The present book embodies a study of some aspects of Western culture during the past three centuries, in so far as it has been influenced by the development of science. This study has been guided by the conviction that the mentality of an epoch springs from the view of the world which is, in fact, dominant in the educated sections of the communities in question. There may be more than one such scheme, corresponding to cultural divisions. The various human interests which suggest cosmologies, and

The progress of civilisation is not wholly a uniform drift towards better things. It may perhaps wear this aspect if we map it on a scale which is large enough. But such broad views obscure the details on which rest our whole understanding of the process. New epochs emerge with comparative suddenness, if we have regard to the scores of thousands of years throughout which the complete history extends. Secluded races suddenly take their places in the main stream of events: technological discoverie

The science of Pure Mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit. Another claimant for this position is music. But we will put aside all rivals, and consider the ground on which such a claim can be made for mathematics. The originality of mathematics consists in the fact that in mathematical science connections between things are exhibited which, apart from the agency of human reason, are extremely unobvious. Thus the ideas, now in the m

The previous chapters were devoted to the antecedent conditions which prepared the soil for the scientific outburst of the seventeenth century. They traced the various elements of thought and instinctive belief, from their first efflorescence in the classical civilisation of the ancient world, through the transformations which they underwent in the Middle Ages, up to the historical revolt of the sixteenth century. Three main factors arrested attention,—the rise of mathematics, the instinctive be

In so far as the intellectual climates of different epochs can be contrasted, the eighteenth century in Europe was the complete antithesis to the Middle Ages. The contrast is symbolised by the difference between the cathedral of Chartres and the Parisian salons, where D’Alembert conversed with Voltaire. The Middle Ages were haunted with the desire to rationalise the infinite: the men of the eighteenth century rationalised the social life of modern communities, and based their sociological theori

My last lecture described the influence upon the eighteenth century of the narrow and efficient scheme of scientific concepts which it had inherited from its predecessor. That scheme was the product of a mentality which found the Augustinian theology extremely congenial. The Protestant Calvinism and the Catholic Jansenism exhibited man as helpless to co-operate with Irresistible Grace: the contemporary scheme of science exhibited man as helpless to co-operate with the irresistable mechanism of n

My previous lecture was occupied with the comparison of the nature-poetry of the romantic movement in England with the materialistic scientific philosophy inherited from the eighteenth century. It noted the entire disagreement of the two movements of thought. The lecture also continued the endeavour to outline an objectivist philosophy, capable of bridging the gap between science and that fundamental intuition of mankind which finds its expression in poetry and its practical exemplification in t

In the previous lectures of this course we have considered the antecedent conditions which led up to the scientific movement, and have traced the progress of thought from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century this history falls into three parts, so far as it is to be grouped around science. These divisions divisions are, the contact between the romantic movement and science, the development of technology and physics in the earlier part of the century, and lastly th

The theory of relativity has justly excited a great amount of public attention. But, for all its importance, it has not been the topic which has chiefly absorbed the recent interest of physicists. Without question that position is held by the quantum theory. The point of interest in this theory is that, according to it, some effects which appear essentially capable of gradual increase or gradual diminution are in reality to be increased or decreased only by certain definite jumps. It is as thoug

In the present lecture, it is my object to consider some reactions of science upon the stream of philosophic thought during the modern centuries with which we are concerned. I shall make no attempt to compress a history of modern philosophy within the limits of one lecture. We shall merely consider some contacts between science and philosophy, in so far as they lie within the scheme of thought which it is the purpose of these lectures to develop. For this reason the whole of the great German ide

In the previous chapters I have been examining the reactions of the scientific movement upon the deeper issues which have occupied modern thinkers. No one man, no limited society of men, and no one epoch can think of everything at once. Accordingly for the sake of eliciting the various impacts of science upon thought, the topic has been treated historically. In this retrospect I have kept in mind that the ultimate issue of the whole story is the patent dissolution of the comfortable scheme of sc

Aristotle found it necessary to complete his metaphysics by the introduction of a Prime Mover—God. This, for two reasons, is an important fact in the history of metaphysics. In the first place if we are to accord to anyone the position of the greatest metaphysician, having regard to genius of insight, to general equipment in knowledge, and to the stimulus of his metaphysical ancestry, we must choose Aristotle. Secondly, in his consideration of this metaphysical question he was entirely dispassio

The difficulty in approaching the question of the relations between Religion and Science is, that its elucidation requires that we have in our minds some clear idea of what we mean by either of the terms, ‘religion’ and ‘science.’ Also I wish to speak in the most general way possible, and to keep in the background any comparison of particular creeds, scientific or religious. We have got to understand the type of connection which exists between the two spheres, and then to draw some definite conc

It has been the purpose of these lectures to analyse the reactions of science in forming that background of instinctive ideas which control the activities of successive generations. Such a background takes the form of a certain vague philosophy as to the last word about things, when all is said. The three centuries, which form the epoch of modern science, have revolved round the ideas of God , mind , matter , and also of space and time in their characters of expressing simple location for matter