ISO SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



is the right course to adopt as regards these alternatives. 

 The logical analysis we have been considering provides 

 the apparatus for dealing with the various hypotheses, 

 and the empirical decision between them is a problem for 

 the psychologist. 



(3) We have now to consider the logical answer to the 

 alleged difficulties of the mathematical theory of motion, 

 or rather to the positive theory which is urged on the 

 other side. The view urged explicitly by Bergson, and 

 implied in the doctrines of many philosophers, is, that a 

 motion is something indivisible, not validly analysable 

 into a series of states. This is part of a much more 

 general doctrine, which holds that analysis always falsifies, 

 because the parts of a complex whole are different, as 

 combined in that whole, from what they would otherwise 

 be. It is very difficult to state this doctrine in any form 

 which has a precise meaning. Often arguments are used 

 which have no bearing whatever upon the question. It 

 is urged, for example, that when a man becomes a father, 

 his nature is altered by the new relation in which he finds 

 himself, so that he is not strictly identical with the man 

 who was previously not a father. This may be true, but 

 it is a causal psychological fact, not a logical fact. The 

 doctrine would require that a man who is a father cannot 

 be strictly identical with a man who is a son, because he 

 is modified in one way by the relation of fatherhood and 

 in another by that of sonship. In fact, we may give a 

 precise statement of the doctrine we are combating in the 

 form : There can never be two facts concerning the same thing. 

 A fact concerning a thing always is or involves a relation 

 to one or more entities ; thus two facts concerning the 

 same thing would involve two relations of the same 

 thing. But the doctrine in question holds that a thing 

 is so modified by its relations that it cannot be the same 



