Mysticism and Logic and Other EssaysRussell, Bertrand
Philosophy
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Russell, Bertrand
Mathematics; Philosophy; Science
My meaning in regard to the impermanence of physical entities may
perhaps be made clearer by the use of Bergson's favourite illustration
of the cinematograph. When I first read Bergson's statement that the
mathematician conceives the world after the analogy of a
cinematograph, I had never seen a cinematograph, and my first visit to
one was determined by the desire to verify Bergson's statement, which
I found to be completely true, at least so far as I am concerned.
When, in a picture palace, we see a man rolling down hill, or running
away from the police, or falling into a river, or doing any of those
other things to which men in such places are addicted, we know that
there is not really only one man moving, but a succession of films,
each with a different momentary man. The illusion of persistence
arises only through the approach to continuity in the series of
momentary men. Now what I wish to suggest is that in this respect the
cinema is a better metaphysician than common sense, physics, or
philosophy. The real man too, I believe, however the police may swear
to his identity, is really a series of momentary men, each different
one from the other, and bound together, not by a numerical identity,
but by continuity and certain intrinsic causal laws. And what applies
to men applies equally to tables and chairs, the sun, moon and stars.
Each of these is to be regarded, not as one single persistent entity,
but as a series of entities succeeding each other in time, each
lasting for a very brief period, though probably not for a mere
mathematical instant. In saying this I am only urging the same kind of
division in time as we are accustomed to acknowledge in the case of
space. A body which fills a cubic foot will be admitted to consist of
many smaller bodies, each occupying only a very tiny volume; similarly
a thing which persists for an hour is to be regarded as composed of
many things of less duration. A true theory of matter requires a
division of things into time-corpuscles as well as into
space-corpuscles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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