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.

    311/376 (page 261)
    tities are coordinate species of the same genus amounts to nothing less than the thesis that signs are logically coordinate with their signiticates. There are no “ dis- crete quantities” except those which are dealt with in special (common) and general arithihetic, that is to say, numbers. Now, a number is an aggregate or collection of units each of w'hich simply represents an act of ap- 2)7'e/iens'iony wdiatever may be the extent or nature of the object apprehended. If this object is designated as a quantity., a number is not a quantity at all, nor a measure of quantity, but simply an intellectual vehicle of quantities—a purely subjective instrumentality for their comparison and admeasurement. All the uncer- taintv and confusion which are characteristic of the numerous attempts to detine and classify quantities are due to the ignorance or neglect of this elementary truth. Quantity has been defined as “that which is susceptible of augmentation, diminution and division,” and as “ the genus of which magnitude and multitude are the species; ” or quantities have been first divided into extensive quantities (space) and intensive quantities (forces, colors, sounds, and all subjective affections), and the extensive quantities have then been subdivided into continuous and discrete. Now, the fact is that all ob- jects of apprehension, including all data of sense, are in themselves., i. e., within the act of apprehension, es- sentially continuous. They become discrete only by being subjected, arbitrarily or necessarily, to several acts of apprehension, and by thus being severed into jjarts, or coordinated wdth other objects similarly appre- hended into wholes. To say that a datum of sensation or of subjective feeling is in itself discrete is to assert that it is absolute, and to deny that quantity is essen- tially relative. And to maintain (with those who speak