148 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



world of sense continuous ? The answer here must, I 

 think, be in the negative. We may say that the 

 hypothesis of continuity is perfectly consistent with the 

 facts and with logic, and that it is technically simpler 

 than any other tenable hypothesis. But since our powers 

 of discrimination among very similar sensible objects are 

 not infinitely precise, it is quite impossible to decide 

 between different theories which only differ in regard to 

 what is below the margin of discrimination. If, for 

 example, a coloured surface which we see consists of a 

 finite number of very small surfaces, and if a motion 

 which we see consists, like a cinematograph, of a large 

 finite number of successive positions, there will be 

 nothing empirically discoverable to show that objects of 

 sense are not continuous. In what is called experienced 

 continuity, such as is said to be given in sense, there is a 

 large negative element : absence of perception of difference 

 occurs in cases which are thought to give perception of 

 absence of difference. When, for example, we cannot 

 distinguish a colour A from a colour B, nor a colour B 

 from a colour C, but can distinguish A from C, the 

 indistinguishability is a purely negative fact, namely, that 

 we do not perceive a difference. Even in regard to 

 immediate data, this is no reason for denying that there 

 is a difference. Thus, if we see a coloured surface whose 

 colour changes gradually, its sensible appearance if the 

 change is continuous will be indistinguishable from what 

 it would be if the change were by small finite jumps. If 

 this is true, as it seems to be, it follows that there can 

 never be any empirical evidence to demonstrate that the 

 sensible world is continuous, and not a collection of a 

 very large finite number of elements of which each differs 

 from its neighbour in a finite though very small degree. 

 The continuity of space and time, the infinite number of 



