mathematical physics. I have been made aware of the importance of this problem by my friend and collaborator Dr Whitehead, to whom are due almost all the differences between the views advocated here and those suggested in The Problems of Philosophy.1 I owe to him the definition of points, the suggestion for the treatment of instants and "things," and the whole conception of the world of physics as a construction rather than an inference. What is said on these topics here is, in fact, a rough preliminary account of the more precise results which he is giving in the fourth volume of our Principia Mathematica. It will be seen that if his way of dealing with these topics is capable of being successfully carried through, a wholly new light is thrown on the time-honoured controversies of realists and idealists, and a method is obtained of solving all that is soluble in their problem. The speculations of the past as to the reality or unreality of the world of physics were baffled, at the outset, by the absence of any satisfactory theory of the mathematical infinite. This difficulty has been removed by the work of Georg Cantor. But the positive and detailed solution of the problem by means of mathematical constructions based upon sensible objects as data has only been rendered possible by the growth of mathematical logic, without which it is practically impossible to manipulate ideas of the requisite abstractness and complexity. This aspect, which is somewhat obscured in a merely popular outline such as is contained in the following lectures, will become plain as soon as Dr Whitehead's work is published. In pure logic, which, however, will be very briefly discussed in these lectures, I have had 1 London and New York, 1912 (“Home University Library"). 2 The first volume was published at Cambridge in 1910, the second in 1912, and the third in 1913. the benefit of vitally important discoveries, not yet published, by my friend Mr Ludwig Wittgenstein. Since my purpose was to illustrate method, I have included much that is tentative and incomplete, for it is not by the study of finished structures alone that the manner of construction can be learnt. Except in regard to such matters as Cantor's theory of infinity, no finality is claimed for the theories suggested; but I believe that where they are found to require modification, this will be discovered by substantially the same method as that which at present makes them appear probable, and it is on this ground that I ask the reader to be tolerant of their incompleteness. CAMBRIDGE, June 1914. CONTENTS LECTURE 1. CURRENT TENDENCIES II. LOGIC AS THE ESSENCE OF PHILOSOPHY III. ON OUR KnowledGE OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD IV. THE WORLD OF PHYSICS AND THE WORLD OF SENSE VI. THE PROBLEM OF INFINITY CONSIDERED HISTORICALLY VIII. ON THE NOTION OF CAUSE, WITH APPLICATIONS TO INDEX PAGE 3 33 63 ΙΟΙ 129 155 185 211 243 |