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Eddington, Physics and Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2024

E. F. Caldin
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Extract

Sir Arthur Eddington in his recent book has presented a relatively non-technical account of the theory of the fundamental laws and constants of physics which he developed in his Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons. But he has also embedded his contributions to science, which are recognised to be of the greatest importance, in a philosophical setting which carries by no means the same authority. It is unfortunate that physical advances, the brilliance of which it would be impertinent to commend, should be obscured, by reason of this embellishment, as seems to have happened in recent controversy. It seems useful, therefore, to discuss what is the real status of Eddington’s results, what points of interest arise from his reflections on the method of physics, and what is true in those parts of the book which deal with genuinely philosophical questions. We shall be mainly concerned with the philosophical setting, and scientific technicalities will be reduced to a minimum.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 21 , Issue 240 , March 1940, pp. 172 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © 1940 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 The Philosophy of Physical Science. (Cambridge, 1939; 8/6).

2 Cambridge, 1936.

3 Cf, Eve, in Nature, Nov. 12, 1938, p. 857, and references there given.

4 The scientific background can be studied in the scientific parts of Eddington's other popular works. In what follows I have inserted short statements of the two or three new ideas which are at the bottom of the twentieth-century advances in physics.

5 Cf. Blackfriars, Nov., 1939, p, 779.

6 Op. cit., Chap. viii..

7 Op. cit., p. 124.

8 On the probabilification of scientific theories through their agreement with experiment and deductions from them, see Eaton, General Logic, Part IV.

9 Another example is to be found in Einstein and Infeld's Evolution of Physics (Cambridge, 1938), where the changeover from the mechanical models of nineteenth-century physics to more modern views is regarded as a chmge of philosophical outlook.

10 A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (Cambridge).

11 which, ironically enough, is exactly what Eddington does.

12 So also students of symbolic logic can proceed without asking the philosopher to decide what they mean by propositions, the self, etc., in virtue of the device of logical constructions.

13 Op. Cit., p. 142-143.

14 Op. cit., p. I j O r p. 198. Explicit statements which accord with the view that modern physics adopts implicitly the Whiteheadian view will be found on pp. 49, 50, 148, 150, 185, 186, 198.

15 It is curious that Eddington does not seem to be aware of Whitehead's work, although he writes much about ‘epistemology’; he is astonished to find that the view that science is concerned with the ‘rational correlation of experience, rather than the discovery of fragments of absolute truth about an external world,’ is commonly accepted.

16 Cf. Op. cit., pp. 67, 143, 191,9 5,2 03, 204.

17 Cf. S. Stebbing, Philosophy and the Physicists, passim.

18 Op. cit., Chap. Xi.

19 Podolsky. Physical Review (1938), Vol. 53, p. 591.

20 Op. cit., pp. 24, 103, 104,105.

21 Op. Cit ., pp. 5% 57, 187.

22 Neglecting, for the moment, Kant’s special use of the term.

23 Op. cit., p. 24.

24 Op. cit., pp. 116, 134, etc.

25 Op. cit., 105, cf. p. 134.