Nature and cognition of space and time

Preface

The following discussion of the Nature and our Cognition of Space and Time is grounded on the fundamental postulates of dualistic Realism. It maintains the reality of space and time in contradiction to the Kantian hypothesis of ideality; space being held to be real as an independent entity, and time as an attribute or property of entities.

In this period of idealistic vagueness and wordiness and of eccentricity and novelties in philosophy, the positive and unequivocal advocacy of the principles of realism is likely to be imputed to bold assertiveness that is the stronger because of ignorance of the history and trend of philosophy; or to belatedness and incompetency. It must expect satirical and slashing reprobation certainly from the followers of the Berkeleian and the Kantian idealism, and from those who are captivated with the subtilties and pretensions of what is strangely called the "new realism."

Some fifty years ago there occurred in this country an extraordinary change as to the prevalent type of philosophy. Formerly the Scottish realistic philosophy, — the philosophy of Reid, Hamilton, Mansel, McCosh, — was very generally current with us, being accepted and taught in most of our institutions of learning, and esteemed widely in philosophical circles. But there came a great revolution. The realists to a very considerable extent surrendered their supremacy, and subsided; and the idealists came into the ascendency. Singularly enough, those modes of idealism which the Scottish philosophy had most strenuously combated, at last superseded it, especially among very many of our professional psychologists and metaphysicians and in a large number of our colleges and universities.

This great mutation was remarkable both for its suddenness and celerity, and for the absence of commotion and conflict. It all happened as if in a night. One day the Scottish realists chiefly were our teachers in philosophy ; the next, idealists sat in their seats. It all happened, too, with very little or no turmoil or struggle. There was no clashing of

Preface. 5

opposing protagonists ; there was no bitter and stubborn strife. The one party quietly withdrew from the field, making no show of determined resistance; the other quietly entered, without the necessity of a resolute and persistent onslaught. There occurred at that time an unusual inflow of European, especially Germanic, idealistic philosophy, which may be reckoned as the chief occasion of the change.

These characteristics of the change were not creditable to the country; for they revealed the want of depth and thoroughness in our philosophical culture, and our liability to be carried about with any wind or arrival of speculative doctrine. If the prevalent philosophy had had a profound and strong hold on the national life, from thorough consideration and understading of its principles, such a change in such a manner would have been impossible. It would have held its place with obstinate spirit, and would have been supplanted only by very capable and resolute assault. So to speak, many heads would have been broken and much blood spilt before the contest was finished. The change would thus have had at any rate the dignity of a revolution, and not the reproach of a flop. It may be remarked in general that, while we may claim as a nation originality and greatness in many things, as in the physical arts and sciences and in the science and conduct of political government, yet in philosophy we are now, as we have long been, for the most part, copyists and borrowers.

Idealism, then, became remarkably prevalent and preponderant with our learned men and societies; and, probably in part because of the facility and rapidity with which it rose to the supremacy, it has been, and is not now less, notably dogmatic, arrogant and intolerant. One characteristic of its domination is the fact that it largely controls the publication of philosophical products, or the stamping of them with "Imprimatur," through its disciples as proprietors or editors of philosophical magazines and as readers and advisers to publishers. What was idealism's gain was, of course, realism's loss ; but the latter retained, and still retains, its old hold upon the popular mind, — a possession that must not be undervalued.

In the crisis spoken of, the realists were dis-

Preface. 7

advantaged, and to that extent rendered incapable of holding their ground defiantly and triumphantly against the advancing idealists, even if they had been fully determined in mind to do so, by their method of philosophizing. They relied to their hurt upon the a priori method and upon " belief s" of which they were possessing and offering no scientific account. Reliance upon the empirical method alone, with no seeking of aid at all from the a priori, is the true policy of realism and the foundation and assurance of its future. It may be here observed, that idealists pay little or no attention to the later presentations of realism made in compliance with experiential canons, and are ignorant of them. This is made evident by their stereotyped criticisms upon "naive realism." Many of their stock animadversions are inept towards genuine empirical realism. We should not cease to expect that, in the faithful and thorough employment of empirical processes and principles, a better day will come for realism; a day when it shall have, with release from insolent and truculent disparagement, prosperity and progress, and the honor of a fair acknowledgment of its worth, and when idealists, on their part, shall exhibit a magnanimous and hearty tolerance, and ability to appreciate truth that is outside the ruts or channels of their own thinking. The writer would be glad, because of the issues involved, if he should be permitted to live to behold that day or its dawning.

If the present work shall find favor in the eyes of the philosophic public, it will be followed, probably after no great interval, by a psychological essay, based on the same realistic principles and having the same aim, under the title of Subject and Object. In the discussion of Subject, psychology "with a soul" will be maintained with particular reference, and with particular opposition, to the psychology of Hume and his present-day followers. Some attention will be given to one of the most singular conceptions in all the history of philosophy, namely, that of an unsubstantial "permanent possibility" of thought or experience. As to Object: Matter and the perception of it will be treated with special regard to the Berkeleian immaterialism.

Preface 9

The writer has the temerity to hold that Berkeley's argument against the possibility of a representative knowledge, and against the existence, of external matter, deemed by idealists to be unanswerable, does yet really admit of a fair answer. It can be demonstrated that Berkeley advocated principles which may be turned to his own confutation. Other topics of the essay will be Subject and Object in their ontological Relation, and Truth considered as the correspondence of thought to its object.

The: Author.

Chapter I. Reality And Nature Of Space

What is Space) ? This is indeed an old, but still a living, metaphysical question. Is Space a reality or a property or relation of realities? Or is it a form of our subjective thought having no reality in the mind or outside. to which it corresponds? Is it only an appearance, a fictitious appearance, being unreal either as an entity or property?

According to the common thought and conviction, space is real empty room, illuminated or colored, continuous, tridimensional, homogeneous, permanent, or vast but unknown extension. Philosophical realists hold to the common conception of space, with the exception of light or color. This property they regard as a phenomenal projection from the mind into space; or the projection of a property of the subjective precept of space, which property does not picture a property of objective space. Space, at least as to its extension, is held to be a reality wholly independent of our thought productive or projective.

But the majority, the great majority apparently, of the philosophical minds of our time entirely reject the common and realistic view of space, and strive to maintain rather the ideality or non-reality of space. It is said that space has no existence considered as a reality external to and independent of the mind. By many, particularly by the followers of the Kantian thought and phraseology respecting space, space is regarded as an a priori form of our pure subjective perception. It is declared, in effect, to be but a phenomenon or appearance, which has no real extension in itself, is no true presentation of the real extension of the mind or of any object in the mind, and is no true representation of anything outside the mind. The appearance of space is supposed, in general, to have not the slightest dependence upon or relation to actual space or extension. It is also variously held by many that space or the thought of space is generated by the mind from the absolutely non-spatial. A creative synthesis or fusion is postulated, by which the spatial arises from constituent elements, sensations, that

Reauty and Nature of Space. 15

in themselves, while different in quality, are extensionless. It is assumed that by the genetic activity of the mind the spatial is caused to appear from series of sensations that are purely temporal, that are pure sequences, or pure reversible sequences, the terms of the series having in themselves or at the first no space intervals between them whatever. According to this view, time is original, but space derivative or generated.

The idealistic philosophers reject the ordinary realistic view of space on various grounds. Of these grounds is their supposition that that view is "self-contradictory/' that it involves us in "alternative impossibilities of thought/' etc. They also urge the point that the space of the realists has no attributes, especially that it has no force, mobility or activity, and is therefore incapable of making any impression on us by which it might make itself known to us. They contend that what' has no power to affect us can not be said to exist. It is further argued that the doctrine of the realists implies a duality in ultimate reality, makes space an entity distinct from and independent of the Supreme Being.

The conclusion of idealists that the space of the realists contradicts itself, or "leaves us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities," is based in part upon arguments that relate particularly to the full extension and the divisibility, or the maximum and the minimum, of space. It should be noted, by the way, that these arguments, as employed by many later metaphysicians, are drawn largely from Kant's discussion of the "antinomy of pure reason." 1. We shall proceed to consider, first, the reasoning of idealists against the reality of space, or against the reality of space as we think of it, based upon the unknownableness of, and the self-contradictoriness of our thought about, the entire extension of space. Mr. Herbert Spencer thus states the familiar argument: "We find ourselves totally unable to form any mental image of unbounded Space; and yet totally unable to imagine bounds beyond which there is no Space/ J * Upon grounds, of which this our inability to think of space as either unbounded or bounded, as either infinite or absolutely finite, is a principal part, Mr. Spencer concludes that space is "wholly incomprehensible "; that the immediate knowledge which we seem to have of it proves, when examined, "to be total ignorance"; f that our idea of space is a wholly sub-

jective notion resembling not in the slightest degree an objective reality or objective space. From the fact of our inability to think of space as absolutely limited, or from the compulsion that is upon us to think of every space as having space beyond, Mr. F. H. Bradley likewise argues: Space " passes away into the search for an illusory whole. It is essentially the reference of itself to something else, a process of endless passing beyond actuality. As a whole it is, briefly, the relation of itself to a non-existent other. For take space as large and as complete as you possibly can. Still, if it has not definite boundaries, it is not space; and to make it end in a cloud, or in nothing, is mere blindness and our failure to perceive. A space limited, and yet without space that is outside, is a self-contradiction. But the outside, unfortunately, is compelled likewise to pass beyond itself; and the end can not be reached. And it is not merely that we fail to perceive, or fail to understand, how this can be otherwise. We perceive and we understand that it can not be otherwise, at least if space is to be space. We either do not know what space means ; and, if so, certainly we can not say that it is more than appearance. Or else, knowing what we mean by it, we see inherent in that meaning the puzzle we are describing. Space, to be space, must have space outside itself. It forever disappears into a whole, which proves never to be more than one side of a relation to something beyond." * With such reasoning, not remarkable for well-chosen terms, clearness and strict sequence, Mr. Bradley concludes that space is not a truly known reality, but only a " contradictory appearance."

There can be no question about our inability to think of space either as infinite or absolutely limited; here are indisputable " alternative impossibilities of thought," opposite contradictories; but this fact furnishes no support to Mr. Spencer' s paradoxical conclusion that space is therefore altogether incomprehensible, that our knowledge of it is all ignorance, that our idea of space can not be in the least a true representation of objective space. We do not know the whole of space or space as a whole ; but we certainly know portions of space. There is no cogency in the reasoning that since we know not the extreme regions of space we have therefore no true knowledge of its interior regions. Is it not a fact that we have clear knowledge of, that we can definitely measure, the sphere of space within the

* Appearance and Reality, pp. 37, 38.

R^AUTY AND NATURE OF SPAC£. 19

orbit of the moon ? We know its radius to be about 240,000 miles. Further, have we not clear thought of, can we not definitely measure, the vastly greater sphere of space within the orbit of the earth? Is not its radius truly known to be about 92,000,000 miles? Surely the fact that we can not think of space as extending infinitely beyond the orbit of the earth, or of it as at some distant point outside this orbit absolutely finite or having no other space beyond, has not the slightest force against the reality of space within the orbit and the truthfulness of our knowledge of it. We know the space within the orbit of the earth, and we know the immediately related outside space between the orbit of the earth and the orbit of Mars ; but this outside space does not seem to be necessary to a real knowledge of the inside sphere or portions ; knowledge of it does not save the knowledge of the latter from being pure ignorance. Again, we know the space within the orbit of Mars, and also the immediate outer space between the orbit of Mars and the orbit of Jupiter ; but this outer space can not be said to be necessary to a true knowledge of the inner sphere; or at any rate knowledge of its full extent does not save the knowledge of the inner sphere from being pure ignorance; or ignorance of its full extent would not render the knowledge of the inner sphere total illusion. Just as truly our ignorance of the complete extension of space beyond the orbits of Jupiter and all the planets, whether it is infinite or somewhere absolutely limited, can not reasonably be said to determine the worth or reality of our knowledge of the spaces within these orbits. All the ponderous logic of the "alternative impossibilities of thought" has not the least pertinency or power against the truthfulness of our knowledge of the greatest sphere of space which we know and the interior lesser spheres. As far as this logic goes, we may continue to adhere as confidently as ever to the simple doctrine, that we truly know a portion or portions of space, but do not know all of it; that we can think of, can know, a very great length of a radius, but can not conceive how far the radius extends, whether to a finite distance or an infinite.

The presupposition upon which Mr. Spencer seems to go, as Bradley also, that we must know the totality of space to know any of it; or that as we do not know the whole we know nothing, is a very dubitable postulate. He has not thought it worth the least effort to justify this postulate; and we are under no obligation whatever to adopt it. It indeed appears gratuitous and baseless. This question will urge itself upon every one : Why should not Mr. Spencer have held on to, as something truly known, the portion of space he could and did imagine, and let the outer space he could not imagine go in its infinity or its absolute finiteness as something not necessary to be known ? Or, why should he have felt himself compelled to surrender the possibility of the true cognition, or the reality as cognized, of the space which he assumed at starting and also spoke of as divisible, because he was unable to imagine how much space lay beyond it? It seems clear he gave up too easily. He still, in spite of this inability of the imagination, might have adhered firmly to the conceivable space initially presumed, as something really existing and truly cognized. He has not succeeded in the least in showing that our ignorance of the extreme range of the perfectly homogeneous space renders impossible a true cognition of a portion of it.

There is, it must be granted, important truth in the principle that we "think in relations/' or that the fullness of our knowledge of a reality depends upon the fullness of our knowledge of its relations. It may be maintained that if we should know all the relations of an object, our knowledge of it would be perfect; and that if we had perfect knowledge of any one object, we would have knowledge of the universe.* But this principle has no manifest application to our knowledge of space so as to require us to admit that we can have no true knowledge of space unless we know the whole extent of it, whether finite or infinite ; or that if we know not the whole we know nothing of it ; or that our conceptions of relative portions of space are not true knowledges, but illusions, that our thought is but a subjective symbol of the unknowable and in no degree a true representation of the objective real. All the metaphysician proves by the fact that we can not think of space as, at the farthest, either finite or infinite, is just what everybody was and is quite ready to admit, namely, that we do not know the entire extent of space. But our ignorance of the extremes of space should not greatly embroil or vex us; for we seem to be left with a true knowledge of a finite space so great as to be absolutely sufficient for all our needs and concerns. We may

* " The simplest individual perception is determined by potential relationship to everything else in the Universe. * * * I can not say 'this book' without a reference to surroundings, which are not to be restrained from extending over the entirety of space and of time." (Haldane, Pathway to Reality, I. 63.)

Reauty and Nature: of Space. 23

claim to know space as far out as the fixed stars, say as far as the star Sirius, which is said to be two hundred thousand times farther away from us than our sun. Possessing the knowledge of so vast a volume, we may rest in uncertainty, if it must be, as to the outermost reach of space. For metaphysicians, then, ceaselessly to trouble themselves about their inability to think of space either as coming to an end at some point beyond the visible stars or as having no end, and on account of that inability to ignore, make nothing of, or defame the immense sphere of space which we may assume to know, and to find no comfort or satisfaction in this knowledge, appears to be metaphysical waywardness. Some have wished that we might get rid altogether of, or, as they say, get "beyond," space, "beyond the oppressive narrowness and crampiness of the world surrounding us." But such a wish seems in some respects absurd. Surely all conceivable intelligent beings should find room enough in which to live and move and have their being, with no sense of discomfort from narrowness or confinement, in the prodigious sphere of space having a thinkable radius not less than the distance from us of the fixed stars. To lament on account of narrowness or crampiness is like a minnow complaining to Neptune that it had not enough of water to swim in, when it had the whole Atlantic and Pacific. It may be here noted as a curious phenomenon that some metaphysicians, like Schopenhauer, have seemingly been half angry at space because it divided things from one another.

The considerations which seem conclusive against Mr. Spencer's inference, that our knowledge of space is ignorance because we can not imagine space as either ending or endless, seem equally conclusive against the inferences of Mr. Bradley. The latter says that, since we can not reach the end of space, or must think of every space as having space beyond it, space therefore " passes away into the search for an illusory whole/' "it is a process of endless passing beyond actuality," "it forever disappears," etc., and contradicts itself hopelessly. But these loose and wayward predications certainly afford no support to the main conclusion. The near or interior space which our thought traverses in its search outwards can not be said to "pass away," or pass "beyond actuality," or in anywise "disappear." On the contrary, it holds its place, it remains immovable and constant, and all the time definitely thinkable. For example, the space within the orbit of the moon does not pass away as thought pushes on to the orbit of Mars and to the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and yet farther and farther till it sinks exhausted without finding an end. All these interior spaces remain steadfast. Not an idler assertion can be made than that they "pass away" or "disappear." There is no assignable reason why they should not be constant, and why our knowledge and measurement of them should not be true, though it be forever unknowable to us what extent of space lies outside them. If there be truth in Mr. Bradley's questionable assumption, that "space to be space must have space outside itself," there can be no less truth in the assumption that space to be space must have space inside itself; and this inside, near space has its permanent existence, and can never be reasonably said to lose its existence — to be instable, transitory and vanishing — because we can conceive no end to the outer space. Likewise our knowledge of the nearer spaces can not be justly said to be but "contradictory appearance" or ignorance. No cogent reason appears why we should not hold that our knowledge may be, and probably is, perfectly true to the reality of, for example, the spaces of the solar system to which we have referred. It seems a quite rational conclusion that we should hold on firmly to what we can embrace of space, and what we can not embrace we should just let go and confess the limitations of our comprehension.

The impossibility of conceiving space either as having an end or having no end proves neither that space nor our thought of space is self-contradictory. Space, it is certain, can not be both finite and infinite, yet it must be one of them, for they are direct opposites ; but it does not contradict itself, as by presuming to be both, or by claiming at one time to be one and at another time to be the other. There is in no way any real contradiction or inconsistency. Space gives a positive knowledge of a portion of itself, but forever conceals from us whether that portion is a part of ultimate finiteness or infinity. Metaphysicians are fantastical in imputing contradiction to space for this reason.

Nor is our thought of space self -contradictory or inconsistent and thereby demonstrating itself to be an untrue phenomenon. We easily perceive a large sphere of space without the least inconsistency in our cognition; but in our farthest perception of space we are halted by opposite impossibilities of thought. Yet there is surely no self-contradiction or self-delusion here. Our perception is by this shown to be not untrue or fictitious, but only weak.

Either space is too great for our faculty or our faculty too feeble for space ; or the utmost that can be said is, that space runs out too far for our perception to follow it. In this dilemma we clearly learn the finiteness of our thought; but to be finite is not necessarily to be erratic; to be able to know only a part is not to be doomed to illusion.

After all the argumentative efforts of the agnostics with the fact of our inability to think of space as either infinite or absolutely finite, or to decide for one of these contradictory alternatives, we seem to be left in undisturbed possession of the clear and easy theory that we can know a part of space, but not all ; that our knowledge of space goes to a great depth and is true as far as it goes, but it does not go to the end.

2. We move on to notice, in the second place, the reasoning of the idealists against the reality of space, or the reality of space as ordinarily thought of, based on consideration of the divisibility of space. Mr. Spencer says: "We find ourselves totally unable to form any mental image of unbounded Space; and yet totally unable to imagine bounds beyond which there is no Space. Similarly at the other extreme: it is impossible to think of a limit to the divisibility of Space; yet equally impossible to think of its infinite divisibility." * Here, then, we have a second set of " alternative impossibilities of thought/' which respects the internal division of space, and which is supposed also to require the conclusion that space is "incomprehensible," that our knowledge of it is "total ignorance." Mr. Bradley remarks upon the divisibility of space : "Any space must consist of parts; and, if the parts are not spaces, the whole is not space. * * * Anything extended is a collection, a relation of extendeds, which again are relations of extendeds, and so on indefinitely. The terms are essential to the relation, and the terms do not exist. Searching without end, we never find anything more than relations ; and we see that we can not. Space is essentially a relation of what vanishes into relations, which seek in vain for their terms. It is lengths of lengths of — nothing that we can find. * . * * Space vanishes internally [that is, by division] into relations between units which never can exist." t Mr. Bradley here seems to assume that space is divisible into ultimate parts that are spaceless or are non-entities, and that therefore we have the result that space is

* First Principles, p. 48.

t Appearance and Reality, p. 37.

composed of spaceless parts ; which result, however, is a contradiction, for, as he says, "if the parts are not spaces, the whole is not space." Or we have the result, that space consists of mere abstract relations, relations that have no terms to be related, or relations of units that never can be found, that never can exist. All terms have vanished or been reduced to nothing by division. He then again infers, in effect, that the only conclusion for us is, that space "has most evidently proved not to be real, but to be a contradictory appearance.' ' We have heard of dissecting to kill ; here is dividing to annihilate. In Mr. Bradley's argumentation there is implicated the traditional metaphysical assumption, that an extended thing can not be a unit, but must have parts, must be a composition, and must be divisible ; that only the unextended can be a unit or simple.

But this whole reasoning of the idealists is a singular mixture of delusion and sophistry. They begin curiously with the most questionable assumption possible, namely, that space is composed of parts and is actually divisible into parts, and divisible, they appear to imply, by easy and familiar means. It must be admitted that they are quite right in presuming that the division of space is assertable, and, as far as that goes, thinkable; and that we can not reach to an infinite length, or to an absolute limit, in this thinkable or ideal division. But a more baseless assumption was never made by metaphysicians than that which these appear to make, namely, that there is a possible and easy real division of space answering to the ideal or predicate division; or, in other words, that as there is an assertable partition, there is and must be a possible and actual partition of space. Now, in fact, not the slightest evidence is producible that space ever has been actually fractured or in anywise divided in any degree, or that it ever can be divided by any means whatsoever In all the past history of human accomplishment, there is no report of one instance of the least actual partition of space. Again, there is no evidence of any kind from all past existence of any sort of fracture of space having taken place. And at the present time who, of all men, knows of the possible division of space and of the means of effecting it; or who knows or can conceive of any disruptive force or union of such forces that can ever cause the least break in space ?