of percepts for their own sakes, which belongs to psychology. Physics
studies percepts only in their cognitive aspect; their other aspects
lie outside its purview.
Even if we reject the view that the quality of events in our heads can
be inferred from their structure, the view that physical determinism
applies to human bodies brings us very near to what is most disliked
in materialism. Physics may be unable to tell us what we shall hear
or see or "think," but it can, on the view advocated in these pages,
tell us what we shall say or write, where we shall go, whether we shall
commit murder or theft, and so on. For all these are bodily movements,
and thus come within the scope of physical laws. We are often asked
to concede that the beauties of poetry or music cannot result from
physical laws. I should concede that the beauty does not result from
physics, since beauty depends in part upon intrinsic quality; if it
were, as some writers on æsthetics contend, solely a matter of form, it
would come within the scope of physics, but I think these writers do
not realize what an abstract affair form really is. I should concede
also that the thoughts of Shakespeare or Bach do not come
within the scope of physics. But their thoughts are of no importance
to us: their whole social efficacy depended upon certain black marks
which they made on white paper. Now there seems no reason to suppose
that physics does not apply to the making of these marks, which was
a movement of matter just as truly as the revolution of the earth in
its orbit. In[Pg 393] any case, it is undeniable that the socially important
part of their thought had a one-one relation to certain purely physical
events, namely the occurrence of the black marks on the white paper.
And no one can doubt that the causes of our emotions when we read
Shakespeare or hear Bach are purely physical. Thus we cannot escape
from the universality of physical causation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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