THE NATURE OF REALITY 449 



of everyday objects, but must be pure creations. Examine 

 some of them — finite space, empty space, expanding space, 

 seven-dimensional space. What are these but structures of 

 pure thought? Or consider the notion of a sequence of events 

 following a probability rather than a causal sequence. What 

 can this be but a pure mathematical creation, "incapable of 

 realization in any sense which would properly be described as 

 material? " x Whatever is created out of pure thought must 

 be pure thought. 



But, granting that this is the starting-point for Jeans's re- 

 flections, his conclusion is quite different from that of Edding- 

 ton. Both astronomers recognize, apparently, that scientific 

 knowledge is merely symbolic. But it is not clear from their 

 writings whether they are conscious of the nature of symbolic 

 reference. As has already been seen in Chapter III, every 

 symbol aims to represent its referent, and thus may be said 

 to be in some sense "like" its referent; but no symbol is able 

 to portray all of the features of the referent, hence is obliged 

 to omit one or more of them. Given any symbol, therefore, 

 one may infer the referent, since the symbol resembles it, but 

 not all of the referent, since the symbol is an abstraction. 

 Jeans accepts the former but forgets the latter; Eddington 

 accepts the latter but forgets the former. Hence for Jeans 

 the fact that scientific symbols are mathematical permits one 

 to infer that reality is mathematical, but for Eddington the 

 same fact argues for a non-mathematical residue. 



Through this mode of inference Jeans arrives at the con- 

 clusion that reality is a world of pure thought. But it is not 

 the same type of thought which Eddington finds. The uni- 

 verse exhibits evidence of a designing power, which has much 

 in common with our individual minds. But it is not emotion, 

 morality, or esthetic enjoyment which we discover in nature. 

 Instead it is something which we find hard to describe, but 

 which we may characterize as "mathematical thinking." 2 

 The Great Architect of the Universe appears, when we ex- 

 amine his work, not as a personal being but as a pure mathe- 



i Ibid., p. 166. 2 Ibid., pp. 186-187. 



