Special characters This file uses the following special characters:
→ … ′ ″ α β γ δ ε η θ ι λ μ ν ο π ρ ς σ τ υ à é ê ï ô “ ” ‘ ’ —
If these do not display, you might try another font or browser, or use theISO-8859-1 or ASCII text version of this ebook.
Printer errors Two printer errors have been corrected: On page 51 the word “sight” has been changed to “touch” as suggested by the sense; and on page 180 the word “universely” has been changed to “inversely”. These are marked in the text by mouse-hovers.
The contents of this book were originally delivered at Trinity Collegein the autumn of 1919 as the inaugural course of Tarner lectures. TheTarner lectureship is an occasional office founded by the liberality ofMr Edward Tarner. The duty of each of the successive holders of the postwill be to deliver a course on ‘the Philosophy of the Sciences and theRelations or Want of Relations between the different Departments ofKnowledge.’ The present book embodies the endeavour of the firstlecturer of the series to fulfil his task.
The chapters retain their original lecture form and remain as deliveredwith the exception of minor changes designed to remove obscurities ofexpression. The lecture form has the advantage of suggesting an audiencewith a definite mental background which it is the purpose of the lectureto modify in a specific way. In the presentation of a novel outlook withwide ramifications a single line of communications from premises toconclusions is not sufficient for intelligibility. Your audience willconstrue whatever you say into conformity with their pre-existingoutlook. For this reason the first two chapters and the last twochapters are essential for intelligibility though they hardly add to theformal completeness of the exposition. Their function is to prevent thereader from bolting up side tracks in pursuit of misunderstandings. Thesame reason dictates my avoidance of the existing technical terminology of philosophy. The modern natural philosophy is shot through andthrough with the fallacy of bifurcation which is discussed in the secondchapter of this work. Accordingly all its technical terms in some subtleway presuppose a misunderstanding of my thesis. It is perhaps as well tostate explicitly that if the reader indulges in the facile vice ofbifurcation not a word of what I have here written will be intelligible.
The last two chapters do not properly belong to the special course.Chapter VIII is a lecture delivered in the spring of 1920 before theChemical Society of the students of the Imperial College of Science andTechnology. It has been appended here as conveniently summing up andapplying the doctrine of the book for an audience with one definite typeof outlook.
This volume on ‘the Concept of Nature’ forms a companion book to myprevious work An Enquiry concerning the Principles of NaturalKnowledge. Either book can be read independently, but they supplementeach other. In part the present book supplies points of view which wereomitted from its predecessor; in part it traverses the same ground withan alternative exposition. For one thing, mathematical notation has beencarefully avoide