Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.djvu/18



1.5 The fundamental assumption to be elaborated in the course of this enquiry is that the ultimate facts of nature, in terms of which all physical and biological explanation must be expressed, are events connected by their spatio-temporal relations, and that these relations are in the main reducible to the property of events that they can contain (or extend over) other events which are parts of them. In other words, in the place of emphasising space and time in their capacity of disconnecting, we shall build up an account of their complex essences as derivative from the ultimate ways in which those things, ultimate in science, are interconnected. In this way the data of science, those concepts in terms of which all scientific explanation must be expressed, will be more clearly apprehended. But before proceeding to our constructive task, some further realisation of the perplexities introduced by the traditional concepts is necessary.

2. Philosophic Relativity. 2.1 The philosophical principle of the relativity of space means that the properties of space are merely a way of expressing relations between things ordinarily said to be ‘in space’ Namely, when two things are said to be both in space what is meant is that they are mutually related in a certain definite way which is termed ‘spatial.’ It is an immediate consequence of this theory that all spatial entities such as points, straight lines and planes are merely complexes of relations between things or of possible relations between things.

For consider the meaning of saying that a particle P is at a point Q. This statement conveys substantial information and must therefore convey something more than the barren assertion of self-identity ‘P is P.’ Thus