Page:Science and the Modern World.djvu/46

 such-and-such purely abstract conditions, then they must have other relations which satisfy other purely abstract conditions.

Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about. So far is this view of mathematics from being obvious, that we can easily assure ourselves that it is not, even now, generally understood. For example, it is habitually thought that the certainty of mathematics is a reason for the certainty of our geometrical knowledge of the space of the physical universe. This is a delusion which has vitiated much philosophy in the past, and some philosophy in the present. This question of geometry is a test case of some urgency. There are certain alternative sets of purely abstract conditions possible for the relationships of groups of unspecified entities, which I will call geometrical conditions. I give them this name because of their general analogy to those conditions, which we believe to hold respecting the particular geometrical relations of things observed by us in our direct perception of nature. So far as our observations are concerned, we are not quite accurate enough to be certain of the exact conditions regulating the things we come across in nature. But we can by a slight stretch of hypothesis identify these observed conditions with some one set of the purely abstract geometrical conditions. In doing so, we make a particular determination of the group of unspecified entities which are the relata in the abstract science. In the pure mathematics of geometrical relationships, we say that, if any group of entities enjoy any relationships among its members satisfying this set of abstract