The Writings of Charles De Koninck: Volume 1

The Philosophy of Exact Science

section t wo The Philosophy of Exact Science In the second and third sections we propose to give as objective as possible an exposition of the doctrine contained in the different philosophical works of our author. Is this possible? Let us from the outset introduce necessary reservations. We have, first of all, our own philosophy, and I think it is difficult to abstract from it.When a non-scholastic author speaks of “reality,”“actuality ,”and of “substance,”and so on, and does not give us a sufficiently precise definition of these terms, we are inclined to assimilate the meaning of these expressions to our own. And in the case of Eddington who does not pretend to give us a well-defined and achieved system, the danger is considerable . It is indeed possible that here and there I force the matter. Sometimes he comes remarkably close to a metaphysics akin to ours and then goes in a direction in which he would refuse to follow us. The doctrine treated here was dispersed almost everywhere in a sketchy manner. The very wish to systematize ideas not always firmly delineated runs serious risks, and we will not be able to systematize them without tightening them. All the same, we cannot simply juxtapose his ideas and make a dictionary. But we will refrain from tightening them too much. By seeking to establish an explicit continuity among these elements, we are doing something that Eddington has not done for us. One further remark.We cannot study all the points that Eddington calls “philosophical.” The meaning of this term is very ambiguous among the English, as we shall soon see. Even problems to which scholastics have given a philosophical value will not occupy us. Such as the problem of the end of the universe based on the second fundamental law of thermodynamics .13 This physical law, whatever its real value, cannot be made into a philosophical truth. The philosopher can have his own reasons for predicting the end of the universe,but these will never be assimilable by the physicist. A theory can be scientifically true, but that does not give it a value, or rather a meaning, that is philosophical.  The restriction that we impose on ourselves is not arbitrary. We find its basis in distinctions made by Eddington himself. Thus, the distinction he makes between “the point of view” of relativity and the “principle” of relativity . The first is clearly philosophical. But Eddington does not explicitly characterize it as such.And the same is true for the problem of indeterminism. Chapter I. The Sources Space, Time, and Gravitation is the first philosophical work of Eddington. He wrote it as a result of the famous expedition to Sobral and to the Isle of Prince that he himself organized. Einstein’s theories had been received with a great deal of skepticism by English physicists and philosophers. Eddington perceived that the prejudices were philosophical and not of the scientific order. And it seems to us that he succeeded wonderfully in dissipating them. The Nature of the Physical World is the series of Gifford Lectures that he delivered in Edinburgh in 1927. Their subject was dictated by the foundation . It is thanks to these requirements that we have a view of the whole on his philosophy. The conferences that he gave before these appeared contain nothing that is not assimilated in them. Science and the Unseen World is a lecture as well, one he gave to a religious society, the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers. They contain important precisions on the problem of God and on the religious problem generally. Since then we have from him two important philosophical articles. The first, “Physics and Philosophy,” appeared in Philosophy. This was a lecture given before the British Philosophical Association. The second appeared in the Collection des Actualités Scientifiques et Industrielles. Both are above all precisions on the problem of indeterminism. Two other works, less philosophical , but which contain many important precisions, have been used: above all, Mathematical Theory of Relativity (1923), an elaboration of the appendix to the French translation of Space, Time, and Gravitation, which was exclusively mathematical;14 second, the little book, The Expanding Universe (1933), which contains interesting remarks on physical theory. I do not think that one can find any evolution in Eddington’s ideas. The extensions and clarifications of the more recent contributions are all in The Philosophy of Sir...