Essais sur la Philosophie des Sciences. Analyse, Mécanique

Abstract

A GOOD book on the philosophical aspect of space, time, mass and force is rare. M. de Freycinet has produced a work that is both readable and worth reading. It opens with a chapter on space and time in which the essential differences of these two fundamental conceptions are discussed, and the impossibility of forming a quantitative estimate of time except by artificial means is clearly pointed out. The next chapters deal with the notions of infinity, of continuous magnitude, of limits, of infinitesimals and of differential coefficients. In considering the reality of such, conceptions, the author is careful to distinguish between reality in a mathematical and in a physical sense, and to point out that reality in the first sense does not necessarily imply reality in the second. Thus the solutions by the calculus of many problems in mathematical physics are based on the assumption that both space and matter are continuous and capable of indefinite subdivision, and these solutions are none the less correct although other phenomena teach us that matter is to be regarded as built up of discrete molecules.

Essais sur la Philosophie des Sciences. Analyse, Mécanique.

By C. de Freycinet. Second edition. Pp. xiii + 336. (Paris: Gauthier Villars, 1900)