Humanism and America : $b Essays on the outlook of modern civilisation
Philosophy
Humanism and America : $b Essays on the outlook of modern civilisation
Humanism; Literature -- Philosophy; Philosophy, Modern; United States -- Civilization -- 20th century
Einstein also began with a critique of Newtonian dynamics to prove
that the conclusions we can draw from electrodynamics are as limited
and as relative as those from mechanics. From this denial of our
ability to obtain real or absolute knowledge he, like Berkeley,
has proceeded to construct a positive philosophy of the absolute.
Relativity, as it has now been interpreted by such disciples as
Whitehead and Eddington, is merely idealism under a new guise. The
objective world of sensation and experience is illusion, and truth
exists only in a set of subjective mathematical formulæ of cosmic
_events_. The relativists openly rejoice that mathematics has come into
its own kingdom and is no longer to be the handmaiden of physics, no
longer to be restricted by the limitations of the sense-perceptions.
Euclidean geometry, which is limited to the three dimensions of tactual
space, has been replaced by a geometry of hyper-space, the properties
of which no one can be cognisant of. Subjective time is eliminated, and
objective time is conflated with space. They, too, deny the validity of
the senses, as did the mediæval schoolman, and picture a topsy-turvy
world. They are labouring under the delusion that the limitations of
logic can be avoided by the simple substitution of mathematical symbols
for words, forgetting that mathematical symbols are as meaningless as
words when they are detached from facts. They fail to see that the
equation is but a form of the syllogism. One can trace all through
their argument the old and familiar fallacy of the ambiguous middle.
They are quite reckless, as it suits their convenience, in confusing
physical space of three dimensions with mathematical space of an
unlimited number; neither do they distinguish time as a subjective
sequence of events from time as a measurable component of velocity. The
relativists are as rash as those sociologists who see a real connection
between physical energy of motion and mental energy of thought and so
deceive themselves with the notion that they are scientific.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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