disciplines of science into a theological setting. He wanted to ensure that religious doctrine did not inhibit the progress of science, but equally did not want a conflict between scientific method and theology. One view, strongly held by Descartes, and by such continental successors as Leibniz, was that scientific method necessarily rests upon ideas implanted in our minds by the deity. Without such ideas no scientific understanding would be possible.

It follows from that view that, if we can discern the correct principles, much if not all of scientific fact could be worked out by reason. The world, after all, is God's creation and He would without question have used perfectly rational principles. Empirical enquiry, therefore, occupied a subordinate role in this conception of science. It was useful in confirming the work of reason; more importantly, our imperfect faculty of reason sometimes needcd prompting. The philosophers who supported this view of science are usually, and reasonably, known as thc rationalists (the term is not synonymous with that applied more recently to opponents of religious doctrine).

In 1793, the greatest living rationalist was undoubtedly Immanuel Kant. He had recently completed his Critique of Judgenient, the last part of his great philosophy. Kant

12 Ethical Record, January, 1994 occupies a special place in the history of philosophy, for he was the first 'modern' philosopher to understand something of the true function of reason in scientific meth6d.

More firmly in the rationalist tradition were philosophers like Johann Fichte (1762- 1814) and Georg Hegel (1770-1831). Both made extensive use of Kant's thought, but neither adopted those features of it that over time proved most significant. Fichte stressed the theological strand of rationalism, which is all but absent from Kant's philosophy. Hegel, whilst having little apparent interest in theology, stressed the ideal and produced views of science, history and art which devalued all forms of empirical enquiry. It was that characteristic of absolute idealism, borrowed from Hegel, which has rendered Marxist philosophy both powerful and suspect.

The Empiricist Tradition The rationalist view of science was opposed by empiricism. Francis Bacon's visionary Novum Organum contained a formula for empirical enquiry that proved highly influential among practising scientists. The empiricist philosophy received its first systematic statement in the Essay concerning Human Understanding by John Locke (1632-1704). The empiricist stance was to accept the sceptical doubts expressed most famously in Descartes' Meditations and to deny that any rational or metaphysical system was needed to overcome them. Empirical evidence is the only source of scientific, of any other, knowledge. It is an imperfect source to be sure, but our efforts should be directed not at creating systems which serve mainly to divert us from the truth, but at finding the means of making the best use of it.

The question at the heart of empiricism in the eighteenth century was that of 'induction': how can a series of specific observations lead to generally valid conclusions? , The idea was introduced as scientific pragmatism by Francis Bacon in his Novum Organunz.Later philosophers sought to use it to justify scientific results more formally. It is difficult to see how pure empiricism can be maintained without invoking a principle of that kind. In the twentieth century, 'induction' has at last been surrendered as untenable. It proved possible, however, to make the sacrifice without giving up the major premisses of the empiricist position.

Empiricism is associated with Britain rather more than with the continent. Debates about the consistency of the empiricist approach, and the problems it poses, continued in parallel with the evolution of rationalism on the continent. British and continental philosophy appear as separate streams, although there was undoubtedly interaction between them. The influence of Thomas Hobbes on Spinoza and that of Hume on Kant are well documented. In the other direction, Kant and Hegel dominated philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge in the nineteenth century.

A rare example of empiricism in continental thought occurs in the Scientific Socialism of Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and the Positive Philosophy of Comte (1798-1857) to which it gave rise. As a comment on the balance of interest between Britain and the Continent, it is worth noting that Comte's philosophy created a distinct, if passing, effect upon thought in England* whilst being almost completely ignored in his native France.

IS. Mill John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) represents a second great flowering of empiricism in Britain. He is perhaps best known for the ways in which he extended Bentham's utilitarian theory of morality, one of the bravest attempts to found an objective ethic upon empiricist • 'The Religion of Humanity [lid]

Ethical Record, January, 1994 13 premisses. Equally significant in the history of philosophy was his treatment of logic, mathematics and scientific method as derived exclusively from empirical experience. Mill denied the inherent necessity of mathematics, a point not pursued by earlier (or later) empiricists.

Mill's treatment of the problem of 'induction' in Part III of his Logic is especially interesting. In this part of his work he acknowledges a considerable debt to Auguste Comte. The substance of his concept of scientific method may be seen as a great refinement, after two centuries of experiment, of Bacon's pragmatic method. Mill's methods of 'agreement', 'difference', 'residues' and 'concomitant variations' are still very much at the heart of scientific practice. Mill's argument went further, though: he sought to maintain that the methods themselves were learned solely through the vehicle of empirical experience. This was a more radical position even than that of Locke, who was prepared to admit that the mechanism for handling the empirical is part of our natural endowment.

The very rigour with which Mill carried through his radical programme revealed the weaknesses at its heart. No subsequent philosopher has attempted so much. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), who might be regarded as Mill's natural successor, accepted that some elements of the rationalist position were essential to a coherent account of scientific knowledge. He was emphatically an empiricist at heart; he used his early training in the rationalist school and the interest in logic and mathematics which occupied him into his forties, 'to resolve some of the long-standing difficulties in empiricism. His most significant contribution lies in his logic, which helped to produce a method of representing empirical generalisations as logical constructs derived from assertions of actual and expected observations. His approach cuts out some of the traditional difficulties about the relationship between evidence and conclusions, but does not of itself enable one to justify one set of expectations rather than another.

Ayer and Russell A.J. Ayer (1910-1989) is perhaps the most noted 'hard line' empiricist of recent times. His philosophy was tempered in the heat of the Vienna Circle, that remarkably intense, though brief, flowering of continental empiricism. Its aim was to re-establish pure empiricism by using and developing the logic which Russell had helped to evolve. Ayer's philosophy proved to be more single-minded than Russell's but not as radical as Mill's. His work might best be seen as a reworking of the problems encountered by Locke and Hume in a more rigorous language.

Russell had seen the need to make some compromise between the claims of empiricism and rationalism, because neither alone seemed able to give a coherent account of the nature of scientific knowledge. Kant's brilliant philosophy had offered a way forward, but he was identified so strongly with main-stream rationalism, that the true force of his thought was realised only after the event. Certainly the British Kantians were rejected by empiricists, and Russell gave Kant very short shrift in his History of Western Philosophy.

The orthodoxies of the past two centuries are therefore the two parallel developments of rationalism and empiricism. Whilst not existing in isolation, they have been fairly independent until well into the present century, when some coalescence has taken place. The movement in Britain and America has been towards greater acceptance of some rationalist points but, for the most part, only to the extent of accepting that knowledge entails a greater theoretical a priori element than was hitherto thought necessary. This conclusion is about the structure of thought only; it postulates neither a `giand design' nor metaphysical reality.

14 Ethical Record, January, 1994 The orthodoxies have experienced many challenges from within their own ranks. One challenge to British empiricism has come from the 'common sense' school of philosophy which draws attention to the apparent implausibility of the empiricist model of human knowledge. The name of G.E. Moore will spring into any mind trained in recent philosophy. A much earlier, and equally effective, exponent was at the height of his influence at the time Elhannan Winchester founded his chapel in Bishopsgate. He was the Scottish philosopher, Thomas Reid (1710-1796).

The Pragmatist Challenge: James and Dewey Another more powerful and sustained challenge to empiricism has come from pragmatism. Leading American pragmatists, such as William James (1842-1910) and John Dewey (1859-1952), regarded themselves as the philosophical descendents of Francis Bacon. They considered that traditional empiricists, in building on his ideas, had taken a wrong turn: they had asked the wrong questions. Bacon's Novum Organum presents, in essence, a sound method of proceeding when confronted with a practical problem. The correct question is not: 'does the outcome constitute objective truth?' but: 'has the problem been resolved successfully?'

The pragmatists draw attention to the role of the interest of the moment in what we describe as 'true'. This is not a licence to manipulate the truth or 'believe what it pays to believe' (as Russell put it). They would be deceits knowingly undertaken. The pragmatist point is about the inescapable structure of thinking; that empirical investigation necessarily takes place in the context of some concept or theory about the problem to be solved. The mind may be, indeed should be, open to all the empirical data it can aqui re, but it can never, even at its beginning, be the tabula rasa that Locke describes.

Dewey generalised this model of scientific method and added to it the idea of 'amelioration' as the universal motive to action. This, he believes, furnishes an account of the process of living which can be applied to all organisms, human or otherwise. The standards by which 'amelioration' is to be judged, and the methods available to achieve it depend, of course, upon the characteristics of the species in question. The cyclic process that Dewey proposes has five parts: every organism seeks the equilibrium of living in harmony with its environment; it registers dissatisfaction when the harmony is disturbed, either by a threat from the environment, or by a sense that things could be better; continued awareness of disharmony leads sooner or later to the identification of the problem and the need for action; the action takes the form of an hypothesis, a putative solution to the problem; the results of the action are tested in practice; sooner or later (we may hope) the result is satisfactory and harmony is restored. Dewey sees this formula applying equally to a simple creature, such as an amoeba and to a scientist who is dissatisfied with a mismatch between his experimental results and the theory he is testing. The amoeba can manage only simple 'instinctive' responses, whilst the scientist uses his intellectual powers to the full, but the underlying principle is the same.

C.S. Peirce The philosopher who is credited with originating American pragmatism is Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). He certainly coined the word, but his thought was much more incisive and rigorous than that of the pragmatists already mentioned. He is now regarded as being years ahead of his time in most of the areas in which he worked.

Ethical Record. January, 1994 15 William James' book Pragmatism grew out of a great admiration for Peirce, and was intended to present Peirce's philosophy to a wider readership. The ideas suffered such a sea change in the process, however, that Peirce repudiated the attempt and renamed his philosophy `pragmaticism' in order to maintain his separate identity. Dewey also acknowledged a debt to Peirce, but the philosopher who has worked most in his spirit is Quine.

After graduating from Harvard, Peirce worked for thirty years for the U.S. Coastal and Geodesic survey. He held one or two minor academic appointments during this time, but never succeeded in his ambition to work full time as an academic. He had perforce to write most of his philosophy in his spare time, and that may account for the fact that most of his work consists of article length papers, with very little extended writing.

In spite of the fragmentary nature of his output, Peirce's work was read by a circle of American philosophers, and he was highly regarded. Many ideas he included in his papers, especially his advanced theories in logic, were taken up and developed further; in many cases they are the original expression of aspects of logic which are now well established. It has taken time, however, to form a coherent picture of the philosophy which lay behind his treatment of detailed topics.

The keynote of his philosophy is his opposition to the Cartesian principle of knowledge which in.one way or another has informed the development of both the rationalist and empiricist schools of philosophical doubt and of the certainty at which rationalism aims. We cannot begin with complete doubt for that leaves us with nothing on which to build; we are reduced to vagaries which have no bearing upon the problems we need to resolve. We must begin with the understanding and the prejudices we actually have. On the other hand, there can be no ultimate certainty. In practice, a proposition may be regarded as certain if no-one actually doubts it, but no proposition is ever indubitable. What appears certain now may be challenged in the future. A disciplined, or `scientific' approach is desirable since it reduces the chance of being 'caught out' by the litmus test of practical experience, but discipline does not remove the possibility of doubt.

Although the objective world of experience is the final arbiter of our success, our understanding of it is conditioned by the system of 'thought signs' we use. Any proposition, to be useful, must be formulated within the operative system, and to be true must cohere with other propositions to form a corpus of fact. The 'truth' of a proposition can only be tested against our understanding of reality, that is in the context of previously accepted propositions with which we believe it to cohere. In that context, we,accept the new proposition as true if we obtain satisfactory responses from the environment.

Peirce maintained that philosophy should emulate the sciences in its general method of moving on from what is accepted by careful and systematic questioning.

Wittgenstein's Pragmatist Leanings Many of the significant modern developments in philosophy derive from the pragmatist view that we cannot stand in loco deus. We can only see ourselves from our position in the cosmos of which we are a part, with which we interact. Not all the recent philosophers who seem to owe something to pragmatism have intentionally espoused it. Some may indeed have been unaware of it or rejected it. It is rather that elements of pragmatism are shared in a common awareness among the philosophers of our age.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one such. His later philosophy is admittedly

16 Ethical Record, January, 1994 discursive, and is directed at showing what he believes cannot be said. The general drift of his philosophy,. however, is that assertions can only be understood in context. His emphasis on language grew from his reaction to the theories of meaning which he had addressed earlier in his career. He was particularly anxious to show that language is an intimate part of the intellectual structure we use to interpret the world, and cannot be detached from it as though it were an optional extra. He was not, in my view, a 'linguistic philosopher' like John Austin and others who claimed to have followed him. His analysis of language was part of a technique leading to a more pervasive understanding and not an end in itself.

His 'pragmatist' leanings emerge in many unexpected places. Russell reports (in My Philosophical Development) a conversation in which Wittgenstein disagreed with the assertion that the number of things in the universe might be counted. Counting can only take place after some description has been offered, and a description implies prior theoretical understanding. Another example is his 'fable' (recorded in Norman Malcolm's Memoir)of a people who do not see that consistency is necessary in commercial dealings, because it is not relevant to the problems they are interested in.

Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend Karl Popper (1902- ) might also be cited in this context, although I doubt whether he would be pleased to be associated with the pragmatists. His view that scientific method is based upon the falsification of hypotheses is well known. That view carries with it the idea that facts are theory dependent. He is not primarily interested in the process by which hypotheses are formulated, but once they exist, they determine the nature of the tests which must be carried out, and therefore determine both the range of facts that will be discovered and their significance. This is only a minimal concession in the direction of pragmatism; Popper did not go so far as to abandon the notion of a single objective pool of knowledge. The fact that a philosopher so close to the heart of empiricism accepted a role for prior theory in scientific knowledge opened the way for others to take more relativist a view. Thomas Kuhn (1922- ), for example, has claimed that scientific 'fact' is determined by the prevailing paradigm of research, which also shapes the theories which can develop from it.

The contemporary, Paul Feyerabend, is sometimes regarded as a 'dissident Popperian'. That may be justified in that his field is the philosophy of science which was dominated by Popper in his formative years as a philosopher. Whether or not he may eventually be classified as a pragmatist, he sets out to break the mould of the traditional philosophy in ways reminisccnt of Peirce. He differs from Peirce very sharply, though, in his total rejection of system.

Feyerabend rejects the view that scientific practice should derive from a theoretical justification of science. Rather we should look at the processes which actually produce the best results; they are, even in science, essentially unmethodical. Science is most productive when ideas proliferate and hypotheses compete for attention, not when precise methods are being followed in an orderly manner. One of the few principles that Feyerabend asserts is that if any process is reduced to a defined procedure then, of necessity, vital exceptions will manifest themselves.

Richard Rorty Another contemporary American philosopher who is suspicious of system is Richard Rorty. He owns to being a latter day advocate of pragmatism, taking up John Dewey's expansive view of philosophy, rather than the precision of Peirce. He continues Dewey's

Ethical Record. January, 1994 17 work of showing the practical import of philosophical ideas on the whole range of human activity and experience. His approach led to his being regarded as a cult figure in some circles, and as beyond the pale in more conventional ones.

Like all pragmatists, he sees a first glimmer of hope in the writings of Francis Bacon, and regards most subsequent philosophy as exploring a blind alley. In his best known book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, he characterises this wrong turn as stemming from the wish to represent the world sub specie aeternitatis. Reality he believes is constantly developing, as human understanding and experience evolved. The task of philosophy is to promote the process of dialogue and transformation. Philosophy which likens itself to science, logic or any other precise discipline is doomed to become a backwater precisely because these disciplines necessarily treat their subject matter as static (though they may themselves change).

Philosophy should not therefore restrict itself to any predefined range of methods, but should free itself and become open to currents and trends. Rorty sees the later, 'enlightened', Wittgenstein as a kind of satirist undermining the old institutionalised philosophy. Rorty denies a place neither to religion nor science, but sees them both as inhibiting the essential dialogue. Religion, because it relies upon unquestioned authority; science, because it promotes a process which aims at definitively 'right' answers. Much more important to the health and future of our culture is the understanding and evolution of the value systems which shape our reality. Rorty looks towards literature and the arts as the more fertile source.

It is pictures rather than propositions, metaphors rather than statements, which determine most of our philosophical convictions. The picture which holds traditional philosophy captive is that of the mind as a great mirror, containing various representations — some accurate, some not — and capable of being studied by pure non-empirical methods. Without the notion of mind as a mirror, the notion of knowledge as accuracy of representation would not have suggested itself. Without this latter notion, the strategy common to Descartes and Kant — getting more accurate representations by inspecting, repairing and polishing the mirror, so to speak — would not have made sense. Without this strategy in mind, recent claims that philosophy could consist of 'conceptual analysis' or 'phenomenological analysis' or 'explication of meanings' or examination of 'the logic of our language' or of 'the structure of the constituting activity of consciousness' would not have made sense. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1980)

Not all the way with Feyerabend and Rorty I am aware that in singling out philosophers for special mention, I have veered in the direction of pragmatism at the expense of other philosophical schools. Apart from the obvious limitations of space, my justification is that pragmatism seems to me to be closer to the heart of recent philosophy, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, than any other. It confirms empirical methods of problem solving, without invoking the logical difficulties which have dogged traditional 'hard line' positivism. For that reason I believe that pragmatism, as an approach, is worthy of more attention from humanists. We do not need to go all the way with Feyerabend or Rorty, but we should not ignore them. They at least show how the broad spectrum of human experience and interest can form an integral part of philosophy rather than appearing as peripheral to it.

18 Ethical Record, January. 1994 THE WORKING MEN'S COLLEGE

Brenda Colloms Lecture to the Ethical Society, 28 November. 1993

The Founders The Working Men's College opened at 31 Red Lion Square, Holborn on October 31, 1854. The founders were Victorian idealists who gathered around an Anglican clergyman named Frederick Denison Maurice. Two other parsons worked with Maurice: Charles Kingsley, rector of Eversley, and the Rev. John Llewelyn Davies. The latter was involved with education, and his sister, Emily, became a founder of Girton College, Cambridge. Five others were lawyers. John Malcolm Ludlow, Thomas Hughes and F.J. Furnivall were barristers of Lincoln's Inn where Maurice had been Chaplain since 1846.

Founders were men who attended organising meetings prior to the College opening and who taught thereafter. Kingsley was not a founder, although often associated in the public mind with the College because of his close friendship with Maurice. Nor was John Ruskin a founder, because although he taught art there from the first, he had not attended the earlier meetings. He, too, in the public mind, was ranked as a founder.

An Alternative to Chartism The origins of the College and the group round Maurice, began in 1846 when Ludlow and Hughes, disturbed by evidence of desperate poverty in the slums near the Inn, turned to their newly appointed Chaplain for advice. That was also the year when the Corn Laws were abolished, helping to reduce the cost of living for the poor. However, the militant Chartists still demanded the vote for working class men, and two years later, in the 'year of revolutions' the Chartist speakers were threatening violence if government did not extend the franchise.

Maurice feared that violence might break out in England, as it was doing on the Continent. He and Ludlow discussed the French idea of wbrkers' producer co-operatives, which they believed would be morally more beneficial than the stores co-operatives already in the North of England. The collapse of the third Chartist petition in April 1848 gave Maurice and his friends an opportunity to publicise their peaceful policies; they brought out papers called 'Politics for the People' and 'The Christian Socialist'. They held lectures for working men stressing the importance of producer co-operatives and better education. Maurice assisted in founding Queen's College, Harley street, a serious school to train students for a career in teaching, and both Maurice and K ingsley taught there part-time. Maurice also lectured at King's College, London, a strongly orthodox Anglican college.

The Christian Socialists, as they were now called, formed a Council of Promoters of Workers' Associations, and producer co-operatives were formed, the first ones including tailors, builders, needlewomen and — most important of all — engineers. However, by 1853 all had failed, or were close to failure. The Christian Socialists concluded the fault lay in lack of education.

BIRTH AND BREEDING The politics of reproduction in modern Britain. An exhibition at the Wellcome Institute, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 till February. Tel: 071-611 8546 for details.

Ethical Record, January, 1994 19 King's College sacks a Professor In that same year Maurice's new book, 'Theological Essays' appeared, and raised a storm of protest, not least at King's College where it was denounced as heresy and Maurice was solemnly dismissed. His case was widely reported in the national press, where he had supporters. A working man publicly begged Maurice to become Principal of a Working Men's College in place of a Professor at King's College, an idea which Maurice and the others adopted with enthusiasm. They lectured, they raised money, they held working meetings and they found premises. In October 1854 they opened the doors to more students than they had anticipated. The aim of the college was 'to give a liberal education to artisans at fees they can afford and at hours they can attend'. It is an aim which more or less is still the heart of the College.

The teachers were professional men who gave their services free. Working class students who might become teachers were to be paid. The College pledged itself to be an educational assocation of middleclass and working class men. Teachers would learn from students as much as students would learn from teachers.

Working Men recruit Ruskin The sensible and progressive educational ideas of Maurice were published under the title, 'Learning and Working'. The College offered classes in English, Languages and Mathematics: in History, Law and Politics: and in Art, with Music to be added later. Maurice said art and music were essential for a liberal education. The acquisition ofJohn Ruskin as the College's first art teacher was a stroke of luck engineered by Furnivall, who knew Ruskin personally. After reading 'The Stones of Venice', and the chapter on the men who built the Gothic cathedrals, Furnivall sent Ruskin a College prospectus. Intrigued by the notion of teaching British workmen about art, Ruskin at once wrote to Maurice offering his services.

His classes were easily the most popular inside the College and the best known outside it. He taught every Thursday night and the class became so large that it had to be divided. Ruskin persuaded Gabriel Rossetti to join the college and he taught figure and colour, while Ruskin, assisted by Lowes Dickinson, took figure and still life in black and white.

George Allen, Publisher Some students joined the art classes hoping to change their jobs, but Ruskin refused to lower his standards. He told the students to go to the Government Schools to learn industrial art. Nevertheless, several students did develop a talent for drawing and moved into fine and commercial art. Ruskin himself helped George Allen, a joiner by trader, to become first an engraver, and then a publisher. With Ruskin's money and under his instructions, Allen published Ruskin's socialist books, bringing them out at prices which working class readers could afford. These socialist books sold so well at these low prices that the fortunes of the fIrm were made, and Allen went into general publishing. He became a lifelong friend of Ruskin, and later on, under the name of George Allen and Unwin, the firm was one of the best known publishers in London.

In 1857 the College had to move to larger premises at 46 Great Ormond Street. Some of the Christian Socialists, satisfied that the College was safely established, took time off to write books. (Of course, they had to carry on with their professional careers as well.). Ludlow lectured on India — it was the year of the Mutiny — and wrote a book. Maurice continued to have essays and sermons published, and Kingsley was the most prolific of them all, with his novels, poetry, sermons and lectures; but the surprise author was Thomas Hughes, who suddenly produced 'Tom Brown's Schooldays', an introduction to

20 Ethical Record, January, 1994 Rugby School for Hughes's son. These books were published by the book-selling Macmillan brothers, Daniel and Alexander, who were long-standing admirers of Maurice.

Ruskin and Rossetti left the College in 1858 and their friend, Ford Madox Brown, became chief art teacher. His famous painting:Work' is a College favourite because the two thoughtful men at the side, watching the labourers, are F.D. Maurice and Thomas Carlyle — the 'brain workers'. Several of the younger Pre-Raphaelite artists taught at the College from time to time.

The bedrock of the College in its early years was Ludlow, who manfully buried his deep disappointment over the failure of the working men's associations. George Tansley, an early student and definitely a middle class one, his father owning a prosperous firm, was also a loyal and active member of the College. The Principal was, naturally, F.D. Maurice, till his death in 1872 when there was a wholesale reorganisation of the College administration. Legal changes made it necessary to appoint a Corporation of trustees who handled large sums of College money and donations. The College thus became an educational charity. Hughes succeeded Maurice as Principal and Litchfield, whose love for the College equalled that of Tansley, became Vice-Principal, the chief executive. The modernisation of the College was almost entirely owing to the work of Litchfield and Tansley, working in tandem.

Social or Academic? A dispute arose which had been slowly growing. Which was the more important — the social side of the College, or the academic side? Furnivall hotly defended the social side; Litchfield and Tansley vigorously upheld the academic side. Their main contention was that the College was established primarily to educate its students and they won the day. Furnivall teniporarily left the College, giving time to founding literary societies, helping with the New Oxford Dictionary, and organising rowing clubs on the Thames.

In 1883, having been appointed a judge based in Chester, Hughes resigned, and Sir John Lubbock, the archetypal polymath, was persuaded to be principal. He combined being a banker with being an M.P. and was famous for inventing Bank Holidays. He had a legendary circle of friends so through him the College could call upon famous personalities to give public lectures. Litchfield continued as Vice-Principal. The curriculum barely changed, and the College remained a uniquely friendly institution.

By the 1890s the College was once more bursting at the seams and a building fund was started. The College's neighbour, the Children's Hospital, was also short of space, and a huge gift from W.W. Astor, the American millionaire, allowed it to buy the College building, which in turn, permitted the College to purchase a site in Crowndale Road, N.W.1. and to engage a well-known architect, W.D. Caroe, to design a new building. It would have a fine library, a spacious hall, science laboratories.

On July 16,1904 the Prince of Wales laid the foundation stone, watched by four of the Founders — Ludlow, Furnivall, Westlake and Lowes Dickinson. By October 1905 the new College was opened. Furnivall, who lived within walking distance, became a regular visitor.

With the Founders, there died the idea that the special fellowship — a union between middle class and working class men — was of vital importance to the College. Friendship and co-operation remained a key feature — the College today has a specially warm

Ethical Record, January, 1994 21 atmosphere — but in the twentieth century operation remained a key feature the College had to compete academically with the lack of it, was one problem which remained the same, or in spite of generous gifts, and splendid donations from Charles Wright, a working class student who became a member of Lloyds, and enabled the College to build an extension in the 1930s.

In 1922 the Duke of York paid a visit, giving a gold medal to be won each year by the best student. Then in 1927 H.M. Inspectors gave a good report of the College work. The art classes too, blossomed under the inspired leadership ofJames Laver from 1926-1938. However, in the post-war years the College faced fresh difficulties. Falling enrolments demanded dramatic measures so GCE and 'A' level courses were introduced with paid professional teachers to give them. Students joined the College hoping to gain entrance to universities and polytechnics. Many of them returned to the College to teach.

The Question of Female Admission In 1954, centenary year, the new young queen, Elizabeth II visited the College, which had been dusted and polished by the wives, sisters and sweethearts of College members. The queen saw a strictly male College, the ladies were simply not on view. That raised once more the controversial question of admitting women students. Council was traditionally reluctant even though the College had a long history of involvement with women's colleges. Maurice had always encouraged classes for women. In 1864 a Working Women's College was opened in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury by Elizabeth Malleson, née Whitehead, and her husband Frank Malleson, a businessman, who was the son of Philip Malleson, a Unitarian minister. All the Mallesons were admirth of Maurice.

Some teachers from the Working Men's College — A.J. Munby, a Latin teacher, for one —taught at both colleges, but in 1874 there was a split in the women's college over the desirability or otherwise of mixed sex classes. The Mallesons were in favour, remained in Queen Square and renamed their college, 'The College for Men and Women, with which is incorporated the Working Women's College'. The break-away group moved to Fitzroy Street and named their college The College for Working Women'.

The moving spirit in the Fitzroy Street college was Frances Martin, once a student at Queen's College. She ended as Principal of the college, and after her death in the 1920s the college was named the Frances Martin College in her memory. The other college did not fare so well, having been wound up for lack of students in 1901. In 1957 the Fitzroy street lease ran out, and the Frances Martin College approached the Working Men's College for a few rooms. Council decided to 'give shelter' to the small number of students, both colleges remaining entirely separate. The women were so discreet that they were rarely seen by the men.

College in the 'Swinging Sixties' However, this brought the woman question once more to the fore and in 1965 Council voted to let women in, for a probationary period of two years. In 1966, the middle of the 'Swinging Sixties', a flood of young women enrolled, blissfully ignorant of the momentous concession by Council. They proved excellent students; the probation restriction was lifted; today, women outnumber the men. Their academic results are fine. They sit on Council and committees. The College has a woman Warden (in other places she would be Principal). Enrolment holds steady at around 2,000 students, which completely fills the building. The College has had to make changes to comply with government regulations. It now offers computer courses along with classics. There are continual arguments about its antiquated name and suggestions that it should merge with a like-minded institution, hoping for advantages from increased size. So, has it a future? As the College has a proven record of change and survival, not change and decay, only time will tell. •

22 Ethical Record, January, 1994 VIEWPOINTS

No Naturalistic Ethic Possible Whitehead's terminology and his radical redefinition of many terms of ordinary language makes his philosophy of organism difficult to understand. His collaboration with Russell (Principia Mathetnatica) gave him the reputation of a logician yet later on in life he changed radically and opposed the traditions of rationalism and empiricism, scoffing at the ideals of clarity and precision. There was a gradual development in his thinking from universal algebra to a sort of universal biology. By using the same kind of approach Mae-Wan Ho (SPES Lecture, ER Jan. 94) gradually seemed to transform science into metaphysics, as if there were no boundaries between science and philosophy, between materialism and idealism and between the secular and sacred domains. Her metaphysical views were very confusing. There was no recognition of the limitations of physical science. Susan Stebbing in Philosophy and the Physicists is nearer the truth by declaring that our limitations, due to the feebleness of our desires for good, cannot be removed by the advance of physical knowledge, nor should our hopes be placed in the researches of the physicists. James Addison — London W12

Another Slogan I would like to suggest another possible slogan to add to those put forward by James Hemming (ER December). "One world, one human race, peace and prosperity for all". Paddy Smith — Guildford

Calling Freethinkers Dear Friends! I am glad to have the opportunity to write you. The matter is that I'll like to know about freethinkers in your country. Now there are many religious preachers from different countries, they are members of different sects and they desire that I and my friends believe them. But I should like to live and think by my own head and own "brains". As luck would have it, I have known your address and about your existence. I would like to ask you: send me, please, your periodical, give your members my address because it is my dream to have friends and who are freethinkers. Some words about myself. My name is TANYA. I am 36 years old. I am a teacher of History. My hobbies are: history, literature, art, nature, classic music. Thank you for attention. I'll be waiting for the news from you. Happy New Year! Your friend, Tanya Korobova Brovarnay Str., h.25, Kv.18, 282003, Ternopol, Ukraine

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Registered Charity No. 251396 Foundedin 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whoseaim is the study and dioemination of ethical principks based on humanism, and the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life. We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural creeds and find themselves in sympathy with our views.

At Conway Hall there are opportunities for participation in many kinds of cultural activities, including discussions, lectures, concerts and socials. The Sunday Evening Chanter Music Concerts founded in 1887 have achieved international renown.

A reference and lending library is available, and all members receive the Society's journal, The Ethical Record eleven times a year.

Memorial and Funeral Services are available to members.

Minimum subscriptions are E10 p.a. Please apply to the Secretary at Conway Hall for Membership Application forms.

Ethical Record, January, 1994 23 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall 1-lumanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WCI JANUARY 1994 Tel: 071-831 7723 Sunday 16 11.00 am EDITH THOMPSON AND BYWATERS: A MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE Dr. Rene Weis analyses the legal and moral aspects of the 1920s murder trial.

3.00 pm WILD LIFE CONSERVATION. An illustrated talk by David Wright

Sunday 23 11.00 am THE MORALITY OF THE GULAG. Harry Whitby reviews some 20th century practices.

3.00 pm WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED SCIENCE? James Addison discusses the difference between 'the world of physics' and the physical world.

Sunday 30 11.00 am PARLIAMENT AND PRIESTESSES T.E Evans examines the Parliamentary debates which throw fascinating light on attitudes to religion today.

3.00 pm VIDEO SEMINAR ON KES. Harry Whitby.

FEBRUARY Sunday 6 11.00 am THE BRITISH HEGELIANS. Peter Heales assesses the contribution of philosophers such as T.H. Green and J. McTaggart to the development of British thought.

3.00 pm WHO WROTE THE NEW TESTAMENT, AND WHY? Peter L. Griffiths

Sunday 13 11.00am INTO OUR THIRD CENTURY. A panel of SPES Appointed Lecturers consider the role of the Ethical Society two hundred and one years after its inception on 14th February 1793.

3.00 pm "FOR THEY'RE HANGING MEN AND WOMEN" Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie illustrate: incidents in Irish history through song.

Thursday 17 EUROTOPIA 7.00 pm A special lecture by Prof. LEOPOLD KOHR whose 52nd Conway Memorial Lecture in 1970 was entitled The Breakdown of Great Britain'.

Advance note: Thursday, 3rd March, 7.00 pm NEIL KINNOCK, M.P. will answer questions from the audience.

SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS — 103rd SEASON 6.30 pm at Conway Hall. Tickets £3. Tel: 081-445 9958 for full programme.

SPES Evening Course THE CHALLENGE OF CREATIONISM Tutor: Mike Howgate An historical, philosphical and scientific critique of so-called 'scientific creationism'. (Bring your creationist friends). 6.30 -8.30pm Tuesdays, March 8, 15, 22 and 29 at Conway HalL Fee: El per meeting, including tea.

Published by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Printed by JI.G. Bryson (Printer) Ltd. 156-162 High Road, London N2 9AS