A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in PhilosophyJames, William
Philosophy
A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy
James, William
Philosophy, Modern
But in point of fact nature doesn't make eggs by
making first half an egg, then a quarter, then an eighth, etc., and
adding them together. She either makes a whole egg at once or none
at all, and so of all her other units. It is only in the sphere of
change, then, where one phase of a thing must needs come into being
before another phase can come that Zeno's paradox gives trouble.
And it gives trouble then only if the succession of steps of change
be infinitely divisible. If a bottle had to be emptied by an infinite
number of successive decrements, it is mathematically impossible that
the emptying should ever positively terminate. In point of fact,
however, bottles and coffee-pots empty themselves by a finite number
of decrements, each of definite amount. Either a whole drop emerges or
nothing emerges from the spout. If all change went thus drop-wise,
so to speak, if real time sprouted or grew by units of duration of
determinate amount, just as our perceptions of it grow by pulses,
there would be no zenonian paradoxes or kantian antinomies to trouble
us. All our sensible experiences, as we get them immediately, do thus
change by discrete pulses of perception, each of which keeps us saying
'more, more, more,' or 'less, less, less,' as the definite increments
or diminutions make themselves felt. The discreteness is still more
obvious when, instead of old things changing, they cease, or when
altogether new things come. Fechner's term of the 'threshold,' which
has played such a part in the psychology of perception, is only one
way of naming the quantitative discreteness in the change of all our
sensible experiences. They come to us in drops. Time itself comes in
drops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account