DAILY EXERCISES: RC#2

The idea of dead scientists engaging in an experiment in eugenics is incredible enough. Yet the most

striking feature in this episode is the power that is ascribed to science itself. While spiritualism evolved into

a popular religion, complete with a heavenly "Summerland" where the dead lived free from care and sorrow,

the intellectual elite of psychical researchers thought of their quest as a rigorously scientific inquiry. But if

these Victorian seekers turned to science, it was to look for an exit from the world that science had

revealed. Darwinism had disclosed a purposeless universe without human meaning; but purpose and

meaning could be restored, if only science could show that the human mind carried on evolving after the

death of the body. All of these seekers had abandoned any belief in traditional religion. Still, the human

need for a meaning in life that religion once satisfied could not be denied, and fuelled the faith that scientific

investigation would show that the human story continues after death. In effect, science was used against

science, and became a channel for belief in magic.

Much of what the psychical researchers viewed as science we would now call pseudo-science. But the

boundaries of scientific knowledge are smudged and shifting, and seem clear only in hindsight. There is no

pristine science untouched by the vagaries of faith. The psychical researchers used science not only to

deal with private anguish but also to bolster their weakening belief in progress. Especially after the catastrophe

of the First World War, the gradual improvement that most people expected would continue indefinitely

appeared to be faltering. If the scripts were to be believed, however, there was no cause for anxiety or

despair. The world might be sliding into anarchy, but progress continued on the other side.

Many of the psychical researchers believed they were doing no more than show that evolution continues in

a post-mortem world. Like many others, then and now, they confused two wholly different things. Progress

assumes some goal or direction. But evolution has neither of these attributes, and if natural selection

continued in another world it would feature the same random death and wasted lives we find here below.

Darwinism is impossible to reconcile with the notion that humans have any special exemption from mortality.

In Darwin's scheme of things species are not fixed or everlasting. How then could only humans go on to a

life beyond the grave? Surely, in terms of the prospect of immortality, all sentient beings stand or fall

together. Then again, how could anyone imagine all the legions of the dead – not only the human generations

that have come and gone but the countless animal species that are now extinct – living on in the ether,

forever?

Science could not give these seekers what they were looking for. Yet at the same time that sections of the

English elite were looking for a scientific version of immortality, a similar quest was under way in Russia

among the "God-builders" – a section of the Bolshevik intelligentsia that believed science could someday,

perhaps quite soon, be used to defeat death.

37. How was "science used against science" according to the author?

(a) People sought science to seek an exit from the world created by science.

(b) Science was used to spread the belief of life after death or eternal life.

(d) Scientists used the scientific techniques to spread unscientific ideas.

38. What is the confusion of past and present day psychical researchers?

(a) They confuse progress with immortality.

(b) They confuse evolution with progress.

(d) They confuse evolution with progress in life in another world.

39. Which of the following is the most appropriate title for the passage?

(a) Science and immortality

(b) The limits of science

(d) Incredible science

DAILY EXERCISES