Aristotelian Society Supplementary Vol 3: Relativity, Logic, and Mysticism; the Papers and Symposia for Discussion at the Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society, the Mind Association and the Scots Philosophical Club, Durham, July 13th–16th 1923

Abstract

AN article by Prof. Leon Brunschvicg in this volume, entitled “The Relation between the Mathematical and the Physical,” is a most important attempt to appreci ate the significance of the relativity principle in physics. In his view it alters completely the status hitherto assigned to mathematics, that of a formal abstract science dependent on physics for its material. The often-quoted saying of Mr. Russell that in mathematics we never know what we are talking about or whether what we are saying is true, no longer applies if we accept the theory of relativity. Physics is wholly dependent on mathematics for its subject matter. “The problem of mathematical physics has definitely and radically changed its meaning: it no longer needs to impose the apodeictic form of geometry on the world, but to adapt a certain type of geometry to the indications which the universe furnishes on its own account.”

Aristotelian Society. Supplementary Vol. 3: Relativity, Logic, and Mysticism; the Papers and Symposia for Discussion at the Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society, the Mind Association and the Scots Philosophical Club, Durham, July 13th–16th 1923.

Pp. ii + 184. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1923.) 15s. net.