Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

biology and physics, Max argued, there was an area about which not much could scientifically be said: scientific language was a tool of consciousness when it looked at the outside world; it was not one much fitted to the process of consciousness looking at itself Perhaps what was needed here was some language that was only too ready to recognise its own limitation; some self-mocking style — ah, look at consciousness looking at itself!

Max got as far as he could with these ideas: he wrote his papers in which he tried to keep to a scientific style: this became increasingly difficult. It seemed to him that the area into which he was moving was now not so much one of science as of philosophy. He gave up his job in Canada and returned to England; although by now somewhat middle-aged, he embarked on a study of philosophy in London. He pursued especially a line of enquiry into the concept of levels of language that had been introduced by Russell and Whitehead before the First World War in order to rescue logical systems from self-contradiction. There were various paradoxes that had threatened to invalidate the consistency of logical systems (These terrible vandals, paradoxes,' Max used to say, 'ploughing up the fallow ground of moribund systems!') — the paradox of the Cretan who said that all Cretans were liars, the paradox of the barber who said he shaved everyone in the village who did not shave himself, the paradox of whether the class of classes that are not members of themselves is or is not a member of itself (Max used to say 'Oh of course they are farcical, these paradoxes, these routines of clowns, breaking up logical systems!') Russell had argued that sense could only be made of such paradoxes if it was seen that language was being used on two different levels — one to talk about things or events and the other to talk about one's talking about these. If one did not recognise this difference then there was contradiction: if one did, then there was the recognition of movement between the two — an oscillation in time, a pattern. But then there might be the question: From what level did one recognise the operation of such patterning? There might be an endless regression of levels: it was this prospect that seemed to be objected to by philosophers. But — Max concluded — what was important here was not the number of possible levels but the use of language to describe the fact that the mind moved between them: it was by means of a style that would embrace such movement that there could be intimated what otherwise could not be said.

Max's first book was a collection of his papers in physics and

biology and philosophy: at the centre of each there were the questions: 'Is it consciousness that forms structures?' 'What is pattern?', 'Is not life that which is held, moves, across levels, between poles?' He suggested that scientific and philosophical language may not indeed be fitted to deal with these questions but might not a suitable language be what is called 'aesthetic'? It was at this place in his book that Max seemed to lose many of his readers. People had become accustomed to physicists hinting at the existence of what could not be described logically, but Max seemed to be claiming some special verity for aesthetics.

When Max returned to England at the end of the 1950s he became involved almost immediately again in controversies concerning the Bomb. At the end of the war he had achieved some notoriety for first having helped to construct the Bomb and then having disassociated himself from the dropping of it — and now there was not only the Atomic but the Hydrogen Bomb. In England, Max was approached by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; he went to their first large-scale rally in Trafalgar Square; he found himself joining their protest march to Aldermaston which was where components for the British Bomb were said to be being made. On the road near Maidenhead he was spotted by a journalist who knew him: he was carrying a pole which supported one end of a banner which proclaimed 'Let's Go Back to Bows and Arrows': carrying the pole at the other end was a pretty girl. The journalist wrote the story in his paper the next day with a headline — 'British Physicist Renews Anti-Nuclear Attack with Arrows'. By the time the march reached Aldermaston Max was marching with the banner folded and his arm round the girl; there was a posse of reporters waiting for him by the side of the road. Max explained — He had a great respect, yes, for the aims and especially the sprit of people in CND but he did not agree with them, no: he was still glad that the Bomb existed on account of the depravity of human nature; it was only through something like the existence of the Bomb that human nature might be kept within bounds or even change. Then why, he was asked, had he been carrying a banner which advocated a return to bows and arrows? Because, Max said, he had wished to be of assistance to people to whom he felt friendly. He was asked by reporters — Was this a responsible attitude for a physicist in a matter of such importance? Indeed, Max said, just as it had seemed to him sensible years ago to have helped in the construction of the Bomb and then to have protested against its use in war, so now it seemed

sensible to show sympathy with the good people of CND even though he was doubtful about their aims: what mattered in such a business was to distinguish between means and ends: if each person practised what he or she thought was right and recognised the obligations of others to do this, then ends could be left to themselves. In fact this was just the sort of attitude that might be required for, and indeed exemplify, a proper change in human nature, Max went on — but by this time most of his audience had drifted away. One or two papers the next day printed a photograph of Max leaning so heavily on the pretty girl that it was as if he were having to be propped up. A month or two later Eleanor came across a copy of one of these papers in Borneo: she sent Max a postcard saying — Indeed who but you and I would understand this business of levels! Eleanor had gone to Borneo after West Africa. In her profession as anthropologist she was still pursuing the idea that had come to her during her first period in Africa — the question of how there could be a form of anthropology that was not just to do with the recording of events and processes but which would include a consideration of the function of the recorder in organising them into systems. An anthropologist was the filter through which events and systems came to mind; yet anthropologists wrote as if they themselves did not exist. Eleanor's first published book was a collection of essays mainly about her time as an anthropologist. On one level the book was a straightforward tabulation of ethnographic facts; on another there was the arrangement of these facts to give the picture of a culture; both these levels were in the area of traditional anthropology. But then on a third level (Max wrote to her — 'This is our level!') Eleanor tried to speculate on her own activity as picker of facts and recogniser of patterns: what as an operator was she doing: was it not a characteristic of life, this forming and recognising of patterns? To understand living systems, perhaps one had to understand what one was doing in trying to understand living systems: they themselves were of the same nature as the activity of mind. It was by this that from what otherwise seemed to be at random there was produced orderliness: and to have a vision of one's own role in this would one not have to have an experience like the appreciation of what is called 'aesthetic'? At this point, to many of Eleanor's readers, she seemed to be dabbling in the occult. Her book was published at much the same time as Max had published his. Max wrote to her — 'And you hadn't even read

my book!' Eleanor replied — 'But of course I didn't have to: and of course I will read your book!'