Archimedes; or, the future of physicsWhyte, Lancelot Law
Philosophy
Archimedes; or, the future of physics
Whyte, Lancelot Law
Physics
But this may take some years, and in the meantime we must look around
and see how this issue is affecting current thought. We find the doubt
about process presented by Mr Sullivan (in _Gallio_), who has not yet
made up his mind to which side science will grant the victory. Thus on
one page he writes: “it seems to be true that events do not really take
place, we come across them” and suggests that process may be “a totally
irrelevant idea when applied to reality”. But later we learn to our
surprise that “it seems likely that (in scientific theory) the world
will have to be regarded as an evolutionary process, where patterns of
value emerge”. However, this inconsistency need not bother us, since
we are told that “the teachings of science so far as the spiritual
problems of man are concerned are merely irrelevant”.
These views reflect perfectly the uncertainty of the time, and will be
looked back on as a precious record of the state of mind which preceded
the scientific synthesis. Perhaps the most interesting feature of
the essay is the indecision it displays with regard to the spiritual
importance of science. This is a relic from the days when there were
two worlds, the world of science and the world of religion and art. No
one ever knew which of these worlds they were living in, and this is no
wonder. For the division was made only because at one time it looked
as though the scientific method could only deal with _quantities_,
and therefore that science could have nothing to say about values or
qualities. This view is no longer tenable. For instance, there is a
quality in organic integration which most of us value, and without this
and many other such conceptions biology and psychology could not get
far.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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