We are told that we live in a scientific world. All about us are the fruits of scientific research, and the products of scientific industry. But, in spite of this transformation of our material surroundings, scientific thought, or the scientific method as such, has had no effect upon the everyday thought and behaviour of our people. To be sure, along with the scientific gadgets a few scientific truths have been disseminated. They know the earth is round and moves about the sun; they could know that bacteria cause disease and that they are themselves descended from less articulate forms of animal life. Even when such conclusions are accepted, it is on the basis of authority with no understanding as to how they arose and on what basis they stand. For the large majority, science has merely acquired a cloak of respectability; it is a stronger magic than that of our forebears, and our modern alchemy is known as a powerful though mysterious source of pecuniary profit.

To recognize the reality of the space-time structure of nature would, I think, revolutionize metaphysics. It means that we must conceive reality as history and history as having direction. It is not enough to take time seriously, we must take the order of time seriously. When we view the apparent confusion of nearby events, we may indeed be tempted to say with Heraclitus: “Time is a child playing drafts. The kingly power is a child's.” But if we take a long view we may discern order. The early Greek pioneers started philosophy on the right track. Anaximander, the real founder of Western philosophy and science, had the brilliant intuition of an order of time as regulating the cosmic process. In the one direct quotation from Anaximander we are told: “And into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, as is meet; for they make reparation and satisfaction for their injustice according to the ordering of time.” It is because of the “ordering of time” that the universe is a self-maintaining whole. The development of the conception of the ordering of time was left to the great metaphysical genius of Heraclitus, who conceived a thought running through all things and steering through all things. There is a controlling direction of change which regulates the rhythm of exchange in nature and keeps the universe from running down. It was this emphasis upon the Word, the logos, the controlling order of change, which Heraclitus felt to be his important contribution. Change, continuous flux, is real, but there is a guiding order in change.

Is metaphysics possible? From the beginning of our present sophisticated era we have continually been compelled to ask this question. For myself I confess to a growing impatience with this and like questions. I hold with Kant that metaphysics is a Naturanlage, that should all science pass away and should we revert to barbarism, there would still be metaphysics. I am also disposed to think that should mankind develop in the opposite direction, should we become the supermen or the angels which the perfectionists of all times have envisaged, metaphysics would not only remain, but metaphysical insight would be the very life of that perfection. As Dante said, “metaphysics is the bread of angels.”

This paper attempts to explore some of the implications of the distinction between having or enjoying and knowing, between “experiencing” and science, for these implications have not always been adequately realized by those for whom the distinction is fundamental.

The pervasive contrast in modern life between the certainties of science and technology, on the one hand, and the uncertainties of human goals and policies, on the other, is the objective source of a fundamental conflict in theory. It is now widely held that facts are rather definitely verifiable, but that values are unverifiable; though other students assume that values are also verifiable in some significant sense and degree.

Forty-three years ago Max Weber observed that “the belief in the value of scientific truth is not derived from nature but is a product of definite cultures.” We may now add: and this belief is readily transmuted into doubt or disbelief. The persistent development of science occurs only in societies of a certain order, subject to a peculiar complex of tacit presuppositions and institutional constraints. What is for us a normal phenomenon which demands no explanation and secures many ‘self-evident’ cultural values, has been in other times and still is in many places abnormal and infrequent. The continuity of science requires the active participation of interested and capable persons in scientific pursuits. This support of science is assured only by appropriate cultural conditions. It is, then, important to examine those controls which motivate scientific careers, which select and give prestige to certain scientific disciplines and reject or blur others. It will become evident that changes in institutional structure may curtail, modify or possibly prevent the pursuit of science.

The eleventh chapter of Genesis significantly begins to the following effect: “And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.” In that one language there was power. That power induced the inhabitants of earth to start the Tower of Babel with the idea of storming the citadel of Heaven. Whereupon, we learn, God confounded their language that they might not understand one another's speech. That confusion of tongues destroyed their power.