Physics and Philosophy

REVIEWS 469 headed. It is an interpretation that one hopes will be resisted by critics who wish to preserve "The Scholar Gipsy" as the great and unified poem it is. This is an instance of criticism marred by learning. If Mr Stanley's over-ingenious explanation of the ending of the poem is correct, then Arnold himself is less a poet than Mr Stanley on the whole thinks he is. The lecturer's treatment, though critical and discriminating, proceeds con amore from beginning to end. His own enthusiasm for Arnold passes to the reader, who rises from this book prepared to believe the brave suggestion of Sir Edmund Chambers that "the proportion of work which endures is greater in the, case of Matthew Arnold than in that of any of his six greatest contemporaries ." In this reviewer's judgment, Mr Stanley spends far too much of his limited space complaining against "the pert little critics of our day" who do not share his own passion for Arnold. He gives too often the unfortunate air of always contending against something . But this is only the defect of the book's very real qualities. It succeeds in reminding us of those things about Matthew Arnold which cannot be too often repeated-of his inspired intoleration of ugliness in aU forms of human life, of his extraordinary intelligence, which was in itself a form of genius, and of doctrines salutary even for our own disordered time. No book on Arnold is a good book unless it is also noble. And this is a noble one. PHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY* FRANK ALLEN Physics is the father of philosophy. Out of the early speculations on physical science by the Greek philosophers, beginning with Thales,ph.ilosophy itself arose. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that in that stirring period of intellectual awakening physical science was at first scarcely differentiated from philosophy. It is well to remember that not u.ntil about 1870 was the term "physics" generally accepted to replace the older and much more significant expression "natural philosophy." During the middle ages, how- "On Underslanding Physics, by W. H. Watson {Assistant Professor of Physics, McGill University], Cambridge University Press (Toronto, Macmillan Co. of Canada), 1938, $2.25. 470 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY ever, philosophy, which for centuries had been the dominant interest, and physics drifted apart as the former became more speculative and the latter more restricted in scope and more rigid in formulation. During the present century the developments of physics have converged more clearly than ever before upon the fundamental concepts of nature, with a corresponding change in the character of the subject, so that a rapprochement of the two great departments of knowledge is evidently in progress. For, as Professor Watson remarks, "the interest of physicists in philosophy and of philosophers in physics is greater than at any time in the last two hundred years." The reviewer found it a little difficult at first to orient himself in Dr Watson's argument, but once his standpoint was attained the discussions began to fall naturally in order. For philosophy in Dr Watson's book is not the traditional philosophy of the philosophers , which generally deals with subjects of little interest to physicists, and for which Dr Watson has perhaps a rather scanty respect. But the philosophy which he trenchantly urges upon physicists is philosophy in Wittgenstein's sense, "that activity which is one of the heirs of what was once called philosophy," or more definitely a symbolic logic. By becoming clear about the nature of symbolism in general, Dr Watson correctly argues, physicists will become more clear about physics, which itself abounds in symbolism. "To interest physicists in Wittgenstein's philosophy and to show its value for clarifying physics-especially mechanics which is the logical backbone of the subject," Dr Watson develops his argument in six brief chapters. Systematically he proceeds from Discipline in Philosophy, through Logic and Psychology and Physics, Methods of Representation) the Nature of Mechanism, the Logic of Substance and Motion, finally to Some Aspects of the Symbolism of Mechanics and Electricity. The distinction between the methods of philosophy and physics is sharply drawn. In physics the...