Project Gutenberg #77427
The Analysis of Matter
Bertrand Russell
1927Russell's philosophical treatment of physics and matter, prepared section by section from Project Gutenberg HTML.
Project Gutenberg #77427 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for MojiMori from public-domain source metadata
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AI Summary
Chapter XXVI — NON-MENTAL ANALOGUES TO PERCEPTION Central question Are there physical processes analogous to perception without consciousness? Main argument Russell explores processes in the non-mental world that...
valid arguments against this view are to be derived from physics. The only legitimate attitude about the physical[Pg 271] world seems to be one of complete agnosticism as regards all but its mathematical properties. However, something can be done in the way of constructing possible physical worlds which fulfil the equations of physics and yet resemble rather more closely the world of perception than does the world ordinarily presented in physics. Such constructions have the merit of making the inference from perception to physics seem more reliable, since they save us from the necessity of assuming anything radically different from what we know. From this point of view, they have a certain interest, and I shall partially develop them, at least as regards space-time, in Part III. But they must not be confounded with scientific knowledge: they are hypotheses which may hereafter prove fruitful, and which have already a certain imaginative value. But they are not to be regarded as necessitated by any recognized principle of scientific inference.