george-lichtheim-europe-in-the-twentieth-century.pdf

 W W   W

wit Einstein, belong to te same spiritual family. Tis also applies to te teory of science worked out by te Frenc pysicist Pierre uem 1861116), wo made a point of stressing te independence of pysics from metapysics, as did is countryman eni Poincar 1854112), fo wom pysical laws were conventions onstruted by scientists to account for te motion of particles. Speaking generally, te new outlook in teoretical pysics since te bginning of te century demolised te classical picture of a static univese made up of particles wose motions confom to te laws of mecanics. Te pysical world of modern science is still omposed of particles, but all may be transformed into oters and none are etenal i n te Newtoian sense : Gvn an approprat an x sst o quatons on can hop to x pan phsa procsss ro th subato up to th ocuar an acro sop an vn th astronoa sa ; an ths can b on thout xptng an phsca objts whatvr ro th  o t  whch ans accptng that thr ar no prannt atra atos n th orgna sns. 

eter tere were laws of nature at all became a matter fo dispute among scientists, some of wom doubted weter stellar evolution could be reduced to constants not subject to cange ove suitable dimensions of time Te topic ad no pratical signicance, save fo teologians still tied to a geocentric picture of te universe, or mecani cal materialists wedded to te ineaceable caracters of atoms and molecules. e same applies to modern osmology.  universe wic may or may not) ave come into existence troug a cataclysmi explosion some 10,000 million years ago still presets some logical problems  after all, it is legitimate to ask wat was tere before tis event occurred  but it is no longe related to te familiar environment inabited by uman beings. stronomers wo favou te notion of an absolute begining in time, because it ts in wit religious doctrines about te Creation, plainly give vent to tei personal preferenes . Pilosopers wo prefer te Stoic picture of a recurring cycle of creatio and destruction are in te same position. 7 Setting metapysics aside, te new model impinged upon te pil osopy of science in tat it lent some substance to te evolt agais determinism associated wit Bergson and wit te merican prag matist scool founded by illiam James 1842110) on te basis of C.S.Peirces earlier work. Te older empiricist tradition ad been determinist, in accordance wit Newtonian pysics. en applied to psycology it led to te unsatisfactory conclusion tat mens actions are wolly explicable in terms of causal determinats. Kantian idealism postulate a distinction between ausally conditioned penomena 6