REVIEWS 



Perception, Physics, and Reality : An Enquiry into the Information that 

 Physical Science can Supply about the Real. By C. D. Broad, M.A. 

 [Pp. xii + 388.] (Cambridge : University Press, 1914. Price 10s. net.) 



The volume under review is a slight expansion of a thesis submitted for Fellow- 

 ships at Trinity College, Cambridge. Mr. Broad was duly awarded a Fellowship, 

 and it is interesting to note that the University of Cambridge encourages those of 

 its own graduates whose work shows exceptional merit. This is noteworthy in 

 the present instance, because the intellectual standard of the volume is superior 

 to that of the ordinary student's thesis. Moreover, Mr. Broad shows scant 

 respect for constituted authority, past or present. 



It must not be inferred from the above that the volume contains anything 

 specially original or startling. While it can hardly be described as a work of 

 genius, it is a solid, balanced, well-argued essay in metaphysics. Its main thesis 

 is strongly reminiscent of Mr. Bradley's epigram : " Metaphysics is the finding of 

 bad reasons for what we believe on instinct, but to find those reasons is no less 

 an instinct." We quote the epigram with the proviso that Mr. Broad's reasons 

 are somewhat better than usual. Mr. Broad is one of the new realists. The 

 natural assumption of the average man is that of naif realism. 



" Common sense is naively realistic wherever it does not think that there is 

 some positive reason why it should cease to be so. And this is so in the vast 

 majority of its perceptions. When we see a tree we think that it is really green 

 and really waving about in precisely the same way as it appears to be. . . . 



" But, as every one knows, we do not stay in this happy condition of innocence 

 for long. We have perceptions which are believed to be illusory, by which it is 

 meant that their objects only exist when they are perceived. . . ." (p. 1.) 



Mr. Broad's conclusion is not quite so simple, but is as near as philosophic 

 reasoning will permit. The assumption underlying the whole argument is that, 

 if we reason deeply enough and go far enough, the truth about existence is very 

 much that which the average common-sense man unconsciously assumes. The 

 book might well be entitled a refutation of idealism, had not that title already been 

 used by another recently published work. 



So far so good ; but the special relevance of physics to the discussion is not 

 yet quite clear. Mr. Broad starts with an advantage shared by few in the 

 philosophical world. Without being a specialist in any branch of science, and 

 without (so far as we are aware) having added anything to scientific knowledge 

 and research, he has studied some branches thoroughly enough to speak of 

 matters scientific from direct personal acquaintance. We can thus be confident 

 that his work will be free from the blunders and misunderstandings to which 

 philosophers are so liable when they write about science without a sound 

 groundwork of detailed knowledge. It must be said, however, that the science 

 and the philosophy rarely come into direct contact. The ostensible object of the 

 volume is '' to attempt to discover how much natural science can actually tell us 

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