How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (35 page)

Mathematics is very often employed by scientific writers, mainly because it has the qualities of preciseness, clarity, and limitedness that we have described. Usually you can understand something of the matter without going very deeply into the mathematics, as in the case of Newton. Oddly enough, however, even if mathematics is absolutely terrifying to you, its absence from certain works may cause you even more trouble.

A case in point is Galileo's Two New Sciences, his famous treatise on the strength of materials and on motion. This work is particularly difficult for modern readers because it is not primarily mathematical; instead, it is presented in the form of a dialogue. The dialogue form, though appropriate to the stage and useful in philosophy when employed by such a master as Plato, is not really appropriate to science. It is therefore hard to discover what Galileo is saying, although when you do you will discover that he is stating some revolutionary things.

Not all of the scientific classics, of course, employ mathematics or even need to employ it. The works of Hippocrates, the founder of Greek medicine, are not mathematical. You might well read them to discover Hippocrates' view of medicine-namely, that it is the art of keeping people well, rather than that of curing them when they are sick.· That is unfortunately an uncommon idea nowadays. Nor is William Harvey's discourse on the circulation of the blood mathematical, or William Gilbert's book on magnets. They can be read without too much difficulty if you always keep in mind that your primary obligation is not to become competent in the subject matter but instead to understand the problem.

A Note on Popular Science

In a sense, there is little more to say about reading scientific popularizations. By definition, these are works-either books or articles-written for a wide audience, not just for specialists. Thus, if you have managed to read some of the classics of the scientific tradition, you should not have much trouble with them. This is because, although they are a bout science, they generally skirt or avoid the two main problems that confront the reader of an original contribution in science.

First, they contain relatively few descriptions of experiments (instead, they merely report the results of experiments) . Second, they contain relatively little mathematics (unless they are popular books about mathematics itself) .

Popular scientific articles are usually easier to read than popular scientific books, although not always. Sometimes such articles are very good-for example, articles found in Scientific American, a monthly magazine, or Science, a somewhat more technical weekly publication. Of course, these publications, no matter how good they are or how carefully and responsibly edited, pose the problem that was discussed at the end of the last chapter. In reading them, we are at the mercy of reporters who filter the information for us. If they are good reporters, we are fortunate. If they are not, we have almost no recourse.

Scientific popularizations are never easy reading in the sense that a story is or seems to be. Even a three-page article on DNA containing no reports of experiments and no diagrams or mathematical formulas demands considerable effort on the part of the reader. You cannot read it for understanding without keeping your mind awake. Thus, the requirement that you read actively is more important here than almost anywhere else. Identify the subject matter. Discover the relation between the whole and its parts. Come to terms and plot the propositions and arguments. Work at achieving understanding before you begin to criticize or to assess significance. These rules, by now, are all familiar. But they apply here with particular force.

Short articles are usually primarily informational, and as such they require less active thinking on your part. You must make an effort to understand, to follow the account provided by the author, but you often do not have to go beyond that.

In the case of such excellent popular books as Whitehead's Introduction to Mathematics, Lincoln Barnett's The Universe and Dr. Einstein, and Barry Commoner's The Closing Circle, something more is required. This is particularly true of a book like Commoner's, on a subject-the environmental crisis-of special interest and importance to all of us today. The writing is compact and requires constant attention. But the book as a whole has implications that the careful reader will not miss.

Although it is not a practical work, in the sense described above in Chapter 13, its theoretical conclusions have important consequences. The mere mention of the book's subject matter -the environmental crisis-suggests this. The environment in question is our own; if it is undergoing a crisis of some sort, then it inevitably follows, even if the author had not said so -though in fact he has- that we are also involved in the crisis.

The thing to do in a crisis is (usually) to act in a certain way, or to stop acting in a certain way. Thus Commoner's book, though essentially theoretical, has a significance that goes beyond the theoretical and into the realm of the practical.This is not to suggest that Commoner's work is important and the books by Whitehead and Barnett unimportant. When The Universe and Dr. Einstein was written, as a theoretical account (written for a popular audience) of the history of researches into the atom, people were widely aware of the perils inherent in atomic physics, as represented mainly but not exclusively by the recently discovered atomic bomb. Thus that theoretical book also had practical consequences. But even if people are today not so worried about the imminence of an atomic or nuclear war, there is still what may be called a practical necessity to read this theoretical book, or one like it.

The reason is that atomic and nuclear physics is one of the great achievements of our age. It promises great things for man, at the same time that it poses great perils. An informed and concerned reader should know everything he can about the subject.

A slightly different urgency is exerted by Whitehead's Introduction to Mathematics. Mathematics is one of the major modern mysteries. Perhaps it is the leading one, occupying a place in our society similar to the religious mysteries of another age. If we want to know something about what our age is all about, we should have some understanding of what mathematics is, and of how the mathematician operates and thinks.

Whitehead's book, although it does not go very deeply into the more abstruse branches of the subject, is remarkably eloquent about the principles of mathematical reasoning. If it does nothing else, it shows the attentive reader that the mathematician is an ordinary man, not a magician. And that discovery, too, is important for any reader who desires to expand his horizons beyond the immediate here and now of thought and experience.

18. HOW TO READ PHILOSOPHY

Children ask magnificent questions. "Why are people?" "What makes the cat tick?" "What's the world's first name?" "Did God have a reason for creating the earth?" Out of the mouths of babes comes, if not wisdom, at least the search for it.

Philosophy, according to Aristotle, begins in wonder. It certainly begins in childhood, even if for most of us it stops there, too.

The child is a natural questioner. It is not the number of questions he asks but their character that distinguishes him from the adult. Adults do not lose the curiosity that seems to be a native human trait, but their curiosity deteriorates in quality.

They want to know whether something is so, not why. But children's questions are not limited to the sort that can be answered by an encyclopedia.

What happens between the nursery and college to turn the How of questions off, or, rather, to turn it into the duller channels of adult curiosity about matters of fact? A mind not agitated by good questions cannot appreciate the significance of even the best answers. It is easy enough to learn the answers.

But to develop actively inquisitive minds, alive with real questions, profound questions-that is another story.

Why should we have to try to develop such minds, when children are born with them? Somewhere along the line, adults must fail somehow to sustain the infant's curiosity at its original depth. School itself, perhaps, dulls the mind-by the dead weight of rote learning, much of which may be necessary. The failure is probably even more the parents' fault. We so often tell a child there is no answer, even when one is available, or demand that he ask no more questions. We thinly conceal our irritation when baffled by the apparently unanswerable query.

All this discourages the child. He may get the impression that it is impolite to be too inquisitive. Human inquisitiveness is never killed; but it is soon debased to the sort of questions asked by most college students, who, like the adults they are soon to become, ask only for information.

We have no solution for this problem; we are certainly not so brash as to think we can tell you how to answer the profound and wondrous questions that children put. But we do want you to recognize that one of the most remarkable things about the great philosophical books is that they ask the same sort of profound questions that children ask. The ability to retain the child's view of the world, with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare-and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.

We are not required to think as children in order to understand existence. Children certainly do not, and cannot, understand it-if, indeed, anyone can. But we must be able to see as children see, to wonder as they wonder, to ask as they ask.

The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions-simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions-and maturely wise in our replies.

The Questions Philosophers Ask

What are these "childishly simple" questions that philosophers ask? When we write them down, they do not seem simple, because to answer them is so difficult. Nevertheless, they are initially simple in the sense of being basic or fundamental.

Take the following questions about being or existence, for example: What is the difference between existing and not existing? What is common to all the things that do exist, and what are the properties of everything that does exist? Are there different ways in which things can exist-different modes of being or existence? Do some things exist only in the mind or for the mind, whereas others exist outside the mind, and whether or not they are known to us, or even knowable by us?

Does everything that exists exist physically, or are there some things that exist apart from material embodiment? Do all things change, or is there anything that is immutable? Does anything exist necessarily, or must we say that everything that does exist might not have existed? Is the realm of possible existence larger than the realm of what actually does exist?

These are typically the kind of questions that a philosopher asks when he is concerned to explore the nature of being itself and the realms of being. As questions, they are not difficult to state or understand, but they are enormously difficult to answer-so difficult, in fact, that there are philosophers, especially in recent times, who have held that they cannot be answered in any satisfactory manner.

Another set of philosophical questions concerns change or becoming rather than being. Of the things in our experience to which we would unhesitatingly attribute existence, we would also say that all of them are subject to change. They come into being and pass away; while in being, most of them move from one place to another; and many of them change in quantity or in quality: they become larger or smaller, heavier or lighter; or, like the ripening apple and the aging beefsteak, they change in color.

What is involved in any change? In every process of change, is there something that endures unchanged as well as some respect or aspect of that enduring thing which undergoes change? When you learn something that you did not know before, you have certainly changed with respect to the knowledge you have acquired, but you are also the same individual that you were before; if that were not the case, you could not be said to have changed through learning. Is this true of all change? For example, is it true of such remarkable changes as birth and death-of coming to be and passing away-or only of less fundamental changes, such as local motion, growth, or alteration in quality? How many different kinds of change are there? Do the same fundamental elements or conditions enter into all processes of change, and are the same causes operative in all? What do we mean by a cause of change? Are there different types of causes responsible for change? Are the causes of change-of becoming-the same as the causes of being, or existence?

Such questions are asked by the philosopher who turns his attention from being to becoming and also tries to relate becoming to being. Once again, they are not difficult questions to state or understand, though they are extremely difficult to answer clearly and well. In any case, you can see how they begin with a childishly simple attitude toward the world and our experience of it.

Unfortunately, we do not have space to go into the whole range of questions more deeply. We can only list some other questions that philosophers ask and try to answer. There are questions not only about being and becoming, but also about necessity and contingency; about the material and the immaterial; about the physical and the non-physical; about freedom and indeterminacy; about the powers of the human mind; about the nature and extent of human knowledge; about the freedom of the will.

All these questions are speculative or theoretical in the sense of those terms that we have employed in distinguishing between the theoretical and practical realms. But philosophy, as you know, is not restricted to theoretical questions only.

Take good and evil, for instance. Children are much concerned with the difference between good and bad; their behinds are likely to suffer if they make mistakes about it. But we do not stop wondering about the difference when we grow up. Is there a universally valid distinction between good and evil? Are there certain things that are always good, others that are always bad, whatever the circumstances? Or was Hamlet right when, echoing Montaigne, he said: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."