Page:Eddington A. Space Time and Gravitation. 1920.djvu/213

XII] world of perception necessarily carries with it the law of gravitation, all the laws of mechanics, and the introduction of the ordinary space and time of experience. Our whole theory has really been a discussion of the most general way in which permanent substance can be built up out of relations; and it is the mind which, by insisting on regarding only the things that are permanent, has actually imposed these laws on an indifferent world. Nature has had very little to do with the matter; she had to provide a basis—point-events; but practically anything would do for that purpose if the relations were of a reasonable degree of complexity. The relativity theory of physics reduces everything to relations; that is to say, it is structure, not material, which counts. The structure cannot be built up with out material; but the nature of the material is of no importance. We may quote a passage from Bertrand Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy.

"There has been a great deal of speculation in traditional philosophy which might have been avoided if the importance of structure, and the difficulty of getting behind it, had been realised. For example it is often said that space and time are subjective, but they have objective counterparts; or that phenomena are subjective, but are caused by things in themselves, which must have differences inter se corresponding with the differences in the phenomena to which they give rise. Where such hypotheses are made, it is generally supposed that we can know very little about the objective counterparts. In actual fact, however, if the hypotheses as stated were correct, the objective counterparts would form a world having the same structure as the phenomenal world…. In short, every proposition having a communicable significance must be true of both worlds or of neither: the only difference must lie in just that essence of individuality which always eludes words and baffles description, but which for that very reason is irrelevant to science."

This is how our theory now stands.—We have a world of point-events with their primary interval-relations. Out of these an unlimited number of more complicated relations and qualities can be built up mathematically, describing various features of the state of the world. These exist in nature in the same sense as an unlimited number of walks exist on an open moor. But