Page:Philosophical Review Volume 22.djvu/699

683 No. 6.] SUMMARIES OF ARTICLES. 683 but departed from through the action of a known added cause. We find, as Poincaré says, that continuity really reigns in the realm of matter. The great tendency in modern science is to emphasize discontinuity, even energy being declared to be of an atomic nature. Time also would become discontinuous, if the principle of relativity in an extreme sense establishes itself. But the speaker believes that the atomic hypothesis cannot be pressed too far, and is an upholder of ultimate continuity and the ether of space. The attempt to make space and time discontinuous quantities is unjustifiable, as we know nothing about them experimentally. They are ultimate data, abstractions based on experience, not concrete physical entities. Is ether also an abstraction? Although the difficulty of experimenting on ether is well known, still we can know one thing about it that is metrical in character, namely, the velocity with which it can transmit transverse waves. This proves it a physical agent. We cannot, it is true, observe motion in relation to the ether, as curious compensating effects always come in. This is readily explained on the basis of the electrical theory of matter. If it be true, all material interaction will be electrical, i.e., etherial. As every kind of force would then be transmitted by the ether, the fact that all our apparatus is traveling together at one and the same pace would eliminate our chance of detecting the motion. It is predicted, however, that our motion through the ether will some day be detected by comparing our speed with that of light. At least, the electrical theory of matter, which assumes the ether, is positive and gets results, the principle of relativity is negative, and involves a virtual denial of the existence of ether. And yet this ether is the engine of continuity, without which matter would be merely a lot of chaotic fragments. Still it is denied because it cannot be sensed. This is what science has no right to do. Comprehensive denials are beyond its field, although it may ignore, for practical purposes, any given hypothetical set of facts or explanations. All intellectual processes are based on abstraction. To deny effectively needs much more comprehensive knowledge than to assert, and this science does not possess. Its results are unquestioned as far as they go, but they ignore ultimate explanations, furnishing always proximate ones. They must be supplemented. Even the biologist is justified in attempting to state everything in terms of physics and chemistry for his practical purposes. But it must never be forgotten that this does not exhaust the phenomena of life. Whenever the scientist goes too far and denies the existence of what he abstracts from, we must appeal to the direct experience of the everyday world. Also, the fact that we do not perceive a force, does not prove its non-existence. The biologist who denies life and design ignores much that he cannot explain. And so with other questions. Immortality, intuition and revelation, psychical phenomena, discarnate intelligence that may interact with us on the material side, are open questions and are some of them susceptible to investigation. Scientific method is not the only way to truth. The actions of the Deity make no appeal to special sense, only a universal appeal, and our methods cannot detect uniformity.