Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.djvu/9



Also at the date of writing the evidence for some of the consequences of Einstein’s theory is ambiguous and even adverse. In connection with the theory of relativity I have received suggestive stimulus from Dr L. Silberstein’s Theory of Relativity, and from an important Memoir by Profs. E. B. Wilson and G. N. Lewis.

The discussion of the deduction of scientific concepts from the simplest elements of our perceptual knowledge at once brings us to philosophical theory. Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Mill, Huxley, Bertrand Russell and Bergson, among others, have initiated and sustained relevant discussions. But this enquiry is touched by only one side of the philosophical debate. We are concerned only with Nature, that is, with the object of perceptual knowledge, and not with the synthesis of the knower with the known. This distinction is exactly that which separates natural philosophy from meta physics. Accordingly none of our perplexities as to Nature will be solved by having recourse to the consideration that there is a mind knowing it. Our theme is the coherence of the known, and the perplexity which we are unravelling is as to what it is that is known. In matters philosophic the obligations of an author to others usually arise from schools of debate rather than from schools of agreement. Also such schools are the more important in proportion as assertion and retort do not have to wait for the infrequent opportunities of formal publication, hampered by the formidable permanence of the printed word. At the present moment England is fortunate in this respect. London, Oxford and Cambridge are within easy reach of each other, and