He said 'You see what?'
I said 'You mean that no Russian leader could ever say, even to himself, that he wanted the five-year plan to fail, because if he did, psychologically he wouldn't be able to do what he wants, which is to embark on a reign of blame and terror.'
Melvyn said 'Didn't I say you're learning, ducky!'
I thought — Melvyn really does know more than me?
Then — But of course if one could learn to be tough and subtle with oneself, then one wouldn't need blame and terror?
I seldom talked to Melvyn about the work I was doing in Cambridge. I was studying mathematics; which was a prelude, I supposed, to specialising in physics. I do not remember what work Melvyn was doing: English? History? In spite of what seemed to be his committment to Marxism, he gave the impression of his work being of no importance. I said to him once 'But you mean Marxists, if they are serious, must have an inkling that they are engaged in something quite different from what they have to say they are doing.'
He said 'Don't be too sharp, ducky, or you'll catch yourself where it matters.'
I said 'It's quite like mathematics.'
He said 'Have fun with your mathematics, ducky!'
The most influential mathematician and theoretical physicist at Cambridge at this time was Paul Dirac: his exploratory work was held to be on a level with that of Bohr and Heisenberg on the Continent. I went to some of his lectures: he was a quiet, passionate man who spoke of things that were indeed, he seemed to suggest, just beyond one's grasp; they were like leaves, like shadows. But that there were such things as leaves and shadows meant, as it were, that there was some sun. Some of Dirac's mathematics I did not wholly understand: but in one or two publications at the time he tried to put into laymen's language some of the wider implications of what he thought he was discovering. This was quite a common activity amongst eminent scientists at this time: it was only later that they seemed to withdraw again into the fortress-jargons of their special disciplines.
What I understood Dirac to be implying was -
The laws of physics control a level of reality of which our minds by their nature cannot form an adequate picture: we deal with the world of appearances mainly through intuition. When an object we are observing is small, we cannot observe it without disturbing it, so that what we are observing is not the object but the results of the disturbance. When an object is big, we can say we observe it because the disturbance is for practical purposes negligible, but then what we are observing is inevitably to do with appearances. Two sorts of mathematics are required for a description of reality: classical mathematics, which concerns objects which are big and by means of which we can talk about cause-and-effect between them because this is how intuitively we see appearances; and a new form of mathematics which concerns objects which are small and in which we cannot talk about objective cause-and-effect because of the disturbances caused by the observer. Thus for human consciousness there is something that essentially cannot be pinned down at the heart of matter — and this is not to do with inadequacy of technique, but is built into the relationship between consciousness and language and matter. This is not to be regretted: it is a realisation necessary for understanding.
I had a friend at this time who was called Donald Hodge. Donald was older than me; he had come to Cambridge to study physics, but for the moment was trying to grapple with philosophy. Donald had orange hair and small steel spectacles of which the side-pieces were joined to points near the bottom of the rims. He and I would go for walks together by the banks of the river. In the winter the backwaters of the river became frozen so that there were the footprints of birds on the snow that lay on the surface of what had once been water. Donald and I discussed the relation between philosophy and what seemed to be being suggested by physicists.
Donald said 'But it seems to me that physicists are confused about what is the nature of language.'
I said 'But mathematics is a form of language.'
He said 'But when you say you cannot observe something but can only observe the effect of your observation — what else is it, indeed, that you ever think you are observing?'
'But a different form of mathematics is required to describe this.'
'But you make up a mathematics — '
'But you make up a language.'
Donald and I walked by the frozen water. I thought — We go
round and round: but sometimes, almost without our noticing, something gets through.
Donald had become a pupil of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who some ten years previously had become famous, at least among philosophers, with the publication of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This book had been concerned, primarily, to clarify what were the limits of language.
Donald said 'I mean you use words, making pictures, to describe what is otherwise indescribable.
I said 'What goes on within an atom appears to happen by chance. This is indescribable?'
Donald said 'You can describe it in mathematics — '
I said 'As a matter of probabilities.'
'But you say that Dirac seems to suggest that there are certain entities that are not describable even by numbers.'
'There are certain numbers, yes, at this level, about which it is impossible to say that one is bigger than another.'
'And you call that mathematics?'
Donald had a way of curling his upper lip beneath his nose, as if he were indicating scorn or determination.
There were footprints wandering in the snow. The footprints made patterns. I thought — Why are Donald and I walking together? It is a possibility that he is in love with me?
Then — If Donald and I are in a maze, we can see that there is some pattern.
The concluding words of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus had been 'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.' It was for these words above all that he, and the book, had become famous. Wittgenstein had seemed to be implying that nothing was sayable except that which was to do with reason. But he had demonstrated how narrow the area was that could be dealt with by reason.
I said to Donald '"Chance" is a word for what we cannot explain by reason. There is no reason why by some means we should not try to talk about it.'
Donald said 'By what means?'
I said 'We can look at, try to describe, the way things happen.'
I had been trying to get Donald to take me with him to one of Wittgenstein's seminars; I wanted to hear what was being said in the area that should, it had been suggested, be passed over in silence. But Donald had said that Wittgenstein insisted that his pupils should
undertake a whole course of enquiry with him, that there was no sense in trying to pick up bits and pieces; it was the process itself that might be felt to be dealing with whatever it was in silence.
Donald said 'Wittgenstein would agree that philosophy is more a matter of looking than of analysis.'
I said 'When you are with him, what is the style of what you talk about?'
Donald said 'It is often as if one were finding one's way through a maze.'
It was at times like these that Donald and I were apt to walk for a certain distance in silence.
What I had learned about Wittgenstein was that he had been at Cambridge before the First World War; he had returned to his native Austria to fight in the Austrian army. It was in the trenches that he had written most of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In it he had tried to explain — Language constructs models of what can be called 'reality': what language cannot do is suggest what might be the connection between the structures of language and the structures of reality. But this had traditionally been a central task of philosophy. So, in a sense, Wittgenstein seemed to suggest, philosophy was over.
After the publication of the Tractatus Wittgenstein had himself given up philosophy; he had taught in an Austrian village school; he had designed a severely functional house for his sister in Vienna. Then at the end of the 1920s he had suddenly returned to Cambridge: he had thought that there was something more to do in philosophy.