STALLO'S " CONCEPTS OP MODERN PHYSICS.' 229 



PHILOSOPHY. 



REVIEW OF STALLO'S "CONCEPTS OF MODERN PHYSICS." 



DR. ROBERT G. ECCLES. 



The thirty-eighth volume of the International Scientific Series is a statement 

 in excellent form of the weak points of Modern Physics. Following the volumes 

 by Cooke, Stewart, Lommel, Lockyer, Wurtz and Young, nothing could be. more 

 opportune or better calculated to display the spirit of fairness of the managers 

 and publishers of the Series. The true spirit of science refuses to shield any 

 theory from attack, and firmly believes in the final triumph of the best. The 

 projectors of this literary enterprise have shown, from first to last, a keen appre- 

 ciation of this spirit and a determination, as far as they could, to foster it. Stal- 

 lo's "Concepts of Modern Physics " is a further guarantee on their part that they 

 will be impartial to the last while giving the public the best thoughts of the best 

 thinkers concerning the meaning of our multitudinous experiences, common and 

 scientific. The author hews with his axe at the very root of the philosophic side 

 of science. He looks into the minds of scientific philosophers and claims to dis- 

 cover there sources of illusion woven into the structure of the intellect itself. He 

 points out four fundamental assumptions as the byways from the true path into 

 which they tend to turn and lose themselves. These are : 



1. " That every concept is the counterpart of a distinct objective reality, 

 and that hence there are as many things, or natural classes of things, as there are 

 concepts or notions, 



2. "That the more general or extensive concepts and the realities corre- 

 sponding to them pre-exist to the less general, more comprehensive concepts and 

 their corresponding realities ; and that the latter concepts and realities are derived 

 from the former, either by a successive addition of attributes or properties, or by 

 a process of evolution, the attributes or properties of the former being taken as 

 implications of those of the latter. 



3. "That the order of the genesis of concepts is identical with the order of 

 the genesis of things. 



4. "That things exist independently of and antecedently to their relations ; 

 that all relations are between absolute terms ; and that therefore whatever reality 

 belongs to the properties of things is distinct from that of the things themselves,'" 

 (pp. 137 and 138). 



In illustration of the first and second false assumptions he mentions the con- 

 troversy between the champions of the corpuscular and dynamical theories of mat- 

 ter. The one side insists upon it that mass or inertia is the counterpart of an ob- 



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