472 



NA TURE 



[October 7, 1922 



universe would be an object of intuition, that is, would 

 form a picture, at least to God. According to Einstein, 

 we cannot say, speaking absolutely, that there is any 

 picture even for God. The picture is only known as a 

 function of the frame. That is, the things measured 

 are only known through the measurings, and the 

 measurings are bound up with the things they 

 serve to measure. The understanding of this reci- 

 procity makes it impossible to separate and consider 

 apart what, for the convenience of language alone, we 

 distinguish as frame and picture. Science goes in a 

 kind of perpetual oscillation, with an ever-narrowing 

 adaptation, from the measured to the measuring, from 

 the measuring to the measured. Thus, considered 

 from the point of view of the measuring, it is impossible 

 by any physical means whatever to reveal a uniform 

 movement of translation in which both the observer 

 and all that he observes participate. Considered from 

 the point of view of the measured, the velocity of light 

 is the only velocity which is unchanged when we pass 

 from one system of reference to another, and in the 

 electromagnetic universe this velocity plays the role 

 which infinite velocity formerly played in the mechan- 

 istic universe. The constancy of the velocity of light 

 implies further an irreducible plurality of physical 

 measurements of times, because the various groups of 

 observers cannot make clocks from which they can 

 detach themselves and compare them as instruments 

 with one another. They are themselves the inhabit- 

 ants of a clock, prisoners in their own time-measuring 

 instrument, bound to its state whether they suppose 

 it at rest or moving. 



To most of us, however, whether our interest in the 

 principle of relativity is scientific or philosophical, the 

 greatest stumbling-block is probably the hypothesis of 

 a finite universe. This seems a contradiction in thought 

 and at least an unnecessary appendage of the principle. 

 Prof. Brunschvicg shows us very clearly why the 

 equations lead necessarily to this hypothesis, for they 

 allow us to show that without it the total reduction of 

 inertia to reciprocal action between masses is impossible. 



The metaphysics which the new physics implies 

 means therefore a complete revolution both in philo- 

 sophy and science. As metaphysics it claims neither 

 priority over science nor independence of it, not even 

 the independence implied by Kant in the theory that 

 the conditions of experience are a priori. This is not 

 because metaphysics has learnt to be humble or to be 

 resigned, but because in reality there is a contradiction 

 in the very notion that by reflecting on science we can 

 disengage certain antecedent conditions capable of 

 enclosing all past and future knowledge in static 

 schemes. On the side of positive science we have 

 come to see that by the pure experimental method we 

 NO. 2762, VOL. I IO] 



are not and cannot be brought into contact with 

 elemental constituents of experience, whether material 

 as Democritus conceived them, or intelligible as Plato 

 conceived them, or sensible as Hume conceived them. 

 The realities we are dealing with in physical science are 

 statistical, so that all reflection on the results of ex- 

 periment is, not an approach to the absolute, but a 

 progress in the discovery of relativity. The early 

 nineteenth-century ideal of a pure positive science per- 

 petually progressive by means of a division of labour 

 has given place in the twentieth century to a new and 

 more subtle idea, the idea of a progress which is 

 reflective. 



(3) Prof. D. Nys's " La Notion d'espace " is a valuable 

 book, but belongs to a different category from that of the 

 two works we have mentioned. It is the fourth volume 

 of his " Cosmologie ou Etude philosophique du monde 

 inorganique," and is encyclopaedic in its treatment of 

 the subject. It includes in a general view of the various 

 philosophical doctrines a very clear account of the 

 recent theories with the criticisms upon them and is a 

 model of careful compilation. It develops no original 

 theory and is written from the point of view of neo- 

 scholasticism. 



(4) Mr. Shann's short treatise on " The Evolution of 

 Knowledge " is the work of one who knows how to 

 think out a problem for himself. It deals with a 

 different aspect of relativity from that of the physical 

 principle, namely, with the nature of the vital need 

 which has produced in man and some animals the 

 function of knowing. All those friends of Mr. Shann 

 who have received from him from time to time his 

 excellent privately printed pamphlets, bound in the 

 well-known scarlet wrapper, will welcome this pub- 

 lished work. II. Wildon Carr. 



Ceremonial Exchange. 



Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of 

 Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes 

 of Melanesian New Guinea. By Dr. Bronislaw 

 Malinowski. Pp. xxxii + 527. (London: G. Rout- 

 ledge and Sons, Ltd., 1922.) 21s. net. 



IN this volume Dr. Malinowski has given the first- 

 fruits of his extended stay in the Trobriands, a 

 group of islands off the south-east of New Guinea. A 

 good deal of more or less desultory information, pub- 

 lished in Government reports and elsewhere, has in- 

 dicated that these islanders differ in some respects from 

 their neighbours ; Dr. Malinowski now shows how 

 intimately they are all associated with one another, 

 not merely by ordinary trade, but by a hitherto un- 

 recorded and very remarkable system of ceremonial 



