Abstract
We must, however, guard against going to the opposite extreme from Comte and claiming that the form of modern science is uniquely, or at least especially, due to the influence of mathematics. In fact, a glance through the history of physical concepts suffices to show that this form — which is, or at least was until Einstein, that of a mechanism (in Chapter 19 we shall deal with the connection between mechanism and relativism) — was already found in all its essential traits in antiquity, when mathematics properly speaking played only an insignificant role. The true motivating force was the concern to preserve the identity of reality discussed in §7.
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Notes
Henri Bergson, Matière et méoire (Paris, 1903), p. 59 [Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy M. Paul and W. Scott Palmer (London: Allen and Unwin, 1911), p.71].
Harald Höffding, Der Totalitätsbegriff (Leipzig, 1917), passim.
Plato, The Republic, X, 602C–603A.
Spinoza, Ethics, Pt. 2, prop. 43, note: veritas est norma sui et falsi [The Chief Works of Spinoza, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (Bohn Library ed.; reprint New York: Dover, 1951), 2:115].
Höffding, Der Relationsbegriff (Leipzig, 1922), pp. 94–95.
Cf. below, §170 ff., on the role of the sense of touch in the concept of material body.
Hegel, Naturphilosophie, Werke (Berlin, 1842 ), Vol. 7, Pt. 1, pp. 92, 462 [Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 62, 297].
Gottlob Frege, ‘Uber Sinn und Bedeutung,’ Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik 100 (1892) 25, has rightly said that “the discovery that the rising sun is not new every morning, but always the same, was one of the most fertile astronomical discoveries” [‘On Sense and Reference,’ Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, trans. Max Black (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960), p. 56].
Henri Poincare understood perfectly the extent to which our belief in the entities created by science is analogous to the one manifested in common sense. He has even expressed this opinion in a particularly difficult case, that of the existence of the ether (it is well-known that many physicists today seriously doubt that it exists). Indeed, after having said that “this hypothesis is found to be suitable for the explanation of phenomena,” he added: “After all, have we any other reason for believing in the existence of material objects? That, too, is only a convenient hypothesis” (La science et l’hypothèse, Paris, s. d., p. 245 [Science and Hypothesis, trans. W. J. Greenstreet (London, 1905; reprint New York: Dover, 1952), pp. 211–212]. Cf. below, §269, concerning the meaning of the term convenient.
Alfred Loisy, ‘Le cours de Renan au Collège de France,’ Journal de Psychologie 20 (1923) 327.
Georges Urbain, Les disciplines d’une science (Paris, 1921), p. 8.
Nicolas Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité (Paris, 1721 ), Eclaircissement 11, 4: 277 ff. [The Search after Truth and Elucidations of the Search after Truth, trans. Thomas M. Lennon (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980), p. 636 ff.]; F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality (London, 1893), Ch. 11, p. 123 ff.
Stumpf quoted by Ernst Mach, Die Leitgedanken meiner Naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnislehre (Leipzig, 1919), p. 23.
Henri Marais, Introduction géométrique à l’étude de la relativité (Paris, 1923), p. 96.
Wien, WW 156, 220, 285; cf. 221, 223, and our comments on Wien’s comparison between the positions of Mach and Goethe (Ch. 1, n. 6). Adolf Kneser similarly declares that “the quest for a real world cannot be dismissed,” and that “the true evolution of science comes about in such a way that sensations are suppressed and fade away into insignificance” (Mathematik und NatuD;r, Breslau, 1921, p. 31 ).
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© 1985 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Meyerson, É. (1985). Reality. 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_3
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