THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 37 



same universe on each occasion. It does not warrant a pre- 

 diction of the behaviour of the water in the bucket if the whole 

 of the rest of the universe were removed even supposing that 

 it is legitimate to assume that such a thing could happen.* 



It is plain that such arguments cannot disprove the existence 

 of absolute space. They cannot, that is to say, prove that it is 

 meaningless to suppose the whole universe to be moved, each 

 point of it, 1000 miles from its present place, along lines 

 parallel to the line joining, at a given moment, given points on 

 the earth and the sun. It seems, then, that we may fairly 

 apply an argument which Mr. Bradley has on more than one 

 occasion claimed the right to use, and has expressed in the 

 epigrammatic form, "What is possible and what a general 

 principle compels us to say must be, that certainly &."f 

 The arguments of Newton, and the similar modern ones 

 to which I have alluded, are reasons why absolute space 

 M must be/' which, as Mr. Russell remarks, still await refutation. 

 Meanwhile fresh difficulties may be accumulated for the 

 philosophers who take up, under the distinguished leadership 

 of Mach, the extreme empiricist position. We have already 

 seen that these writers maintain that Newton's concept of 

 action between mass-points is merely a useful mode of analysing 

 for descriptive purposes certain events that are in the habit of 

 taking place in our corner of the actual presented universe ; 

 and that we have no right to suppose that it would prescribe 

 the behaviour of another material universe, nor even of the 

 present one if its configuration were to be modified to a serious 

 extent. This doctrine of the economical function of scientific 

 concepts is not in itself necessarily incompatible with absolute 

 space, but the temptation to extend it so as to give an account 

 of the origin of the two " single continuous receptacles " which 

 contain the whole manifold of human experience is one which 



* Cf. Stallo, Concepts of Modern Physics, p. 200. 

 t Op. cit., p. 196. 



