Psychological conceptions in other sciences : the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford 14 May, 1929 / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
1929
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychological conceptions in other sciences : the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford 14 May, 1929 / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ether. What are primarily sought now are the mathe¬ matical relations in terms of which the Universe can be described. Not only the ether, but also electrons and quanta are unimaginable and unknowable entities. They are no longer modelled on what we know in the ‘ big world ’; the electron may indeed be subject to change in the very act of becoming known to us. They are—to use Spencer’s words again—‘symbols of actions out of ourselves, the natures, of which we cannot even conceive’, except—we might in these days add—by applying a non-Eucli- dean geometry to the purely mathematical conception of a space-time continuum. In erecting such a four¬ dimensional structure, how far are we removed from the simple, naive standpoint assumed by Lord Kelvin, when he said, ‘I never satisfy myself till I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can make a mechanical model, I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way through, I cannot understand, and that is why I cannot get the electro-magnetic theory of light?’1 In Lord Kelvin’s time the ether was regarded as material—as a sublimed kind of matter. He felt himself therefore able to declare of it—‘That is the only substance we are confident of in dynamics. One thing we are sure of, and that is the reality and substantiality of the luminiferous ether.’2 Few physicists would speak to-day with such confidence about what they are sure of, when ‘ realities ’ and ‘ substantialities ’ are being shattered in such succession and profusion, and the Universe seems scien¬ tifically coming to be regarded as a vast corpus of mathe¬ matical necessities and possibilities, certain of which, as expressed for example in the laws of mechanics, gravitation, &c., through the further operation of mind become ‘physical’. The domain of Physics has not only been deprived of substance and absoluteness: it is also relinquishing its claim to being solely swayed by determinism. Deal with 1 Nature, 1885, vol. xxxi, p. 603. 2 Popular Lectures and Addresses (London: Macmillan & Co., 1889), vol. i, p. 310.
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