Another thing that helps us achieve the scientific spirit is to remember that no two things in this world are absolutely identical. Two things may be similar for our purpose, but the closer we look, the more differences we find. We become prejudiced when we lump a group of people under a single label and then respond to individuals as though they have the same characteristics as the label. Only open eyes and open minds are prepared to cope with a world in which no two things are alike. The words we use imply similarity. We must use our eyes and ears to remind us of differences that are important for our purpose.
Men, women, and children in the twenty-first century will learn to think in terms of degrees. The language we use often implies polar opposites—good or bad, true or false, beautiful or ugly, fast or slow, black or white. But the world in which we live usually shows a large number of degrees between extremes. If we are to be as relaxed and happy as possible, our thoughts must adequately reflect the reality around us. And we can’t do that by making black and white statements if the area to which we are referring contains shades of grey.
Individuals in the twenty-first century will learn to think in terms of probability. They will realize that man must regard all his knowledge as more or less probable. “Absolute certainty,” said C. J. Keyser, “is a privilege of uneducated minds—and fanatics. It is, for scientific folks, an unattainable ideal.” The people of the future will think of their ideas in terms of an ascending scale of probability, ranging from, “This seems most unlikely,” through, “This may be or may not be confirmed by further observation,” to, “This has a very high degree of probability.”
When people adapt their thinking to the degree nature of our world, they will be more relaxed. They will be more effective at locating and adopting, but always tentatively, the points-of-view that best represent the world about them. “A truly scientific attitude,” said Dr. Roger Williams, “is one of humility. ... A know-it-all attitude is incompatible with the scientific method.”
Individuals in the twenty-first century will be acutely aware of the way their own nervous system influences their observations and reactions. We see life through the filter of our own individual personality and mode of thinking. Even the language structure that we absorb plays an important part in how we think and the way we observe things. Our ego-needs play a big part in selecting what we notice, fail to notice, remember, or forget. “We see things not as they are,” said the wise man, “but as we are.”
Individuals in the twenty-first-century world will have a profound feeling of the way all people and all things interact with their environment. People or things are not cut-and-dried entities. The way they act varies depending on the time and place. We must notice differences. Wendell Johnson said, “To a mouse, cheese is cheese. That is why mouse traps are effective.”
Ever Lovelier Worlds
The success of the method of science in solving almost every problem put to it will give individuals in the twenty-first century a deep confidence in its effectiveness. They will not be afraid to experiment with new ways of feeling, thinking, and acting, for they will have observed the self-corrective aspect of science. Science gives us the latest word, not the last word. They will know that if they try something new in personal or social life, the happiness it yields can be determined after sufficient experience has accumulated. They will adapt to changes in a relaxed way as they zigzag toward the achievement of their values. They will know that there are better ways of doing things than have been used in the past, and they will be determined to experiment until they have found them. They will know that most of the unhappiness of human beings in the mid-twentieth century was not due to the lack of shiny new gadgets; it was due, in part, to not using the scientific method to check out new political and social structures that could have yielded greater happiness for them.
About a century ago Abraham Lincoln brilliantly expressed the attitudes that will most effectively help us work toward a happier future: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”
Future generations of mankind will realize that it is only through the scientific method of thinking that their value systems can be fully realized. They will welcome experimentation of all kinds in all phases of life. They will have a habitual open-mindedness coupled with a rigid insistence that all problems be formulated in a way that permits factual checking. They will have the attitude described by Wendell Johnson, “To a scientist a theory is something to be tested. He seeks not to defend his beliefs, but to improve them. He is, above everything else, an expert at ‘changing his mind.’ ” *
* Wendell Johnson, People in Quandaries (New York: Harper & Brother 1946), p. 39.
The paramount role that the method of science will play in helping us achieve “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” was eloquently expressed by Herman J. Muller:
Above all, the spirit of science is the spirit of progress. ... It can afford men ever newer horizons and higher peaks to climb, materially, mentally, and
