This paper argues that that political context of British science popularization in the inter-war period was intimately tied to contemporary debates about religion and science. A leading science popularizer, the Quaker astronomer A.S. Eddington, and one of his opponents, the materialist Chapman Cohen, are examined in detail to show the intertwined nature of science, philosophy, religion, and politics.

EDDINGTON frequently insisted on the ' necessity for an outlook beyond physics ' , and was deeply interested in the relations between science and other ways ...

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington was a key figure in the development of modern astrophysics, who also made important contributions to the philosophy of science and popular science writing. The Arthur Eddington Memorial Trust was set up after his death in order to hold annual lectures on the relationship between scientific thought and aspects of philosophy, religion or ethics. This 2012 collection gathers together six of these lectures, including contributions by Sir Edmund Whittaker, Herbert Dingle, Richard B. Braithwaite, (...) John C. Eccles, Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, and Baroness Mary Warnock, together with Eddington's 1929 Swarthmore Lecture on Science and the Unseen World. A preface written by the Astronomer Royal, Baron Rees of Ludlow, is also included. This is a fascinating book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the philosophy of science and Eddington's legacy. (shrink)

I think it will be agreed that there is a domain of investigation where physics and philosophy overlap. There are branches of philosophy which do not approach the subject-matter of physics, and a great part of the work of practical and theoretical physicists is not aimed at extending our knowledge of the fundamental nature of things; but questions which concern the general interpretation of the physical universe and the significance of physical law are claimed by both parties. I suppose that (...) ideally the physicist should be allowed to elucidate his own universe up to a point, and then hand it over to the philosopher to ascertain its exact status in relation to a wider outlook. (shrink)

Several recently published books quote the British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington as having said that “religion first became possible for a reasonable scientific man about the year 1927.” In this essay it is shown that these words have been taken out of context and are not representative of Eddington’s views on the relation between science and religion.

This book is a comprehensive and unique text and reference in medical ethics. By far the most inclusive set of primary documents and articles in the field ever published, it contains over 100 selections. Virtually all pieces appear in their entirety, and a significant number would be difficult to obtain elsewhere. The volume draws upon the literature of history, medicine, philosophical and religious ethics, economics, and sociology. A wide range of topics and issues are covered, such as law and medicine, (...) truth-telling by the physician, research, population policy, genetics, abortion, dying, and individual rights in medical care. The selections span the centuries, beginning with material from the works of Hippocrates, continuing through Thomas Percival, John Stuart Mill, and Claude Bernard, down to modern commentators like Henry K. Beecher, Walsh McDermott, David L. Bazelon, Paul Freund, H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, Paul Ramsey, Richard McCormick, Rashi Fein, and Bernard Barber. The text has eight major divisions, beginning with sections on the ethical dimensions of the physician-patient relationship in history; the moral bases of medical ethics; and regulation, compulsion, and protection of the consumer in clinical medicine and public health. Each of these sections includes key essays that appear for the first time. All of the book's major divisions contain primary documents: codes such as the Hippocratic Oath, Medieval Law for the Regulation of Medicine, and the first as well as the most recent code of the American Medical Association; court decisions, including those on Karen Quinlan and on abortion in the United States and West Germany; government documents such as the statement of the National Commission on the Protection of Human Subjects, the Tuskegee Syphilis Report, the British Parliamentary debate on euthanasia, and the Council of Europe on rights of the sick and dying; and various published guidelines such as the Harvard Medical School brain death criteria, the American Hospital Association on patient's rights, and Pope Pius XII on the prolongation of life. Cases that illustrate moral dilemmas are provided for discussion purposes. Each section is preceded by a succinct editor's introduction. The documents and essays are of practical value for practitioners and students in medicine, law, ethics, and counselling, and for individual patients and groups concerned with medical care. Through encompassing divergent viewpoints, the essays and primary documents were selected to encourage humane practices and deepen understanding of the multiple traditions that shaped and do shape the development of medicine. (shrink)

Head of Rugby School for over a decade, Thomas Arnold became Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in the final year of his life. Known for his controversial ideas on schooling and religion, he was a prominent and influential figure in the history of British education. First published in 1844, this two-volume work presents a diverse collection of Arnold's correspondence, compiled by his friend and former pupil Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster. Interspersed with biographical commentary by (...) Stanley, the letters in Volume 1 illuminate Arnold's early life and work, and his career at Rugby up to 1835. In them he discusses his ideas for reform in both teaching and religion, revealing his unfailing dedication to both. Offering insights into the role of school and church in the early nineteenth century, Arnold's writings continue to interest scholars of both religion and education. (shrink)

Head of Rugby School for over a decade, Thomas Arnold became Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in the final year of his life. Known for his controversial ideas on schooling and religion, he was a prominent and influential figure in the history of British education. First published in 1844, this two-volume work presents a diverse collection of Arnold's correspondence, compiled by his friend and former pupil Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster. Interspersed with biographical commentary by (...) Stanley, the letters in Volume 2 illustrate Arnold's theological position through his correspondence with various church figures. Other letters further reveal his views on education, politics and public affairs, and document his year at Oxford. Included at the end of the volume is a supplement from 1847 which provides additional material that was unavailable at the time of the first edition. (shrink)

Head of Rugby School for over a decade, Thomas Arnold became Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in the final year of his life. Known for his controversial ideas on schooling and religion, he was a prominent and influential figure in the history of British education. First published in 1844, this two-volume work presents a diverse collection of Arnold's correspondence, compiled by his friend and former pupil Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster. Interspersed with biographical commentary by (...) Stanley, the letters in Volume 1 illuminate Arnold's early life and work, and his career at Rugby up to 1835. In them he discusses his ideas for reform in both teaching and religion, revealing his unfailing dedication to both. Offering insights into the role of school and church in the early nineteenth century, Arnold's writings continue to interest scholars of both religion and education. (shrink)

In the Arthur Stanley Eddington Memorial Lecture for 1965 Eccles uses his considerable knowledge to argue that neurophysiology can give clues to the physical requirements of the unity of conscious experience, but it cannot fully account for it. The way is thus left open to postulate or believe in the special creation of the soul as the principle of self-identity. Specifically, Eccles argues that self-identity is not reducible to gene identity. He does not, however, go into the problems (...) surrounding the origin of the employment of the notion of self-identity; and in this respect his analysis is uncritical from a philosophical point of view. Interestingly enough, some of the positive bits of neurophysiological theory that Eccles puts forth in this short lecture, in particular, the theory of hemispheric localization of the higher functions, have been shaken considerably in the past few months by the results of the Coe hemispherectomy.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Summary The 1935 conflict on the nature of relativistic degeneracy that pitted Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar against Arthur Stanley Eddington is part of astronomical lore. In recountings of the events surrounding the dispute, the complaint is frequently aired that Chandrasekhar, who faced the pre-eminent astrophysicist of his time, did not enjoy the support of the astronomical community, which opted to side instead with Eddington. We reconsider these statements in the light of the published record and argue that the reception of (...) Chandrasekhar's ideas was, if anything, rather favourable and that any perceived lack of support may have been due in great part to the inability to distinguish, on an observational basis, between the predictions of the competing theories. We further argue that the observational situation improved little over the subsequent thirty years, but that this did not prevent Chandrasekhar's version of relativistic degeneracy, and associated theory of electron-degenerate stars, from gaining a central position within the realm of stellar structure and evolution. We briefly compare this status to that enjoyed by general relativity before 1960. (shrink)

Science and religion have long been thought incompatible. But nowhere has this apparent contradiction been more fully resolved than in the figure of A. S. Eddington (1882–1944), a pioneer in astrophysics, relativity, and the popularization of science, and a devout Quaker. Practical Mystic uses the figure of Eddington to shows how religious and scientific values can interact and overlap without compromising the integrity of either. Eddington was a world-class scientist who not only maintained his religious belief throughout his scientific career (...) but also defended the interrelation of science and religion while drawing inspiration from both for his practices. For instance, at a time when a strict adherence to deductive principles of physics had proved fruitless for understanding the nature of stars, insights from Quaker mysticism led Eddington to argue that an outlook less concerned with certainty and more concerned with further exploration was necessary to overcome the obstacles of incomplete and uncertain knowledge. By examining this intersection between liberal religion and astrophysics, Practical Mystic questions many common assumptions about the relationship between science and spirituality. Matthew Stanley’s analysis of Eddington’s personal convictions also reveals much about the practice, production, and dissemination of scientific knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Theoretical astrophysics emerged as a significant research programme with the construction of a series of stellar models by A. S. Eddington. This paper examines the controversies surrounding those models as a way of understanding the development and justification of new theoretical technologies. In particular, it examines the challenges raised against Eddington by James Jeans, and explores how the two astronomers championed different visions of what it meant to do science. Jeans argued for a scientific method based on certainty and completeness, (...) whereas Eddington called for a method that valued exploration and further investigation, even at the sake of secure foundations. The first generation of stellar models depended on the validity of Eddington's approach – the physics and many of the basic facts of stars were poorly understood and he justified his models through their utility for future research and their robustness under challenging use. What would become theoretical astrophysics depended heavily on this phenomenological outlook, which Jeans dismissed as not even science. This was a dispute about the practice of theory, and it would be this methodological debate that made theoretical astrophysics viable. (shrink)

The 1919 eclipse expedition’s confirmation of general relativity is often celebrated as a triumph of scientific internationalism. However, British scientific opinion during World War I leaned toward the permanent severance of intellectual ties with Germany. That the expedition came to be remembered as a progressive moment of internationalism was largely the result of the efforts of A. S. Eddington. A devout Quaker, Eddington imported into the scientific community the strategies being used by his coreligionists in the national dialogue: humanize the (...) enemy through personal contact and dramatic projects that highlight the value of peace and cooperation. The essay also addresses the common misconception that Eddington’s sympathy for Einstein led him intentionally to misinterpret the expedition’s results. The evidence gives no reason to think that Eddington or his coworkers were anything but rigorous. Eddington’s pacifism is reflected not in manipulated data but in the meaning of the expedition and the way it entered the collective memory as a celebration of international cooperation in the wake of war. Science is above all politics. —Sir Oliver Lodge (1914) Is it not an actual fact that babies have been killed in ways almost inconceivably brutal, and not as a mere individual excess, but as a part of the deliberate and declared policy of the German army? … Is it not a fact that German men of science have gone out of their way to declare their adhesion to these things? —“From an Oxford Note‐Book,” Observatory (1916). (shrink)

The 1919 eclipse expedition’s confirmation of general relativity is often celebrated as a triumph of scientific internationalism. However, British scientific opinion during World War I leaned toward the permanent severance of intellectual ties with Germany. That the expedition came to be remembered as a progressive moment of internationalism was largely the result of the efforts of A. S. Eddington. A devout Quaker, Eddington imported into the scientific community the strategies being used by his coreligionists in the national dialogue: humanize the (...) enemy through personal contact and dramatic projects that highlight the value of peace and cooperation. The essay also addresses the common misconception that Eddington’s sympathy for Einstein led him intentionally to misinterpret the expedition’s results. The evidence gives no reason to think that Eddington or his coworkers were anything but rigorous. Eddington’s pacifism is reflected not in manipulated data but in the meaning of the expedition and the way it entered the collective memory as a celebration of international cooperation in the wake of war. Science is above all politics. —Sir Oliver Lodge (1914) Is it not an actual fact that babies have been killed in ways almost inconceivably brutal, and not as a mere individual excess, but as a part of the deliberate and declared policy of the German army? … Is it not a fact that German men of science have gone out of their way to declare their adhesion to these things? —“From an Oxford Note‐Book,” Observatory (1916). (shrink)

Arthur S. Eddington, FRS, (1882–1944) was one of the most prominent British scientists of his time. He made major contributions to astrophysics and to the broader understanding of the revolutionary theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is famed for his astronomical observations of 1919, confirming Einstein’s prediction of the curving of the paths of starlight, and he was the first major interpreter of Einstein’s physics to the English-speaking world. His 1928 book, The Nature of the Physical World, here (...) re-issued in a critical, annotated edition, was largely responsible for his fame as a public interpreter of science and has had a significant influence on both the public and the philosophical understanding of 20th-century physics. In degree, Eddington’s work has entered into our contemporary understanding of modern physics, and, in consequence, critical attention to his most popular book repays attention. Born at Kendal near Lake Windermere in the northwest of England into a Quaker background, Eddington attended Owens College, Manchester, and afterward Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won high mathematical honors, including Senior Wrangler. He became Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge in 1913 and in 1914 Director of the Cambridge Observatory. Eddington was a conscientious objector during the First World War. By the end of his career, he was widely esteemed and had received honorary degrees from many universities. He was elected president of the Royal Astronomical Society (1921–1923), and was subsequently elected President of the Physical Society (1930–1932), the Mathematical Association (1932), and the International Astronomical Union (1938–1944). Eddington was knighted in 1930 and received the Order of Merit in 1938. During the 1930s, his popular and more philosophical books made him a well known figure to the general public. Philosophers have found his writings of considerable interest, and have debated his themes for nearly a hundred years. (shrink)

This contribution to the debate over Marx's theory of value gives an account of his concept of ?abstract labour?. Contrary to Stanley Moore {Inquiry, Vol. 14 [1971]), Marx never abandons his early critique of the Hegelian ?Concept'; for he gives a material basis to the conception of social labour as concretely universal. If, in analysing the commodity form of the product of labour, Marx characterizes the labour that forms the substance of value as ?abstractly universal labour?, the priority of (...) the abstract over the concrete at this point is not due to the influence of Hegel's Logic on Marx's work, but reflects the material process of abstraction occurring in commodity exchange. We show that Marx takes up a critical stance to this reality. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explain the significance of Alfred A. Robb’s philosophy of time stemming from his interpretation of relativity theory; and at the same time, to investigate the reasons for the failure of his philosophical contemporaries to appreciate its significance, with special attention to its reception on Russell’s part. The study of Russell’s reaction to Robb exposes shortcomings in Russell’s own philosophy of time, which has been extremely influential through the years. It also highlights the philosophical (...) differences between Minkowski and Robb, the shared idealistic premises of Russell and McTaggart, and the confluences between the views of Russell, Eddington and McTaggart. The paper closes with an account of how Robb’s interpretation has been vindicated by its adoption in modern physics. (shrink)

The Nature of the Physical World is one of a series of semi-popular books, extremely popular and influential in the English-speaking world, that Arthur Eddington wrote between the 1920s and the 1950s. Not only were they masterful scientific expositions, but they included attempts to defend a definite philosophical position: dualism.

Sir arthur edington's brilliantly phrased article, “Physics and Philosophy,” which appeared in the January 1933 issue of Philosophy, seems to me to contain a number of things which are calculated to be provocative to the mere philosopher. And I propose in this article to discuss what appears to be one of the most important of these provocative things, namely, Sir Arthur's view of the status of the physical world.