They succeeded so well that the public went one step further and began to deny what the scientists had merely ignored. This was the environment in which Sherrington began his long career. No one wants to be excommunicated from the scientific network by questioning current presuppositions, and financial support cannot be obtained easily for research done in any other kind of spirit. This forced us to assume that life is merely an extension at a certain level of organization and mindedness is merely an extension of life at a certain level of complexity. But progress in understanding has continued.
Science has within itself a certain self-correctiveness, though it is slow in action.
Unfortunately, it requires mature reflection and considerable courage for any scientist who cares for reputation to publicly depart from current orthodoxy. The result is that such shifts are apt to occur toward the end of a scientist's career and the impact is likely to have little effect on his own generation. Sherrington was a man of genius who was also an essentially humble man in the Huxleyan sense. He rightly excluded any appeal to nonphysical force when he sought to explain the operations of the nervous system, especially in man. It is clear, however, that the course of half a century of research he observed pervasive nonphysical reality that expressed itself in apparent purposefulness.