Adventures of ideas / by Alfred North Whitehead.

  • Alfred North Whitehead
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Adventures of ideas / by Alfred North Whitehead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    216/412 page 200
    Greeks, Jews, and Mahommedans from such useless studies, from such pure abstractions for which no foresight could divine the ghost of an application. Luckily they could not get at their ancestors. Section VII. The services to mankind rendered by the Newtonian System of Nature are incalculable. It combines ideas derived from Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, into a con¬ sistent scheme of thought which elucidates an incredible number of observed facts. Thereby it has enabled men to obtain a new command over Nature. Where we formerly obeyed, we now direct. But at last the Newton cosmology has broken down. The story of the breakdown extends over more than a century. For by far the greater part of that period men of science were quite unaware that the ideas which they were introducing, slowly, one after the other, were finally to accumulate into a body of thought inconsistent with the Newtonian ideas dominating their thoughts and shaping their modes of expression. The story commences with the wave-theory of light and ends with the wave-theory of matter. It finally leaves us with the philosophic question, What are the concrete facts which exhibit this mathematical attribute of wave-vibration? The story in detail is the history of modern physics, which lies beyond the scope of this discussion. We merely require to understand the contrast between the most general notions respectively underlying Newtonian physics and modern physics. Newtonian physics is based upon the independent individuality of each bit of matter. Each stone is conceived as fully describable apart from any reference to any other portion of matter. It might be alone in the Universe, the sole occupant of uniform space. But it would still be that stone which it is. Also the stone could be adequately de-
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