Abstract
For the time being let us disregard these very remote and speculative views and consider the structure of the theory as it is viewed by most of its adherents. If we attempt to survey the whole theory all at once, we cannot fail to be struck by the breadth of ambition that seems to have consciously or unconsciously motivated those who constructed it. For what they sought to establish was nothing less than a true system of universal deduction, in the sense that Cartesian physics or the natural philosophy of Hegel constitutes such a system.
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Notes
This is how Eduard Gans summed up the thought of the master in his preface to the Philosophy of History (Hegel, Werke, Berlin, 1842,9: vii).
Raum, Zeit, Materie, 3rd ed., p.262. In the In the 4th ed. this passage, p. 274 of the [French] translation [STM 311] has been considerably weakened. Since we have undertaken to scrutinize the way scientists think, we believe it is interesting to consider the primitive form of their thought [italics have been added by the translators to identify the material not included in the 4th German edition or in Brose’s translation of the 4th edition, which reads instead: “If Mie’s view were correct, we could recognize the field as objective reality, and physics would no longer be far from the goal of giving so complete a grasp ...”; the German insertion is Meyerson’s].
Raum, Zeit, Materie, 3rd ed., p. 262 [STM 312; italics have been added to indicate material not in the 4th ed.; the German insertion is Meyerson’s]. Cassirer, examining the results of the relativistic conceptions from a philosophical point of view, likewise states that when one arrives at the ultimate abstractions of the theory, “finally there seems no return to ... the immediate data, to which the naive view of the world clings” (ER 114; Eng. 444), while Borel simply notes that “the claim that we can include in a few coefficients the infinite variety of the perceptible world with its boundless diversity of qualities may appear extraordinary” (ET 206; Eng. 173).
Taine, Les philosophes classiques du XIX e siécle en France, 11th ed. (Paris, 1912), p. 132.
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© 1985 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Meyerson, É. (1985). Universal Explanation. In: The Relativistic Deduction. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 83. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5211-9_11
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