ISSN 0014-1690 The Ethical Record
Vol. 99 No. 5 £ 1 May 1994
BACK TO BASICS WITH TROLLOPE T.F. Evans 3
GOD AND THE BIG BANG Hyman Frankel 6
PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY Marion Granville 13
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE AND "MODERNISM" John Good 16 Self-portrait. 1948. Gertrude Elias. On 8 May1994. Gertrude addressed the Society on her autobiography. The 'Suspect Generation' VIEWPOINTS HUMANISM ON THE WORLD STAGE Vivien Gibson, D. Baker, Bob Stuckey, Jerry W. Hardin 18 There are now over three million ethical, non-religious people from thirty-two countries linked to IHEU, the International Humanist and Ethical Union. So reports SPES member Matt Cherry from IHEU's OBITUARIES base in Utrecht, the Netherlands, where he has recently Rose Warwick 2 assumed the post of Secretary for Development and PR. Frank Ambrose Ridley 20 Matt is actively resisting the tendency in Germany today to blame the rise of Nazism on irreligion, calling this a "terrible misunderstanding of the lessons of history'. Many of the great moral responses to the WHY I DO NOT CALL horrors of Nansm were non-religious. Survivors such as MYSELF AN ATHEIST Primo Levi and Jacob Bronowski emphasised the need Prot Sir Hermann Bondi, to base moral and social principles on humanity rather F.R.S. 21 than on any `higher' authority, whether religious belief or totalitarian dogma. Increasingly, this humanist belief ETHICAL SOCIETY is under threat from fundamentalist religion. We hope PROGRAMME 24 Germany will resist this threat. He is also working with German humanists to alter the preamble to a proposed new German constitution so that it no longer implies all German citizens are responsible to God, which would violate the secularist principle of the separation of church and state." SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY
Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC IR 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 Chairman: 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 (The Secretary's office is now on the 2nd Floor, Bradlaugh House, 47 Theobald's Road) Hall Staff Manager:Stephen Norley. Tel: 071-242 8032 for Hall bookings. Head Caretaker David Wright.
ROSE WARWICK It is with regret that we have to report the death of Rose Warwick on 7th April at the age of 90. Her funeral was conducted by Peter Cadogan. She was a long standing member of SPES, having joined before the Society moved to Conway Hall, and she and her husband Oliver played an important part in the affairs of the Society, especially in the earlier days at Conway Hall. They worked hard for SPES. Oliver was a Trustee and served for many years on the GC. Rose was supportive, a loyal member and attended and took part in our functions. She was a good speaker and would give talks to the Sundary afternoon Socials, and show slides of her travels abroad. Her sons too have played their part, Justin also serving on the GC and Conrad, like his father, leading rambles in Epping Forest. Rose was sensible, generous, kindly and interested in the rights of women. We admired her energy and spirit and were glad to have her as a Member of SPES. Louise Booker
Members' Names and Addresses It has been our normal practice to print both names and addresses of our members in the Annual Report. If you do NOT wish to have your address published, please let me know, in writing, as soon as possible. Nina Khare, Secretary
SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Registered Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in all relevant fields. We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural creeds and tind 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 Chamber 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 Recordeleven times a year. Funerals and Memorial Meetings are available to members. Membership is £10 p.a. Please apply to the Secretary for Membership Application forms.
The views expressed in this journal are not necessary those of the Society
2 Ethical Record, April, 1994 BACK TO BASICS WITH TROLLOPE AND THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
T.F. Evans Lecture to the Ethical Society, 10 April 1994
... a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel.
Anthony Trollope An Autobiography 1883
If you come to grief and creditors are craving (For nothing Lhat is planned by mortal head Is certain in this Vale of Sorrow — saving That one's Liability is Limited), — Do you suppose that signifies perdition? If so, you're but a monetary dunce — You merely file a Winding-Up Petition, And start another Company at once! As a Company you've come to utter sorrow — But the liquidators say, "Never mind — you needn't pay", So you start another Company tomorrow!
W.S. Gilbert Utopia Limited 1893
Major Importance It will be immediately apparent to all but a few exactly why Trollope has been chosen to start our thinking. Shortly after the present Prime Minister took office, he was given, among other signs of recognition and acceptance, the one unquestionable indication that he was to have an assured place in the hall of British fame. He was invited to appear as a guest on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Desert Island Discs! At the end of the programme, he was asked the three ritual questions: first as to which piece of music he would take, if he could take one only; second which book he would take and third, which luxury he would like. (The luxury he wanted was a full-scale replica of the Oval cricket ground and, to the surprise of all listeners, he was allowed this). It is the choice of book which interests us for John Major selected, surprisingly, a novel by Trollope, The Small House at Allington.
Trollope has been a popular novelist during the present century and older members may recall the excellent serials made on BBC radio from the Trollope Barsetshire novels during the war years. Yet, there are always doubts about him. The Guardian columnist, Edward Pearce, remarked recently that Trollope is often the favourite writer of those who do not really like literature. Certainly, he is very readable and gives a credible picture of several strains of mid-Victorian society. The Small House at Allington is a pleasant enough
Ethical Record, May, 1994 3 love story but, if the castaway had read it once, he would soon find, on second reading, that the fall of the waves on the shore would lull him to sleep before he reached the end.
Political Views What is more relevant today is that Trol lope wrote a long novel called The Way We Live Now published in monthly parts beginning in 1874 and as a book in 1875. As the title suggests, Trol lope wanted to take a look at certain features of Victorian society. He was interested in politics but could not be called a profound political thinker. Despite the tone of the passage that has been quoted, he was no revolutionary. He greatly regretted the deepest divisions in society and wanted, as he once said, to do what he could, to bring the Duke and the dustman a little more closely together. He called himself a "conservative liberal" and, in case this title causes a wry smile, it has to be added that Gladstone still described himself thus after he had headed a nominally Liberal government.
Trollope always felt that "to sit in the British Parliament should be the highest object of ambition to every educated Englishman". He fought one campaign as liberal candidate for Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire, hated every minute of it and finished at the bottom of the poll. Among the features of electioneering that disgusted him was the amount of bribery that went on on both sides. He noted that "there was something grand in the scorn with which a leading Liberal turned up his nose at me when I told him that there should be no bribery, no treating, not even a pot of beer on our side". It was no consolation to him after the poll that his Liberal associates brought a petition against the victorious Tories and had them unseated for improper practices during the campaign. He did not play any part in this.
Commercial Profligacy of the Age Trollope wrote The Way We Live Now because he was struck by what he conceived to be the "commercial profligacy of the age". The central theme of the novel is thus corruption, of different kinds. There is a lady writer who tries her hardest to ensure success for her worthless books by seeking to persuade editors to see that they are given favourable reviews. There are various parents who do what they can to arrange marriages for their daughters, marriages that will see them launched financially and socially irrespective of any feelings they might or might not have for the young men who are chosen for them. There are idle and feckless young men, who spend all their time drinking and gambling.
Gradually, however, the central character of the novel, is seen to be a financier named Melmotte. It is this character who leaves the deepest impression, not so much for what he is but for what he does. He is immensly rich and in common with many rich men, in fact or fiction, it is never exactly clear where his wealth came from. He employs subsidiaries on a large scale, he entertains lavishly (the term "conspicuous consumption" was not in common use in Queen Victoria's time but it would have been appropriate) and he enters Parliament as member for Westminster.
However, he does not last long. Various nefarious schemes go wrong and rather than allow himself to be arrested, which it seems is imminent, he takes prussic acid. (It is not merely a coincindence that other writers of the time included very similar characters in their books: there is a great commercial and financial swindler named Merdle in Dicken's Little Dorrit, written in 1855 and George Eliot's Bulstrode in Middlemarch, who is, as it were, of the same family, had appeared only a couple of years before Melmotte). There is a wealth of fascinating and very convincing detail with which Trollope has presented the picture of the great swindler and if anyone wished to identify him with comparable figures in our own day, it would be hard to avoid the name Maxwell for one!
4 Ethical Record, May, 1994 Back to Basics It would be painful to go into details of the many comparisons that come to mind when we read of the sins and the excesses of the wealthy and powerful in those days of more than a century ago. When, however, it seems, as it has done repeatedly in the last few years, impossible to pick up a newspaper or to listen to a news bulletin without learning of corruption and various other forms of misconduct, financial or otherwise, in high places, we may be forgiven for thinking that, perhaps, things are not a great deal better than they were then. On the other hand, there is always a tendency to look back to some kind of golden age and to regret that we have somehow lost it. It is here that this strange catch-phrase "Back to Basics" crops up.
It is very difficult to be precise about the meaning of this apparently simple term. It is made no easier when glosses are added, or attempts at explanation. We learn from different sources that what is meant are "family values" or "Victorian values" or even "plain common-sense". We all think now and then that things are not as good as they were. As the poet put it, "There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away". On the whole, we think more often, in Dickens, of the fun and sentiment rather than the slums of Bleak House and the depravity of later novels, Little Darrit and Our Mutual Friend, for example. There is not much of a golden age in J.B. Priestley's pages in Victorian Heyday, where he writes of the period that "an hour spent in or around the Haymarket after midnight would have left any member of our own 'permissive society' speechless from shock. When, therefore, we talk 'glibly of "back to basics", the real question to be asked and answered is not "What do you mean by 'basics'?" but "How far do you want to go back?"
Falling Standards Tempting as the idea seems, it is no real use for opponents of the present government simply to spend time criticising the policies and practices of today. It is far more important to try to find what is meant by "basics", if the word is not to be interpreted simply as a longing for unspecified glories of a bygone age. Thus, for as long as any of us can remember, people concerned with education, whether as teachers, parents or otherwise, have deplored the fact that, as they think, standards have fallen drastically. A report by a number of large employers was quoted not so long ago which deplored the fact that children leaving school were incapable of making simple mathematical calculations or writing a correct English sentence. We all know this criticism. The report from which this quotation is taken, was issued in 1923!
We hear that children have no manners and dress untidily, to take two more general comments and criticisms. Again, they always have done, except when regimented, and only a minority would attempt to impose strict standards of dress, such as school uniforms, for example. As to writing a correct English sentence, it seems only necessary to refer to radio and television and the newspapers that complain about standards, to find that good writing is not always to be found in the media. We are often told, in a sonorous phrase, that children, and sometimes adults as well, must be taught the difference between right and wrong. Has anyone ever tried to teach anyone else this difference?
Let us recall the incident in Shaw's Major Barbara, which applies with just the same force as it did on the first appearance of the play in 1905. Undershaft, the munitions millionaire, is being asked to provide for his son and, as he had not seen the young man for some years, he subjects him to an interrogation on the things he might want to do with his life. The interview is unproductive and, finding that all his suggestions come to nothing, Undershaft asks Stephen whether there is anything he knows or cares for.
Ethical Record, May, 1994 5 Stephen looks at his father steadily and tells him: "I know the difference between right and wrong". Undershaft is hugely tickled and replies: You don't say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists; the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you're a genius, a master of masters, a god! At twentyfour, too!
It is hard to avoid a similar reaction when we are told that the teachers and others in charge of the young must teach them the difference between right and wrong. Of course, teachers as well as parents have responsibilities for the way in which children are brought up and their minds are moulded. In addition, there are other powerful formative influences being brought to bear upon the impressionable young, even in the air they breathe.
Forward to Basics As a matter of deliberate policy in the last decade or more, purely commercial considerations have been treated as of paramount importance. Making money has been seen to be the greatest good of society, even if the existence of such a thing as society has been called into question by the High Priestess of the doctrine. The most successful, the Melmottes of our own day, have been able to pay themselves very great rewards. The rest of the population have been warned to limit their own claims on national resources for fear of endangering economic success. Anyone who objects has been accused of talking Britain down. Members of the so-called "chattering classes" have been rebuked as if nobody does any chattering in City board-rooms or West End clubs. The press and other media have been chastised as if their proprietors and editors had not been rewarded in the past for their loyalty to the ruling faction and could be relied on for future support.
It follows that if "Back to Basics" has any value at all we must give up thought of a comparatively recent and, of course, mythical golden age that has been destroyed; it is of no use dreaming of small houses at Allington or elsewhere. It is no use dreaming of nuns cycling to communion in the morning mist (a strange image lifted by Mr Major from a sardonic passage by the Socialist, George Orwell). "Basics" must be interpreted to include conceptions of social conduct, not simply personal behaviour, which society, define it as we will, has never reached in the past. The whole pursuit of life itself, and in social organisation as well as elsewhere, must be reinterpreted as a quest for greater freedom and fairness in personal and social relationships. "Forward to Basics" would be a much better cry !
GOD AND THE BIG BANG
Hyman Frankel Lecture to the Ethical Society, 24 April 1994
I want to start with two quotations. The first is short and is from the great Isaac Newton, whose work fashioned our notion of the Universe for over two hundred years:
"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."
6 Ethical Record, May, 1994 The second is from the man who today, over three hundred years later, occupies the same professorship in Cambridge as Newton — Stephen Hawking:
"...if we do discover a complete theory (of the Universe), it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God."
As you will have noted, they express sentiments that are both similar and dissimilar. They are similar in that both men believe: that there is a God, that God created the Universe (although, as I shall explain later, Hawking has a mixed view on this), that they and their fellow-scientists believe they have found out pretty well how the Universe works, and that, as I shall also explain later, it was created out of nothing or out of chaos.
They are dissimilar in that, while Newton assumed God made the Universe according to the biblical account and that it is unchanging and in a state of equilibrium, Hawking and most other contemporary popularisers of modern cosmology believe it and, with it, time, began about twenty thousand million years ago from a point or out of nothing and that it has been expanding ever since, although they are uncertain as to whether it will continue to do so in the future. Also they are not sure about God's precise role in all this because, again unlike Newton, they believe there is a great uncertainty at the base of things. Both the similarities and dissimilarities are of the greatest importance in understanding the way physical science and scientists work and think and the sort of societies they live and work in.
Newton's Picture First, let me explain the two pictures, starting with Newton's. The great seventeenth- century scientist was an outstanding experimentalist and astronomical observer, as well as a great mathematician. In his master work, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and System of the World, he laid down the following fundamental beliefs and principles:
I. there is an absolute space and an absolute time existing independently of all the bodies moving in it; there are absolute motions; all bodies are either at rest or move in straight lines at constant speed, unless acted on by a force; it possesses 'inertia% the force acting on a body is equal to the mass of the body multiplied by its acceleration; every force acting on a body evokes an equal counter-force; matter, which is composed of tiny particles that are hard and impenetrable, is itself inert, that is to say, has no capacity to act on its own; • all bodies attract one another and this attraction tends to keep the matter of the Universe together; this gravitation acts mysteriously across empty space and must, therefore, somehow be connected with God; God probably intervenes from time to time to keep the system stable. • This point was controversial — some argued that gravity was a property of the material particles. [Ed]
Ethical Record, May, 1994 7 Putting all these together, we have a picture of an infinite Universe created by God in which bodies move according to the universal laws discovered by Newton. Matter being itself inert, the motions of bodies are the result of forces acting on them. Gravitation acts to prevent the Universe flying apart and, in spite of the separate movements of the stars and planets, produces the system's stability. There is a clear cosmic design, proving the existence of God.
Now, Newton drew up this picture, which others developed and embellished, not in isolation — even though he did shut himself off in the country to write his masterpiece, but in contact with his contemporaries in science, trade and commerce. Occupying, as he did from an early age — he was only twenty-six when he was appointed to the premier mathematical chair in England, together with his fame throughout the civilised world, his view of the mechanism of the known Universe both advanced and reflected the general outlook of his peers, especially the great and powerful merchants, with whom he mixed.
Adam Smith's View This view of the world paralleled, in fact, that of an equally famous economist a century later, who laid down the principles of the so-called 'free market' economy, the system that has been in operation in Britain more or less for the past five hundred years. I mean, of course, Adam Smith. In his classic work, The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote the following: "...the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men."
The duties of the King or Sovereign were merely to ensure that this was not interfered with and to provide the basic institutions for it. Smith then added:
"...every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it....he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention."
These passages show that Adam Smith saw society as consisting of independent individuals each pursuing his own path for his personal gain, with a minimal role for the State or Sovereign, yet somehow a 'hidden hand', as mysterious as gravitation, brought them together in an harmonious working whole. Like gravitation, the 'hidden hand' keeping the individual transactions together was a semi-religious conception, so that the system of merchant capitalism, like the physical Universe, came from and expressed the perfection of God. In Smith's picture the merchant capitalists — in Newton's Universe the physicists, were God's agents in unveiling this divine system.
One other point that I want to make about the Newtonian picture is that it was deterministic. By that it could be said that, if a super-intelligence knew all the positions and all the motions of all the particles in the whole cosmos, it could predict the future of the Universe for ever. Or, to bring it down to a single simple principle, determinism means that to every effect there is a cause and the same cause will produce the same effect. If the cause of an occurrence is known exactly, the consequence is, in principle, absolutely predictable.
8 Ethical Record, May, 1994 The Picture Dissolves Two things occurred at the end of the last century to dissolve Newton's picture; and the grand one to emerge was principally the work of Albert Einstein. Contrary to Newton, Einstein laid down that space (lengths, volumes and so on), time and motion were all relative to the motion of the observer. Take an everyday example to show what is meant by 'relative' — a passenger on a train passing through a station. To him or her, the station seems to be moving the opposite way, although in reality it is stationary relative to the ground.
Other conclusions from Einstein's theory were that matter was inseparable from space, that space was curved in the neighbourhood of matter, that space and time were interwoven (called space-time) and that gravitation was equivalent to the presence of matter in curved space-time. A year after he published his General Theory of Relativity, Einstein applied it to the whole Universe, rejected the idea that it was infinite in space and pictured it as like the surface of a sphere but in three dimensions with time as a fourth, that it was full of evenly-distributed matter and, as for Newton, that it was static and u ncha nging.
In short, Einstein depicted a Universe with the following characteristics: it was as fully deterministic as Newton's; that is to say, it followed exactly from Einstein's equations and, once the data were known, everything about it could in principle be predicted. Further, there was no such thing as absolute rest, bodies moved as straight as possible along their paths and events took place when they met. Gravitation kept the Universe, in which the matter was evenly distributed, together. So, except for the important interlocking of matter and space, his model Universe was similar to Newton's. Basic to it was a geometrical concept — space-time, so that it was rather more abstract than Newton's.
Was There a Big Bang? When some American astronomers found that the more distant galaxies seemed to be receding — and this seemed to be confirmed the more galaxies they studied, they argued that, if this were traced back sufficiently far in time, a point would be arrived at when all the matter in the Universe was compressed to a point of infinite density —technically known as a 'singularity'. It followed that there must have been an explosion of infinite power to start the expansion that is still continuing. This explosion was dubbed 'the Big Bang'.
A number of leading cosmologists, including Einstein himself, didn't care for this interpretation. Eddington, who had led the expedition confirming Einstein's prediction that the path of light passing near the Sun would be bent, and who was, between the wars, the foremost populariser of physics in the English language, had a different theory. There were, he pointed out, very many solutions to the Einstein equation for the Universe, including one that suggested that the Universe had been expanding for a very long time, but before that it had been contracting and so the Universe might have contracted to about one-tenth its present size before starting to expand. Such alternatives were, however, ignored; and the idea of the Big Bang caught on both among the cosmological elite and the public.
Now, an explosion gives off heat and matter; so that cosmologists argued that the Big Bang must have left traces behind — in particular, the remains of the heat given off, which they calculated would now be a "glow" at about three degrees above absolute zero. In 1957, two Americans found this cosmic background radiation, which is remarkably even
Ethical Record, May, 1994 9 everywhere at about 2.7 degrees above zero. This was hailed as unassailable proof of the Big Bang. The only big problem not solved to date is how the stars and galaxies were formed out of the dust and debris in the relatively short period — cosmologically short, that is, of several thousand million years after the Big Bang.
I must mention two more points. The first is the recent American-led expedition into space with new instruments that confirmed the smoothness of the radiation to very great distances in outer space. Showing the pattern to the international mcdia its leader, Smoot, made the much-quoted remark that it was as though he had looked on the face of God. The other is the explanation that the CBR could be the result of the endless energy pouring out from hot stars and galaxies in a Universe without beginning or end either in space or time. This alternative has received virtually no coverage in the media or the learned journals; and I'll come back to it later.
Three Alternatives There is one final scientific problem, called the 'missing matter' problem. The favoured solutions to the Einstein equations for the /.1 whole Universe come down broadly to three, which I show here. As you see, they all start et from the Big Bang at time zero. The first 4' expands very rapidly and continues to do so; the second expands swiftly at first, then slows down and continues to expand at the present NOte e rate; the third also slows down to a stop and starts to recontract.
During the seventies, the third model was favoured. and cosmologists wrote of the dire future of the Universe collapsing back to a fiery point. Over the past fifteen to twenty years, however, the second has taken precedence but to hold to that slow rate of expansion, the cosmos needs to have ten times the matter known to exist at present. So a search has been going on for the 'missing matter'; but it has so far eluded the most painstaking investigations.
Yet, if the scientific problems are hefty, even more are the philosophical. First is, of course, what brought about the Big Bang? Who or what provided the almost infinite energy? The superficially easy answer for believers is, of course, God. But, if one doesn't believe in a Deity, what then? One comes up against the problem of something out of nothing. Moreover, the Big Bang idea brings the inevitable question, what existed before it? The cosmologists answer, Nothing; there was neither time nor space. Those who are inclined to question the 'expert' view find this difficult to swallow; but the reply is that there is no alternative, although some voices, like that of the Russian, Linde, whisper that other universes may have existed before. The fact is that orthodox Big Bang theory drives many to a belief in divine creation. In fact, this alarms the present Pope, who recently advised cosmologists to desist from investigating what actually happened at the Big Bang itself, because Hawking's thought frightens him. After all, if they can actually unveil the mystery of Creation, what happens to the Church? Science will have replaced religion. In fact, the popular physics writer, Professor Paul Davies, has actually written that science is a surer way to God than religion!
However, that isn't the only problem facing Big Bang theory. Think of a point of infinite density spewing out all the matter in the cosmos — thousands of millions of
10 Ethical Record, May, 1994 galaxies each containing thousands of millions of stars; and all out of a point. Despite various attempts to get over this problem, the best they hint at is that perhaps it really didn't begin at a point. The point could be a few million miles across, but that is very tiny astronomically. Alternatively, Hawking suggests that the Universe may have been brought into being by a sudden and unexpected fluctuation. So, perhaps, God wasn't needed after all. But this is still a case of something out of nothing. As I previously remarked, arguments that perhaps there was never a Big Bang are ignored. The Swedish Nobel prizewinner, Hannes Alfvén, has had the courage to declare that the idea of a point of infinite density containing all the matter in the Universe is unscientific nonsense.
Reasons for the Upsurge of Mysticism Many books have recently been published arguing that science has shown the Universe to be divine, mystical and so on. Why has this happened? Recall what Newton wrote. This was after the English Revolution and the republican period of the I640s, coupled with the burst of mercantile activity which continued into the eighteenth century. The established Church was there to give divine support to the existing order.
There is a parallel situation today. The world today is almost entirely capitalist, the East European experiment in socialism having collapsed. Yet it is in a state of turmoil, with ever-increasing political, economic, social and environmental problems, to which there seems to be no overall solution — at least, not within the context of continuing capitalism. Concerned people either narrow their vision and try to tackle particular problems about which they are most concerned, such as poverty, health, education or the environment, arguing that with the collapse of Stalinism, the socialist vision has disappeared. Or they retreat altogether into a personal world. Those who are unconcerned live for themselves. It is, therefore, not surprising that we are witnessing an upsurge of mysticism.
Karl Marx wrote that religion was both an expression of the misery of the world and a protest against that misery. Where it is but an expression of that misery, it is of little avail and usually ends up with mere religious worship, prayer and the promise of a reward for that suffering in an afterworld. In the hands of our ruling elites, it becomes a justification for continuing misery because, they say, that is the way the world was made: man was given freewill and our travails are its result, just as Norman Lamont, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that unemployment was a price `we' (not he, of course) had to pay for keeping inflation down. How does this link up with the theory of the Big Bang?
Well, on Big Bang theory there was a beginning to the Universe, and, if that required a Creator, so be it. But it is wholly rational, according to rules discovered by the experts, which is just what our ruling class would wish us to believe; so that it can be left safely in their hands. If the market isn't 'bucked' — again an expression of Mrs. Thatcher's, meaning that it should not be interfered with, all will be well. This is similar to the idea that the Universe, once begun, will, if left to itself, continue expanding and, provided we can find the `missing matter', which is different from the stuff we have now, it will stabilise itself. Finally, the Universe is describable wholly in quantitative, mathematical terms, just as the capitalists reduce everything to balance sheets, profit and loss, sums of money.
On the other hand, unlike the situation three hundred years ago, when the system was beginning, the world doesn't seem to be working quite so rationally as they hoped; and its origin is now shrouded in mystery, although God knows perfectly well and may one day reveal his plan. Here quantum theory, with its basis in probability waves, uncertainty and unpredictability, helps. This is turned into a new mysticism, that the Universe is really mysterious, ruled by spirit and we must live with the apparent uncertainty and
Ethical Record, May, 1994 Il irrationality. That is the way the ruling class wish us to see the world; and that is how Big Bang theory with its quantum addition reflects it.
However, some of us believe that 'God' is a human creation, that it is impossible to know the Universe, which is infinite in space and time and endlessly complex, because to do so one would have to stand outside it; and that is impossible. Just the same, one can say some things about it. It may be expanding, but that is only one aspect of it and, in any case, this may be the case only of part of it and only of the epoch we happen to be living in. Again, a quantitative description in terms of pure quantity, of mathematics, is only a particular aspect of the cosmos. It also contains quality, change and turmoil, colour and life — mostly outside the realm of physics. To trace back its past over twenty thousand million years and its future over an even longer period, as though all this can be reduced to purely. mathematical extrapolations, is the height of unscientific presumption.
Cosmologists who believe in God take, therefore, one of two lines of thought. Some, like Hawking, claim they are soon likely to know the mind of God, which is really their own minds. Others, like Paul Davies, following Kant, admit there is a limit to science, which cannot answer such questions as why does the Universe exist. Beyond this limit, he says, lies the field of religion, of mysticism, which Davies has adopted. But this is merely giving a mythical title to either ignorance or unanswerable questions.
Counteracting the Mystics. There is, however, Marx's second explanation of religion — as a protest against the misery faced by people. And very many non-believers like myself feel closer to those priests and believers, particularly in Central and South America but here in Britain also, who see their religion in terms of a battle against oppression, rather than with non- believers who care for nothing but their own comfort. So it is necessary to counteract the mystics who use modern physics to put over the view Jhat we should go with the spirit that supposedly rules the world and just withdraw from its problems. But it does mean that we non-believers have something in common with some believers, but not with those who say it is just God's will and we have to accept it.
The cosmologists of whom I have spoken have curious and contradictory attitudes to the world, illustrating the truth of a dialectical view of things. Hawking, to his great credit, supports many politically radical causes. Davies attacks Thatcherism's devas- tation of our educational system and denies he is advocating a philosophy of acceptance and submission. This is good; and one must hope that they will cease to propagate a still unproven and, to many critics, false cosmological fantasy, which gives those who are responsible for the world's problems an excuse for carrying on.
Christopher Caudwell: The Crisis in Physics (1938); F. Capra: The Tao of Physics (1975); P. Davies: The Mind of God (1992); F. Engels: Anli-Diihring. Introduction; F. Engels: The Dialectics of Nature: Introduction; S. Hawking: A Brief History of Time (1988); B. Hessen: The Roots of Newton's Principia (1931); D. Layzer: Cosmogenesis; Eric Lerner: The Big Bang Never Happened (1992); I. Newton: Principia, Vol.II, The System of the World, General Scholium; F. Pirani: Cosmology for Beginners (1993); R.C. Tolman: Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology (1934) ch. X, pt.I V.; Yourgrau & Beck teds.): Cosmology, History and Theology: articles by Alfven and Vigier.
Note: Reader's views on the extent of the influence of society on science would be welcome. [Ed.]
12 Ethical Record, May, 1994 PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY MY WORK AS A THERAPIST
Marion Granville Summary of a Lecture to the Ethical Society, 17 April 1994
Grief and misery change people — they are reluctant to complain indefinitely to their friends and relations but they want to find their old selves again and hope that a counsellor will enable them to do that. Student therapists starting out look for a system which will be user-friendly for them, but it is not an easy task. The library shelves groan with fascinating volumes which tell how the great theorists treat patients, and a beginner has to choose the systems which most closely fits his own outlook.
The Appeal of PCP 1 didn't think it would be possible for me to practise using the methods of any of the major psychiatrists and counselling practitioners, but help arrived through an article in the Guardian some time around 1970 when I was a mature student of psychology at teacher training college. It was about an American psychologist who had evolved a method of psychotherapy which treated clients as individuals rather than as examples of psycho- logical problems. His name was George Kelly and it read as if his Theory of Personal Constructs made an excellent shot at explaining how human beings manage to make their own sense of the world.
The first appeal of the Psychology of Personal Constructs is the centrality of the person. It is the client's theories about the world which are being studied, rather than the system's theories about the client. The second appealing thing — it seems the essence of politeness to me — is the way George Kelly outlines his own philosophical position so that readers know something about the person who conceived the system. The philosophy, called Construct Alternativism, maintains that the phenomena of the universe are so many that each person can only pay attention to a minute proportion of the myriad events of each moment. To quote Kelly, "...each man contemplates in his own personal way the stream of events upon which he finds himself so swiftly borne".
Man the Scientist Kelly stressed the notion of man the scientist, "Might not the individual man, each in his own personal way, assume more of the stature of a scientist, ever seeking to predict and control the course of events with which he is involved"? Further, persons cope with life by making hypotheses, testing them out and, if necessary, modifying their behaviour.., the scientific method. For instance, if you are a child who likes pulling hair it will probably become evident that it is more prudent to choose little girls, even if they offer only thin, scrawny pigtails to the grasp, rather than attacking the thick plaits of lofty, glossy-haired beings who will fly swat you without breaking stride.
Kelly's philosophy also presumes that the universe really exists and that mankind is gradually coming to understand it. We do this by seeing, or finding, patterns which we attempt to fit over the realities of which the world is composed. The sun seems to rise every morning albeit in a different place and at a different time each day. Being clever creatures, men and women have noted that these happenings are cyclic and, over millenia, have worked out explanations which have enabled them to predict recurrences.
Forming Constructs Such repetitions of patterns form guidelines which help us to predict more domestic
Ethical Record, May. 1994 13 happenings and enable us to plan our actions. These patterns Kelly called constructs. No two people experience exactly the same events, and therefore their constructions of the universe will be different. Furthermore, just as different people live in different worlds, so any individuals can re-construe the world they experience and step into a different universe without the need for a spaceship. Although changing oneself sometimes seems to take more time and effort than building a spaceship!
Kelly advises, "Counselling is a situation where one person helps another to achieve a psychological reconstruction of life. There are always some alternative constructs available — no-one needs to paint himself into a corner; no-one needs to be the victim of his biography". He recommends that a therapist should metaphorically stand in a client's shoes and see the world, in part, as he sees it.
Counselling The therapist's professional experience is to be able to look for ways of change which will not threaten the client's core constructs. To accept what she says about herself and her world is the only useful starting point. Usually, after the first session with a client, a counsellor will make a note of the theme in the account of his problem, clues as to how he anticipates events and outcomes, his ways of moving, sitting and responding.
All this is the preparation for attempting to see the world as the client experiences it; to set aside one's emotional meanings for ordinary words: home, partner, garden, job, friend, and try to find what words are deeply significant for the client and what are the implications of the meanings they hold. One of the aspects of Personal Construct Psychology which is most helpful in this task is the repertoire of methods for eliciting the client's constructs and sorting out in which particular areas it is possible to help to bring about beneficial change.
Self - Characterisation It is useful to ask a new client to write a self-characterisation and bring it along to the first session. The instructions for doing this are: "I want you to write a character sketch of Simon Green, just as if he were the principal character in a play. Write it as it might be written by a friend who knew him very intimately and very sympathetically, perhaps better than anyone ever really could know him. Be sure to write it in the third person. For example, start out by saying 'Simon Green is ...' "
Sometimes people write a lot. The example Kelly uses in the first volume of The Psychology of Personal Constructs is almost eight hundred words but others find it extremely hard to get going at all. Here is a very short example:
"Simon is a cheerful person who is comfortable with the way life has treated him even though a biographical outline would include not a few difficult experiences. Probably having come through the sad events gives him a sense of achievement — or maybe it is the feeling of having learned something which accounts for that"?
, When asked what sort of person is the opposite of a cheerful one, Simon provided "miserable", ... a construct, in fact:The construct is not the words which we use to refer to it but the process of the individual who uses it, either consciously or not. The labelling words are not an either-or discrimination but a continuum, so that, eventually, a person can say where, on a scale of I to 7 a friend or relative is placed when 1 means 'cheerful', and 7 means 'miserable'.
14 Ethical Record, May, 1994 More of Simon's constructs emerge: cheerful — miserable comfortable with life resentful difficult experiences smooth passage through life come through sad events — trapped in problems having sense of achievement unchanged
Loosening and Tightening One of the techniques for finding the pathways for possible change is a process called Loosening and Tightening. To loosen one's construing one chooses a construct and says all the things it brings to mind. Simon used "comfortable in life" and produced a list of related words:— like a sofa; fitting in everywhere; not under stress right now; easy with people; not worried about things; relaxed attitude; going nowhere; stagnant; no progress; boring. The exercise shows a move from cheerful words to less positive ones, which may indicate that he is reluctant to admit that he sees himself in darker terms.
Where a client finds it difficult to express a coherent problem, or even to put into words his constructs, then the emphasis will be on defining and tightening concepts. Tightening is what I have had to do to squeeze the essentials of Personal Construct Psychology into 45 minutes!
Another, rather similar, helpful exercise is called the CPC Cycle — it involves circumspection, pre-emption and choice. When clients are indecisive about everything this way of thinking can be useful in finding what they want. A relevant construct is chosen and the client turns a gaze upon it with the mind, as it were, out of gear.
Francis and the Options Francis wanted to change but could not decide on any particular sort of change so he relaxed and proffered:— moving house, vocational adjustment, different friends, different work, different woman, religious change, dye hair, grow a beard, different style of clothes, learn to fly a helicopter, go to the theatre often, leave the country.
Reading back the list he immediately pre-empted "vocational change" as the important area and went on to talk at length about how he was fed up with his work and had wanted to move on for ages — all of which had been pushed into the back of his mind because of lack of confidence. His choice was to investigate the job possibilities in his field and survey his resources for making a move.
It is often useful to define an aim during a first session with a therapist, and say, for example, "Let's look at your difficulties at work, initially for four sessions, and then review the situation". A diagnosis may very well change before the four sessions are over and a new layer of problem raise its head.
No Magic Spell Some clients are interested in PCP and want to know something about the theory, others show no interest as long as they can see that the approach is making them see things slightly differently and feel a little better. Some people come to a therapist hoping for a magic spell which, when spoken, will turn their near and dear into ideal characters, and then all will be happiness. A few of these go away when they realise that self-change is what is on offer, but not what they want. Some persevere and find that when they have shifted their viewpoint, other people change in response to it.
Ethical Record, May, 1994 15 One aspect especially interesting to members of this Society is that George Kelly was a church-going christian, yet this is not detectable from the two volumes in which he set out his philosophy and his system of psychology, nor does it appear in the index to the review of publications on PCP published last year.
Let us end on an humorous note: Q. How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? A. Only one, but the lightbulb has really to want to change!
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE AND "MODERNISM"
John Good Lecture to the Ethical Society, 17 April 1994
Baudelaire is generally rated in Europe among the greatest if not the very greatest 19th century poet and the most internationally influential. His influence is still great both as poet and critic. No English language poet, not even T.S. Eliot, has done so much to direct literature in general and especially poetry towards themes which are urban, metropolitan and modern, i.e. "modernist".
Importance of Baudelaire He reflects a shift in sensibility from the opposite poles of romanticism and classicism in . literature to a use of metaphor and imagery which, through symbolism, led eventually to the "modernist" movement. Post-modernism, which we hear much about these days, may signal the end of the era that most obviously began with Baudelaire.
Apart from being an influential critic of painting, music and literature, Baudelaire was the poet of Paris, of the city, of the everyday city, the banal, the industrial, the commercial; also of the excluded, the poor and the old, as well as of the bohemian life we now associate with the Latin Quarter and its imitations in other countries.
Although that way of life in Paris has fallen prey to a kind of "chic", partly through the fame of books and plays by Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, one can still catch glimpses of that life today. As it was in the 19th century, at the time of Henri Murger's "Scenes de la vie de Boheme", there is a suggestion in Edouard Manet's "La Musique aux Tuileries" at the London National Gallery. Manet, a friend of Baudelaire, was one of the founders of what came to be called "Impressionism" — Baudelaire is one of the people in the painting.
The Poetry As poetry, Robert Frost the American poet remarked, is strictly speaking untranslatable, most of us are affected only indirectly by foreign language poetry and by foreign prose. It is through the poetry of T.S. Eliot and the prose of James Joyce that French writers like Baudelaire and Flaubert influence our taste. Nowadays the BBC and newspaper journalists can apply Victor Hugo's description of Baudelaire's poetry as a "frisson nouveau" to other subjects. It is still true that the first shock of reading some of the poems in Baudelai re's "Les Fleurs du Mal", especially perhaps in the section entitled "Tableaux Parisiens", is disturbing even today.
The "Fourmillante cite, cite pleine de reves/Ofi le spectre en plein jour accroche le passant" and the images in "Le Cygne" of a swan lost-in the midst of the squalor and noise
16 Ethical Record, May, 1994 of Paris disrupted by the massive rebuilding under Baron Haussmann and the driving of the great boulevards through the ancient network of old Paris, remind us of the destruction of our own cities in the 1960s and the sense of urban alienation which Eliot expressed in "The Waste Land".
T.S. Eliot In that poem Eliot used words taken directly from the introductory poem of "Les Fleurs du Mal"; "Hypocrite lecteur! — mon semblable, mon frere!" A Baudelairean line borrowed from Verlaine is also used by Eliot, "0 ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole", to contrast ironically with the noise and squalor of London. Indeed, it is something of a shock in itself to come across images, and even entire lines, from Baudelaire or other French poets influenced by him, years after having first read them in the best known of the earliest English language "modernists" in the slim volume the "Selected Poems" by T.S. Eliot. It is equally startling to discover that the other source of Anglophone and international "modernism", James Joyce, owed so much to Gustave Flaubert, the contemporary of Baudelaire who, like Baudelaire, was hauled before the courts for offences against public morality in his writings.
Painting and Music However, Baudelaire's influence went wider. In painting he was the friend and advocate of Delacroix, Courbet and Manet and the first generation of Impressionists. He defended the musical revolution of Wagner and was among the first to welcome his works in France. Yet it was for good or ill Baudelaire who most obviously set in motion the modernist revolt-reaction against 19th century bourgois materialist "scientism". He had his roots in French romanticism led by Victor Hugo and Hector Berlioz and in time he became the opponent of the contrary movement of classicist "Parnassianism"; but he opposed even more vehemently the school of "Naturalism" represented by Emile Zola.
Perhaps the great capitalist upsurge of economic development and social change in the reign of Louis Napoleon, nephew of the great Bonaparte, and the growth of a kind of dissident urban outside class or underclass explain Baudelaire's opposition to what in England Matthew Arnold called "middle class philistinism". Arnold was much influenced by French aestheticism and he was probably the most significant Victorian critic.
Sartre and Poe What Jean Paul Sartre in the 20th century saw as Baudelaire's reactionary philosophy, the mixture of "nostalgie de la boue" and aspiration .towards a lost paradise, which Baudelaire in his poetry called "anywhere out of this world", may have sprung from what English speaking people consider minor poetry, that of Edgar Allan Poe, which enjoyed great prestige in France. Baudelaire translated Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" and his views owed something to Poe's critical writing, for example Poe's argument that aesthetic pleasure could be derived from what Eliot called "the boredom, the horror and the glory" of life.
In "Les Phares", a poem which is a concentrated critique of some great painters, Rubens, da Vinci, Michaelangelo and others, Baudelaire sees Rembrandt as a: "triste hôpital tout rempli de murmures, Et d'un grand crucifix &core seulement, oil la priere in pleurs s'exhale des ordures, Et qu'un rayon d'hiver traverse brusquement".2 In that poem and others, Baudelaire expresses the "horror and the boredom"; "ennui" is
Ethical Record, May, 1994 17 his word for it, but he also suggests the "glory" that Eliot linked with the boredom and horror.
Graham Greene An English writer who chose to live largely in France, Graham Greene, a writer with a religious sensibility, wrote in "Brighton Rock" and many other books obsessively of a kind of counterbalancing Heaven and Hell, a sort of Satanism. In "The Quiet American", "The Power and the Glory" and "A Burnt Out Case", Greene expressed admiration for the enemies of his Catholic religion. He described Ho Chi Minh, for example, as someone who was "As pure as Lucifer". Baudelaire powerfully conveyed that species of Satanism one finds in some religious writers. Sartre analysed it unsparingly.
Symbolism The "poetes maudits" are the successors of Baudelaire. Rimbaud is the most important of them, although he wrote no poetry after the age of twenty — in fact he became a trader in Africa. It was Rimbaud who carried out, between the age of sixteen and nineteen, the Baudelairean programme of becoming a "voyant" through what this extraordinary boy called "un long et savant et systematique dereglement de tous les sens"3. Then until he died aged 37, he was an arms dealer, even gun-runner. His poetry and that of Paul Verlaine, another Baudelairean, were the main inspiration of the "Symbolist" movement in France which eventually transformed poetry in English, mainly through the poetry of T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats.
Eliot cited Laforgue, another Symbolist poet who died in his twenties as a direct influence. However, it was Baudelaire's unblinking vision of the street and cafe and artistic life of Paris, with its splendours and miseries, which began the revolution. As Baudelaire said, "tu m'as donne de la boue et j'en ai fait de l' or°.
swarming city, city filled with dreams, where the spectre in broad daylight grabs the passer-by. sad hospital, completely filled with murmurs, And decorated only by a great crucifix, Where prayer exhales itself in tears from garbage, And which a winter's ray suddenly traverses. a long and systematic disordering of all the senses you gave me mud and out of it I made gold
VIEWPOINTS
Friends who will not abandon God With reference to David McDonagh's letter in April Ethical Record, I have to admit that amongst quite a large number of doctrinally religious friends, only one is born-again with a passionate devotion to the Bible as being literally true in every word. However, although the others are prepared to question, (often at my prodding!) and indeed to jettison, many of the tenets of their respective beliefs, they will not abandon 'God'. The 'Creator' concept more than any other, seems to lend itself to the 'exact copy' programming claimed by Richard Dawkins. Also unfortunately, despite Mr. Dawkins' outstanding The Blind Watchmaker, I am unable to give these friends entirely satisfactory explanations of certain aspects of the evolutionary process. They prefer the imponderables of an emotion- stirring Almighty. Vivien Gibson — Ealing, W5
18 Ethical Record, May, 1994 Meet Robin Squire, MP The Havering and District Humanist Society have invited Robin Squire, the Under- secretary of State with the Department of Education, as speaker at their meeting on Friday 5th August. Robin Squire is M.P. for Hornchurch which is in the London Borough of Havering. Robin will speak on his work with the Department. The meeting will start at 8.00 pm and will be at HOPWA House, Inskip Drive, Hornchurch. Anyone who wishes to attend will be welcome. D. Baker, Hornchurch
Photos and Pictures It was good to see an illustration used in the March edition of Ethical Record. I would welcome a photo of the author of each article to help get to know who's who within the society. Such a photo could be at the end with a related illustration at the beginning. Bob Stuckey — London NI
Greetings, fellow Humanists, from across the broad, deep seas. I am an enthusiastic, active member of one of the oldest existent Humanist movements —The Positivists. Our founder and mentor, Augusto Comte, in the mid 1800s, established the Positivist movement with the institution of the Humanist Church (Paris). Brazilian medical students (studying principally in Brussels and Paris) upon their return to Brazil, in the late 1800s, fostered and seeded the fundamentals of Positivism in Brazil. In the 1880s and 1890s, Positivists, principally T. Mendes and Benjamin Constant, enjoyed considerable political influence resulting in the banishment of the Portuguese/ Brazilian King, Pedro II — bringing about the declaration of an independent Brazilian Republic. Positivism-Republicanism, mildly emulating the American political scence, enjoyed a brief period of popularity particularly among instructors of math and biological sciences. However, during the 1920s and 1930s, severe political and ideological setbacks took place putting the movement into serious decline. Present day membership, principally in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre and Curitiba, numbers less than 500 nominal members — less than 100 active members actually abound. At a 1990 (our most recent) symposium in Curitiba, 50 attendees (about 50% novice, new contacts) participated. General apathy, the power of the protestant as well as the catholic church, and age advancement of members have all, sadly contributed to our decimation. The majority of our current members are either sons of Positivists or ex-students of Positivist teachers — scattered about Brazil rather randomly. A significant ex-jewish membership persists as many Jewish-Catholic marriages resulted in religious quandry and many were hasty adherents in face of the Gertulio Vargas Nationalist-Integralist anti-semitism of the 1930s. 1940s. Members are medical doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers (90%). I am an Irish-American Positivist, living in Curitiba, married to a Paulista Brazilian wife, Suefi. Due to the decline of our patron David Carneiro Jr. (and family) it is my interest to see to it that our Positivist-Humanist community survives and proliferates. To that end, I have written your offices in an effort to bridge the adverse times, opening new contacts, seeking methods of stronger alliances with world-wide Humanists — wherever they be. Specifically, as a writer of novels and short stories, as well as philosophical inquiries, I would be greatly interested in receiving sample copies of your publications for our library-reading room. We are currently making final plans to launch our own Portuguese language, Humanist periodical and seek advice/orientation from friendly quarters. Please note that I am already in contact with Paul Kurtz (Buffalo) and Matt Cherry (Utrecht). I would very much appreciate receiving contributions of articles suitable for
Daical Record, May, 1994 19 our, new, yet unnamed publication (possibly The Brazilian Ethical Humanist and Progressive Positivist, in Portuguese, of course). We look forward to hearing from you, receiving your comments and considerations.
Jerry W. Hardin October 15 — April 15 April 16 — October 14 Apt. 183 3311 Laurel Ridge Road Rua Benjamin Constant 551 Blairsville, Georgia, Curitiba, Parana, Brazil 80060-020 30512, USA
FRANK AMBROSE RIDLEY, 1897-1994 Frank Ridley was brought up by his adoptive parents in a middle-class family where the Bible was rigidly and dogmatically followed. After attending Salisbury Theological College he became a licentiate of theology at Durham University. He rebelled against such stifling orthodoxy, broke with the Church and came to London, where a brief experience of business in the City influenced his transition to socialism.
His theological and historical studies came to fruition in such classics asJulian the Apostate, The Papacy and Fascism, The Jesuits, and The Assassins, all published in 1937 or 1938. He made a pioneering analysis of the totalitarian alliance between the Vatican and Fascism, and his Marxian perspective freshly illuminated Islamic traditions of terror and assassination. Today these studies still seem relevant in the light of a rising tide of neo-Fascism and opportunities for the spread of Roman Catholicism in a post-Stalinist Europe.
Similarly, he was a pioneer advocate of a Fourth International years before Trotsky, who denounced him, belatedly proposed one. Ridley led me to understand that he himself helped to make the Independent Labour Party a revolutionary party by 1946. But during the Cold War era it clearly was not easy, with slender resources, to develop a third force based on international socialism as Ridley would have wished. With many ILP members being Christians and many NSS members appearing to be Tory sympathisers, his mission seemed to be to try to make secularism more socialistic and grassroots socialism more scientific. HisRevolutionary Tradition in England (1947) remains one of his finest books, authoritative and eminently readable. He was undoubtedly the most revolutionary and socialist President the National Secular Society ever had; and he was also the most scholarly. As both editor of the Freethinker and President of the NSS between 1951 and 1954, he was instrumental in reviving and perhaps to some extent reorienting the NSS after the ravages of the Second World War. He retired as NSS President in 1963, after 12 years. During three decades until the 1970s he wrote about a thousand articles for the Freethinker. For some six decades; from August 1925 onwards, he held sway as a stimulating lecturer, debater and orator on any number of political and religious issues. To my knowledge, he published his last freethought pamphlet when he was nearly 90. Like many freethinkers and socialists, he was a staunch republican and also much concerned about the dangers of a nuclear holocaust. Nor should we forget his long- standing opposition to imperialism and colonialism and his association with veterans in that struggle. He had no children, but in newly independent Zimbabwe a black child was
20 Ethical Record, May, 1994 named after him.
His place of honour in the history of the twentieth century British freethought and socialist movements is assured. A colourful personality and an inspiring teacher in the noblest tradition of popular culture, he led an eventful and richly creative life. He had many friends, and those of us who were privileged to know him will always remember him with affection, pride and gratitude. His brilliant conversation often sparkled with wit, humour, spontaneous insights and scholarly allusions. He was warm-hearted, humane, modest, open and stoical in manner. Their name is legion — myself included — who owe him a great debt in their attempts to understand the world and to help change it. May we prove worthy of him. Martin Page
The Green Machine (1926), a science fiction novel; Mussolini over Africa (1935); A tthe Crossroads of History (1935); Next Year's War (1936); Juliqn the Apostate (1937); The Papacy and Facism (1948); The Assassins (1938); The Jesuits (1938); The Revolutionary Tradition in England (1948); Spartacus (1962).
The above was one of the addresses delivered at Frank Ridley's secular funeral on 1 Ith April. A memorial meeting will be held in the Library, Conway Hall, on 29th May 1994.
"I have as my ideal the life of Jesus" (From the boyhood diary of Richard M. Nixon)
WHY I DO NOT CALL MYSELF AN ATHEIST
Prof. Sir Hermann Bondi, F.R.S.
Summary of a Lecture to the Ethical Society, I May 1994
In the course of a description of my overall outlook it will become clear why I regard the dividing line between believers and non-believers to be much more dependent on their position in relation to alleged revelations than vis-a-vis an otherwise ill-defined concept of 'god'.
An Attitude of Awe 1 would like to start at a rather basic level of attitudes to all we see around us. This is an attitude of awe, of wonder and of mystery. I have constantly the strongest awareness of how pitifully little we scientists have yet managed to account for or even describe satisfactorily. I am terribly unimpressed by the views of some of those who suggest that when we have understood the Big Bang or, in another field, the quark, then really the Universe will be all ours. I regard this as totally mistaken. For me, science is the endless frontier; science is always trying to advance outwards to new territories. The whole history of science is to me an attempt to get to grips with a growing volume of knowledge that arises because of the improvements technology makes in our instrumentation and experimentation. As long as technology advances, science will surely always, find new challenges, new things to account for. Any idea of exhaustion of material is utterly abhorrent to me. Nor is there anything special about the origin of the Universe or the nature of high energy particles in physics. There is to me just as much challenge to science
Ethical Record, May, 1994 21 in accounting for complexities as there is for individual or so-called fundamental items. I am as struck by a we and wonder in geology as in astronomy, in looking at the simplest forms of life or at the most complex forms of ecology.
I hope I have indicated enough to show that in my respect for the unknown, in my belief that we have not mastered all that much so far, I am not very different from religious persons. It is after this, however, that various stages arise with some of which I feel very much in conflict.
An Anti-Revelationist Viewpoint The first level that arises after this, as we penetrate to more religious views, is the idea of God as the architect of the Universe, the idea that it is perhaps more comfortable to believe that the Universe had an architect Somebody whom we all respect who held such a view was Einstein. However, his God who is responsible for the Universe is, in his own description, in no sense a personal God, not a God who takes the slightest interest in the misdeeds of us humans, not a God who is any way interested in our prayer. One stage further come people who have, as it were, a feeling that there is a Supreme Being in existence who is concerned about them, who does listen to prayer but a Being about whom they have no knowledge in any tangible way; their beliefs are based on their feeling. I n having that feeling of course their ability to communicate it is of necessity somewhat limited.
It is at the next stage of religiosity that I find my path diverges so strongly and so completely from those of believers and this is the step that is best referred to as revelation: the supposed way in which knowledge of God comes to people. I am a total disbeliever in any form of revelation and indeed I find it something worrying and disturbing in its influence on people. I regard this as the crux of the matter and I am worried if people suggest that the feelings of awe, wonder and mystery, in which I so fully share, are in any way an excuse for or lead to or compel a belief in revelation. It is at precisely this point that my disbelief arises and nowhere else.
When people ask me whether I am an atheist, I say that I cannot answer this question without a definition of God. To disbelieve in a Supreme Being gives it just about as much shape and content as to believe in it. If people tell me, a some do, that God is nature, I certainly do not believe in nature. If people tell me that God is love, I certainly do not disbelieve in love. Tell me who your God is and then, and only then, can I say whether I disbelieve. If it is a God who has revealed himself and you firmly believe in that revelation, then my disbelief sets in. It is as an anti-revelationist, rather than as an atheist, that I would wish to be known.
Why this strong dislike of revelation? It is here, and perhaps only here, that my humanism and my science meet and merge. What we all know as humans, what is so strong in science (where I am very much a follower of the philosophy of Karl Popper), is that all knowledge is provisional, liable to be revised — nothing has any great certainty in it. Science in particular is that which is always liable to be overturned, to be disproved, which makes it inevitably purely provisional. There is always room in science, as there is in, life, for doubt, for uncertainty, for being ready to revise. Yet it appears to me that believers in the various revealed religions have an iron, a firm, an absolute belief in their revelation. Indeed, if this revelation is as singular and important as they claim, they could hardly do otherwise. Over-great certainty is always a danger in human affairs, whether the belief is in Christ's or Karl Marx's or Mohammed's revelation. It is such beliefs of utter certainty that have led people to commit the most awful crimes. To take a small example:
22 Ethical Record. May, 1994 the people who so fiendishly burned old women as witches would never have been allowed to do such a cruel and beastly thing had it not been thought that they were commanded by Holy Scripture to act in this manner. It is not relevant to my argument that Holy Scripture has since been interpreted differently. What is relevant is that it is faith that made people do such things.
Again, we know surely that there are numerous religions in the world that in many important aspects contradict each other; and yet they each have believers of the greatest sincerity, the highest intelligence and the most complete and unquestioning faith. At most one of them can be right and it is therefore evident that it is a defect of the human make-up that we are liable to form views of such certainty that we are liable to believe with sincerity and assurance that which is wrong. The humility that one may always be wrong comes to us from life and from science. Revealed religion, however, with its demand for firm faith, flies in the face of our knowledge of what humans are liable to get right and what they are liable to get wrong and is most dangerous. It is not in any contradiction between what his religion says and what physics says that I see any difficulty for a scientist to be a firm believer in a revealed religion. It is in the difference between the uncertain nature of scientific knowledge, which experience has often so much taught us is always only provisional knowledge, and the unquestioning blindness of faith that I see the contradiction, one which it is for our believing colleagues to get over far more than any supposed conflict of evidence.
Goodness and Intelligence Some further comments may be in place. We humanists are sometimes accused of over-estimating the goodness and the intelligence of our species. I do not think we over-estimate this. We have to take ourselves as we are. To know our imperfections is certainly chastening but, since we are the measure of all things, we have got to use this measure with all its faults. Moreover, I do think that we have pretty powerful social instincts, not perhaps as strong as I would ideally like them to be, but they are there. So much indeed of the beastliness of man to man in the pages of history was caused by faith in a revelation, by a degree of certainty that is just not possible for us humans. Religious wars with their appalling suffering, religious intolerance which is so strong even today, all these follow from the evil certainty, whether this expresses itself in wanting to slay the infidels or in opposing contraception or in supporting denominational schooling, which divides children and puts one group against the other.
We humanists do not form a church and we do not have a dogma. There are many issues of social policy, of practical politics and of attitudes where we differ from each other. What holds us together is that we believe in the legitimacy of rational argument and the illegitimacy of referring to the authority of a revelation. We recognise the existence of a human craving for certainty, which is fulfilled by many religions, but regard this as one of the less desirable traits of human beings, just as we all think of greed as one of the less desirable traits. As a person, I know that I must live with uncertainty. I do this gladly and cheerfully but I am worried about those who are too sure by half [Part of this lecture was first published in the journal Physics Educalion 1987]
Stoic motto: Reason unites, Faith divides.
Ethical Record, May, 1994 23 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall Humanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1 Tel: 071-831 7723 MAY 1994 Sunday 15 11.00 am OBJECTIVITY IN MORALS. Peter Heales contrasts subjectivist and relativist approaches to morals with attempts to be more 'scientific'. He asks how far personal moral decisions can be based on open, objective principles.
3.00 pm THE BURMA ACTION GROUP. Zunetta Liddell, anthropologist, consultant to the U.N. and Amnesty International, illustrates the current situation in Burma. Sunday 22 11.00 am THE WELFARE OF IMMIGRANTS. Claude Moraes, the Director of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, examines the current situation.
3.00 pm SCHINDLER. HUMANIST WITH A SWASTIKA. Jane Judelson discusses the Schindler phenomenon with the aid of a video. Sunday 29 11.00 am FOUR-IN-ONE — THE NEW HUMANIST CENTRE. Barbara Smoker, President of the National Secular Society, considers the opportunity presented by its new acquisition, Bradlaugh House.
3.00 pm FRANK AMBROSE RIDLEY MEMORIAL MEETING All welcome. JUNE 1994 Sunday 5 11.00 am SITUATIONAL INFLUENCES ON ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR. Peter Connelly.
3.00 pm ASPECTS OF IRISH LITERATURE. Maurice Good reads from Synge and Beckett, but mainly from W.B. Yeats, to illustrate themes in Irish literature. Sunday 12 11.00 am CAN FEMINISTS BE CHRISTIANS? asks Katie Walsh, a researcher at the London School of Economics.
3.00 pm FOUR LADIES OF SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL. Brenda Colloms recounts the activities of Ellen Flower, Sarah Flower Adams, Harriet Taylor (later Mrs. J.S. Mill) and Harriet Martineau from the I830s onwards Sunday 19 11.00 am THE WORLD AS CREATIVE PROCESS. Geoffrey Read.
3.00 pm JAMES THOMSON, BRADLAUGH AND THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT. Naomi Lewis.
CENTRAL LONDON HUMANISTS May 14/15 BHA AGM and Groups Annual Gathering Weekend at Conway Hall. Phone BHA Office on 071-430 0908 for details. May 16, 7.30 pm Games Evening — nothing too intellectual. June 30, 7.30 pm The Environment — Friend of Foe? Dan Carroll
LONDON STUDENT SKEPTICS meet in Room 3C, ULU Building, Malet Street, WC I . Monday May 23, 7.30 pm.
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