Page:ScienceAndHypothesis1905.djvu/112

 me to calculate the age of the captain. When you have measured every fragment of wood in a ship you will have many equations, but you will be no nearer knowing the captain's age. All your measurements bearing on your fragments of wood can tell you only what concerns those fragments; and similarly, your experiments, however numerous they may be, referring only to the relations of bodies with one another, will tell you nothing about the mutual relations of the different parts of space.

7. Will you say that if the experiments have reference to the bodies, they at least have reference to the geometrical properties of the bodies. First, what do you understand by the geometrical properties of bodies? I assume that it is a question of the relations of the bodies to space. These properties therefore are not reached by experiments which only have reference to the relations of bodies to one another, and that is enough to show that it is not of those properties that there can be a question. Let us therefore begin by making ourselves clear as to the sense of the phrase: geometrical properties of bodies. When I say that a body is composed of several parts, I presume that I am thus enunciating a geometrical property, and that will be true even if I agree to give the improper name of points to the very small parts I am considering. When I say that this or that part of a certain body is in contact with this or that part of another body, I am