Mysticism and Logic and Other EssaysRussell, Bertrand
Philosophy
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Russell, Bertrand
Mathematics; Philosophy; Science
(2) The physical problem of space is both more interesting and more
difficult than the logical problem. The physical problem may be
stated as follows: to find in the physical world, or to construct from
physical materials, a space of one of the kinds enumerated by the
logical treatment of geometry. This problem derives its difficulty
from the attempt to accommodate to the roughness and vagueness of the
real world some system possessing the logical clearness and exactitude
of pure mathematics. That this can be done with a certain degree of
approximation is fairly evident If I see three people _A_, _B_, and
_C_ sitting in a row, I become aware of the fact which may be
expressed by saying that _B_ is between _A_ and _C_ rather than that
_A_ is between _B_ and _C_, or _C_ is between _A_ and _B_. This
relation of "between" which is thus perceived to hold has some of the
abstract logical properties of those three-term relations which, we
saw, give rise to a geometry, but its properties fail to be exact, and
are not, as empirically given, amenable to the kind of treatment at
which geometry aims. In abstract geometry we deal with points,
straight lines, and planes; but the three people _A_, _B_, and _C_
whom I see sitting in a row are not exactly points, nor is the row
exactly a straight line. Nevertheless physics, which formally assumes
a space containing points, straight lines, and planes, is found
empirically to give results applicable to the sensible world. It must
therefore be possible to find an interpretation of the points,
straight lines, and planes of physics in terms of physical data, or at
any rate in terms of data together with such hypothetical additions as
seem least open to question. Since all data suffer from a lack of
mathematical precision through being of a certain size and somewhat
vague in outline, it is plain that if such a notion as that of a point
is to find any application to empirical material, the point must be
neither a datum nor a hypothetical addition to data, but a
_construction_ by means of data with their hypothetical additions. It
is obvious that any hypothetical filling out of data is less dubious
and unsatisfactory when the additions are closely analogous to data
than when they are of a radically different sort. To assume, for
example, that objects which we see continue, after we have turned away
our eyes, to be more or less analogous to what they were while we were
looking, is a less violent assumption than to assume that such objects
are composed of an infinite number of mathematical points. Hence in
the physical study of the geometry of physical space, points must not
be assumed _ab initio_ as they are in the logical treatment of
geometry, but must be constructed as systems composed of data and
hypothetical analogues of data. We are thus led naturally to define a
physical point as a certain class of those objects which are the
ultimate constituents of the physical world. It will be the class of
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