New pathways in science / by Sir Arthur Eddington.

  • Eddington, Arthur Stanley, Sir, 1882-1944.
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: New pathways in science / by Sir Arthur Eddington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    redundancies. In later chapters we shall learn some of the results of the deciphering; and perhaps you will be persuaded that the reconstructed story of the stars is a not inadequate compensation for setting aside the famiUar story teller’s romantic imaginations. But, it may be suggested, if all observation is reduced to coincidences and pointer-readings, can we ever infer from it anything but a system of relationship of coincidences and pointer-readings? In one sense the answer is No. But if the question is put in the form “Can we by manipulating pointer- readings ever arrive at a knowledge which does not smell of pointer-readings?” I suggest that it might equally well be asked “Can an artist by manipulating paint ever achieve a creation which does not smell of paint? ” But I do not wish to set this question aside Hghtly, for it goes to the very heart of the difference between the new and the old scientific outlook. We shall see later that a scheme of relationship, or a structure, has a significance which can be abstracted from the intrinsic nature of that which is the subject of the relation¬ ship. The structure is the object of our search, and when we have reached knowledge of the structure we can disregard the scaffolding by which we reached it. It does not lessen the dignity of the structure that its elements are pointer- readings—which after all is only the story teller’s name for them. If none of the images which constitute our sensory per¬ ception are appUcable to the physical world, in what form can our knowledge of the physical world be expressed ? We have deciphered our cryptogram, but the result is a message couched in unknown language which we have no hope of translating into the language of the story teller. It does not, however, follow that it is unintelhgible to the mind. Perception is only part of our mental outfit, and the language of perceiving is only part of the language of knowing. Our reading of the cipher of experience leads to an understanding