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The Status of Physical Concepts1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

Contemplating certain residual mists, the net proceeds of a material world exploded and disintegrated by the relentless penetration of scientific intellect, the more advanced physicist has been led in recent times to co-operate with the philosopher on a common plane. Not so long ago, and not always without reason, the philosopher was regarded somewhat askance. It is the old antithesis between the practical man and the theorist, the scientific man himself having been regarded for long as a dreamer. All depends upon the level of action. Operating in the wilds the black tracker has nothing to gain by pausing for the slow, if sure, dictum of the scientist; and if a Mercator projection of the world, or a sextant, were offered to a primitive navigator of well-known home waters, these important aids to the sailor of longer voyages would probably be thrown in a corner, if not overboard. The launching forth on to wide oceans created the occasion for, and proved the value of, such products of exact thought. Thus, in his highest abstractions, the physicist must perforce become a philosopher. At the very least, the need of review and evaluation from a more general standpoint will be conceded.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1939

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References

page 75 note 1 Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1936.Google Scholar

1 Professor C. D. Broad has used a similar illustration in a somewhat different context.

page 77 note 1 Professor C. D. Broad has used a similar illustration in a somewhat different context.

page 79 note 1 Philosophy, January 1933.

page 79 note 2 Space, Time and Gravitation.

page 82 note 1 Annales Gnébhard-Séverine.

page 84 note 1 Cf. Cassirer’s Substance and Function.