Mysticism and Logic and Other EssaysRussell, Bertrand
Philosophy
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Russell, Bertrand
Mathematics; Philosophy; Science
We have now to explain how the different perspectives are ordered in
one space. This is effected by means of the correlated "sensibilia"
which are regarded as the appearances, in different perspectives, of
one and the same thing. By moving, and by testimony, we discover that
two different perspectives, though they cannot both contain the same
"sensibilia," may nevertheless contain very similar ones; and the
spatial order of a certain group of "sensibilia" in a private space of
one perspective is found to be identical with, or very similar to, the
spatial order of the correlated "sensibilia" in the private space of
another perspective. In this way one "sensibile" in one perspective is
correlated with one "sensibile" in another. Such correlated
"sensibilia" will be called "appearances of one thing." In Leibniz's
monadology, since each monad mirrored the whole universe, there was in
each perspective a "sensibile" which was an appearance of each thing.
In our system of perspectives, we make no such assumption of
completeness. A given thing will have appearances in some
perspectives, but presumably not in certain others. The "thing" being
defined as the class of its appearances, if κ is the class of
perspectives in which a certain thing θ appears, then θ is a member of
the multiplicative class of κ, κ being a class of mutually exclusive
classes of "sensibilia." And similarly a perspective is a member of
the multiplicative class of the things which appear in it.
The arrangement of perspectives in a space is effected by means of the
differences between the appearances of a given thing in the various
perspectives. Suppose, say, that a certain penny appears in a number
of different perspectives; in some it looks larger and in some
smaller, in some it looks circular, in others it presents the
appearance of an ellipse of varying eccentricity. We may collect
together all those perspectives in which the appearance of the penny
is circular. These we will place on one straight line, ordering them
in a series by the variations in the apparent size of the penny. Those
perspectives in which the penny appears as a straight line of a
certain thickness will similarly be placed upon a plane (though in
this case there will be many different perspectives in which the penny
is of the same size; when one arrangement is completed these will form
a circle concentric with the penny), and ordered as before by the
apparent size of the penny. By such means, all those perspectives in
which the penny presents a visual appearance can be arranged in a
three-dimensional spatial order. Experience shows that the same
spatial order of perspectives would have resulted if, instead of the
penny, we had chosen any other thing which appeared in all the
perspectives in question, or any other method of utilising the
differences between the appearances of the same things in different
perspectives. It is this empirical fact which has made it possible to
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