The concepts and theories of modern physics / By J.B. Stallo.

  • John Stallo
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The concepts and theories of modern physics / By J.B. Stallo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    reply to this is that this assertion, if true, does not help the sensationalists. For acts of sensation are possible only when and where there is objective difference and change; we have direct sensation of different and vari- able physical qualities ordinarily so called, and not of that which is absolutely homogeneous and invariable. Here comes in Hobbes’s law: Sentire temper idem et non sentire ad idem recidunt. It is precisely the fact of its homogeneity and unchangeabloness, in addition to that of its inv^ariablc presence in all ])hysical objects, which distinguishes the property of spatial extension from all other properties characteristic of a real thing, and enables the sensationalist to speak of the existence of space at all. If this distinction could be obliterated —if the cognitive or contteptual barrier which separates the sensations produced by physical action from the states of consciousness representative of space were once broken down—there would no longer be any ground whatever for the distinction between the ‘‘ ])roperties” of space and the properties of matter in any of its va- rieties. We should be constrained to say that the only form or variety of objective existence is either space or matter (it being a mere question of nomenclature which), and that all the properties we now attnbute to matter are in truth and in fact properties of space. That all this should have escaped the attention of Itiemann and Helmholtz is marvelous, considering the assumption made by both in order to account for the alleged necessity of attributing to space a constant measure of curvature, and thus limiting the number of the species of space, which, according to their state- ment, are admissible, to three, viz.: spherical space with a positive curvature, pseudo-spherical space with a negative curvature, and flat or homaloidal space with a