Physics and Philosophy

There is no more eloquent interesting or persuasive exposition of what may be called science of philosophy than Sir James Jeanss. - The New York TimesCan we have any knowledge of the world outside us other than we gain by the methods of science? Are we humans endowed with free will or are we mere cogs in a vast machine that must follow its predestined course until it finally runs down? Is the world we perceive the world of ultimate reality or is it only a curtain veiling a deeper reality beyond?In this strikingly lucid and often poetic book one of the twentieth centurys greatest scientists grapples with these age-old questions achieving in the process a brilliant and non-technical exposition of the interrelationship between physics and philosophy. He begins by defining physics and philosophy pointing out the difference in their respective attempts to explain physical reality and mans place in it. This discussion paves the way for an outline of epistemological methods in which the rationalism of thinkers like Descartes Leibniz and Kant is compared to the empiricism of Locke and Hume.Over the course of the book in a manner that is careful and methodic but never dull Jeans marshals the evidence for his startling conclusion: recent discoveries in astronomy mathematics sub-atomic physics and other disciplines have washed away the scientific basis of many older philosophic discussions. Such long-standing problems as causality free will and determinism the nature of space and time materialism and mentalism must be considered anew in the light of new knowledge and information attained by twentieth-century physical science. Even then however Jeans cautions against drawing any positive conclusions pointing out that both physics and philosophy are both relatively young and that we are still in Newtons words like children playing with pebbles on the sea-shore while the great ocean of truth rolls unexplored beyond our reach.Although first published in 1943 nothing in physics has happened to affect Jeanss account in this book; it remains remarkably fresh and undated a classic exposition of the philosophical implications of scientific knowledge.