INTRODUCTION

AND PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The present new edition of this volume is substantially a reprint of the first. I have made a brief addition to the fifteenth chapter, taking note of G. H. Darwin’s investigations respecting the influence of the solar tides upon the rotation of the planets, as bearing upon the anomalies observed in the periods of revolution of the satellites of Mars; but beyond this I have confined myself to the correction of a number of typographical errors, and of a few verbal inaccuracies. It was at one time my intention to expand some of the early chapters, by extending the considerations therein presented to other physical and chemical details, and to supplement the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth chapters by a discussion of certain general topics, such as the types of substance and cause as commonly dealt with in physical science. But I found that it was impossible to carry this intention into effect without exceeding the limits, if not of my subject, at least of the space at my command. And there being nothing in the English and American criticisms of the book, so far as they have fallen under my notice, which, in my judgment, requires a serious revision of any part of its contents, I have concluded to republish it in its original form. Nevertheless, I avail myself of this opportunity to reply to some of the criticisms alluded to, chiefly to the end of removing a curious misapprehension which is common to nearly all my critics, but incidentally also, of meeting certain objections that are more or less founded upon or connected with it.

引言

及第二版序言

這一卷的新版本在很大程度上是第一版的重印。我在第十五章做了一些簡短的補充，提到了喬治·霍華德·達爾文（G. H. Darwin）的研究，關於太陽潮對行星自轉的影響，這些研究涉及到火星衛星的公轉周期中觀察到的異常現象；除此之外，我只是修正了一些排版錯誤和語言不準確的地方。曾有一段時間，我打算擴展前幾章，將其中提出的考慮延伸到其他物理和化學細節，並通過討論一些常見的總體問題來補充第九、第十、第十一和第十二章，例如在物理科學中通常處理的物質類型和因果關係。但我發現，若不超出我的主題範圍，至少在我掌握的篇幅內，無法將這一計劃付諸實施。由於我所注意到的英國和美國對本書的評論中，沒有什麼在我看來需要對內容的任何部分進行嚴格修訂，因此我決定以原版形式重新出版它。儘管如此，我還是藉此機會回應了一些提到的評論，主要目的是消除幾乎所有評論者共有的一個有趣的誤解，並順便處理一些基於該誤解的或與其相關的反對意見。

I.

The misapprehension I speak of is very surprising, in view of the explicit declaration, contained in the very first sentence of my preface, that the book is “designed as a contribution not to physics, nor certainly to metaphysics, but to the theory of cognition.” Notwithstanding this declaration, most of my critics assume it to be my purpose to expose the shortcomings and defects of particular physical theories as devices for the colligation of facts, or as instruments of research, and suppose that my endeavor is simply, as one of my critics express it, “to pick flaws in these theories,” or, in the language of another critic, “to classify and develop contradictions” between them, to “set facts by the ears,” and “bump friendly heads together”—in short, in the spirit of a sort of scientific pyrrhonism, to discredit the familiar methods of physical science, if not to invalidate its results. And they complain that I fail to apprehend what one of them is pleased to term the “laboratory function” of a physical theory or hypothesis, and to appreciate the distinction between a “working hypothesis” and a theory advanced with the claim of its final validity or truth.

Now, the fact is that, for the purposes of the inquiry to which my book is devoted, I am not directly concerned with the “laboratory function” of “working hypotheses” or physical theories at all. My object is to...

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION iii

consider current physical theories and the assumptions which underlie them in the light of the modern theory of cognition—a theory which has taken its rise in very recent times, and is founded upon the investigation, by scientific methods analogous to those employed in the physical sciences, of the laws governing the evolution of thought and speech. Among the important truths developed by the sciences of comparative linguistics and psychology are such as these: that the thoughts of men at any particular period are limited and controlled by the forms of their expression, viz., by language (using this term in its most comprehensive sense); that the language spoken and "thought in" by a given generation is to a certain extent a record of the intellectual activity of preceding generations, and thus embodies and serves to perpetuate its errors as well as its truths; that this is the fact limited at, if not accurately expressed, in the old observation according to which every distinct form or system of speech involves a distinct metaphysical theory; that the metaphysical systems in vogue at any particular epoch, despite their apparent differences and antagonisms, on proper analysis are found to be characterized by certain common features in which the latent metaphysics of the language in which such systems have originated, or are preserved, are brought to view; that philosophers as well as ordinary men are subject to the thralldom of the intellectual prepossessions embodied in their speech as well as in the other inherited forms of their mental and physical organization, and are unable to emancipate themselves from this thralldom otherwise than by slow and gradual advances, in conformity to the law of continuity which governs all processes of evolution whatever. It being my belief that all this applies to the votaries of science as well as to the devotees of metaphysics or ontology, I sought to enforce this belief by an examination of the general concepts and theories of modern physics. According to the opinion of contemporary men of science, these concepts and theories are simply generalizations of the data of experience, and are thus not only independent of the old a priori notions of metaphysics, but destructive of them. But, although the founders of modern physical science at the outset of their labors were animated by a spirit of declared hostility to the teachings of medieval scholasticism—a fact which is nowhere more conspicuous than in the writings of Descartes—nevertheless, when they entered upon the theoretical discussion of the results of their experiments and observations, they unconsciously proceeded upon the old assumptions of the very ontology which they openly repudiated. That ontology—founded upon the inveterate habit of searching for "essences" by the interpretation of words and the analysis of the concepts underlying them, before the relations of words to thoughts and of thoughts to things were properly understood—was characterized by three great errors: its hypostatization of concepts (notwithstanding the protest of the nominalists against the reification of universals); its disregard of the twofold relativity of all physical phenomena; and its confusion of the order of intellectual apprehension with the order of nature. These errors gave rise to a number of cardinal doctrines respecting the "substance of things," among which were the assertion of its existence as a distinct thing or real entity, apart from its properties; the further assertion of its absolute permanence and immutability; and, finally, the assertion of the absolute solidity and inertia of its parts and their incapacity to act upon each other otherwise than by con-

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION v

tact.* And all these doctrines lie at the base, not only of Cartesian physics and metaphysics, but of the scientific creed of the great majority of the physicists of the present day. The eminent physicist and physiologist who declares that "before the differential equations of the world-formulas could be formed" [i.e., before the ultimate, true, and exhaustive theory of the universe could be constructed], "all processes of nature must be reduced to the motions of a substratum substantially homogeneous, and therefore totally destitute of quality, of that which appears to us as heterogeneous matter— in other words, all quality must be explained by the arrangement and motion of such a substratum,"† and the equally distinguished physicist and mathematician who enters upon the attempt at a solution of the problem thus stated by endeavoring to deduce the phenomenal diversities and changes of the universe from imaginary vortical motions of the undistinguishable parts of an assumed universal, homogeneous, continuous and incompressible fluid, are both as truly instinct with the spirit of the old scientia entia quiescentia entia as the most ardent disciple of the Stagirite in the times of Erigena or Aquinas. The physicist who insists upon impact theories of gravitation, cohesion, or chemical affinity,

*In this connection it may be worth while to direct the attention of our modern "Baconian" physicists to the fact that the proposition, according to which there can be no physical action without contact, is one of the fundamental doctrines of Aristotle. See the references in Zeller's Philosophie der Griechen, second ed., II., p. 986.

† "Ehe die Differentialgleichungen der Weltformel angesetzt werden könnten, mussten alle Naturvorgänge auf Bewegungen eines substantiel homogenes, mithin eigenschaftlosen, Substrates eines absolut leerem geführct werden; was uns als gegeneinandertiges Materie erscheint, mit anderen Worten, alle Qnalität musste aus Anordnung und Bewegung solchen Substrates erklärt werden."—Dr. Bule-Raymond, Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, 2. Auf., p. 15.

CONCEPTS OF MODERN PHYSICS vi