September 8, 1923] 



NA TURE 



Z77 



The Liverpool Meeting of 



THE following Dominion and foreign representa- 

 tives are expected to be present at the Liver- 

 pool meeting of the British Association which begins 

 on Wednesday next, September 12. In the pro- 

 grammes of the various Sections, published in last 

 week's issue, announcement was made of papers to be 

 read by these visitors and of discussions in which they 

 will take part. 



Prof. F. D. Adams, McGill University, Montreal. 



Prof. W. D. Bancroft, Cornell University, .Ithaca. 



Prof. N. Bohr, Institut for Teoretisk Fysik, Copen- 

 hagen. 



]Mr. S. C. Brooks, Hygienic Laboratory, Washington. 



Dr. Herbert Bruce, University of Toronto. 



Prof. A. H. R. Buller, University of Manitoba, 

 Winnipeg. 



Senatore Principe G. Conti, Florence. 



Dr. D. Coster, Copenhagen. 



Prof. P. Ehrenfest, University of Leyden. 



Prof. E. Ekwall, University of Lund. 



Prof. A. S. Eve, McGill Univarsity, Montreal. 



Dr. K. G. Falk, New York. 



Prof. J. C. Fields, University of Toronto. 



Prof. V. M. Goldschmidt, Universitetets Mineralogisk 

 Institut, Kristiania. 



Prof. V. E. Henderson, University of Toronto. 



Dr. G. Hevesy, Copenhagen. 



Prof. D. R. Hoagland, University of California. 



Prof. O. Jespersen, Copenhagen. 



Prof. A. E. Kennelly, Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology, Cambridge, Mass. 



Dr. P. L. Kramp, Zoological Museum, Copenhagen. 



Dr. A. C. Kruyt, University of Utrecht. 



Prof. P. Langevin, College de France, Paris. 



Dr. V. Lebfelter, Folksgesundheitamt, Vienna. 



the British Association. 



Prof. F. S. Lee, Columbia University, New York. 



Prof. G. N. Lewis, University of California. 



Prof. A. B. Macallum, McGill University, Montreal. 



Prof. J. C. McLennan, University of Toronto. 



Prof. J. J. R. Macleod, University of Toronto. 



Prof. R. Magnus, University of Utrecht. 



Prof. A. P. Mathews, University of Cincinnati. 



Prof. E. Merritt, Cornell University, Ithaca, New 

 York. 



Prof. A. R. Moore, Rutgers College, New Bruns- 

 wick, N.J. 



Dr. Th. Mortensen, Universitetets Zoologiska Museum, 

 Copenhagen. 



Prof. W. A. Noyes, University of Illinois. 



Prof. Sven Oden, Kgl. Tekniska Hogskolan, Stockholm. 



Prof. W. A. Parkes, University of Toronto. 



Prof. M. I. Pupin, Columbia University, New York. 



Prof. H. M. Quanjer, Institut voor Phytopathologie, 

 Wageningen, Holland. 



Prof. Roule, Musee d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. 



Prof. R. L. Sackett, State College, Pennsylvania. 



Prof. J. Satterly, University of Toronto. 



Dr. Johs. Schmidt, Carlsberg Laboratorium, Copen- 

 hagen. 



Prof. J. Sebelien, Aas, Norway. 



Prof. H. B. Speakman, University of Toronto. 



Dr. V. Stefansson, Canada. 



Prof. J. Tate, McGill University, Montreal. 



Prof. W. Vernadsky, Paris. 



Senatore Prof. V. Volterra, University of Rome. 



Dr. G. S. Whitby, McGill University, Montreal. 



Prof. A. Willey, McGill University, Montreal. 



Prof. R. W. Wood, Johns Hopkins University, 

 Baltimore. 



Prof. H. Zwaardemaker, Universitas Rheno-Traiec- 

 tina, Utrecht. 



Relativity and Theory of Knowledge. 



'T^HE Scandinavian Scientific Review'^ — a new 

 -'- quarterly in English published in Norway — 

 contains in its first number an original and im- 

 portant piece of philosophical research in an article 

 entitled " The Theory of Relativity and its Bearing 

 upon Epistemology," by Prof. Harald K. Schjelderup, 

 the recently appointed professor of philosophy in the 

 University of Christiania. The author is already 

 distinguished in his own country, although he is 

 probably the youngest occupant of a chair of philo- 

 sophy, having been born in 1895. 



The article begins with a lucid exposition of the 

 principle of relativity which calls for no special remark, 

 but it proceeds to examine the consequence of its 

 acceptance in physics for theory of knowledge. It is 

 obvious that it must make a clean sweep of all naively 

 realistic theories, materialistic or spiritualistic, which 

 assume the physical reality of the universe to be pre- 

 sented objectively to the mind of the observer for his 

 discernment by means of sense discrimination. But 

 does it accord with idealism ? Does it deny that 

 there is any objective universe to which knowledge can 

 attain ? Does it require us to be content with the 

 subjective space -time universes of individual ob- 

 servers ? Prof. Schjelderup answers emphatically. 

 No. Relativity gives us not a relative but an abso- 

 lute universe, a universe the scientific reality of which, 

 however, is completely different in its nature from 

 anything which men of science have hitherto im- 

 ii,aned or thought it necessary to assume. The 

 Minkowski four-dimensional space-time universe is 



' Scandinavian Scientific Review : Contributions to Philosophy, Psycho- 

 i;y and the Science of Education by Northern Scientists. Vol. 1., No. i, 

 Pp. 136. (Kristiania : Scandinavian Scientific Press A/S, 



ptember. 

 22). 



absolute, in precisely the same sense in which 

 Newton's three-dimensional space and independent 

 variable time were absolute, and the world-lines of 

 the Minkowski universe with their intersecting points 

 determined by Gaussian co-ordinates are real in the 

 objective sense, but the reality is not sense-presented, 

 it is unimaginable and imperceptible. It consists, 

 like the reality of Pythagoras, of numbers. 



The point of special interest in the argument is the 

 way in which the author brings out the deciding in- 

 fluence in physical theory which the epistemological 

 weakness of the older mechanics has had. It was 

 Galileo, the founder of modern physics, who, in his dis- 

 crimination between what he called the accidental and 

 the essential attributes of things, first suggested the 

 distinction between secondary and primary qualities, 

 which has played a determining part in later theories 

 of knowledge. Galileo found his interpreter in 

 Descartes, who reduced physical reality to extension 

 and movement. The principle of relativity has 

 eliminated even the primary qualities from the 

 subject-matter of physics. 



Similarly in the relation of Kant to Newton, we see 

 the directive force of the epistemological weakness of 

 a physical theory. The subjectivity of time and 

 space in the Kantian theory meant their transcen- 

 dental ideality. Abstracted from the subjective con- 

 ditions of sensory observation they are invalid. But 

 relativity goes further, it eliminates time and space 

 not only from an unknowable thing-in-itself, but even 

 from the subject-matter of physics. To us to-day the 

 principle of relativity is not a return to older philo- 

 sophical concepts, but a forward movement looking 

 for a new philosopher to interpret a new epistemology. 



NO. 



2810, VOL. I 12] 



