The Philosophy of Sir James Jeans

Abstract

THE excellent article by “H. D.” with the above title¹ seems to me to require a little historical emendation. To regard science as a process of describing and co-ordinating sensations, and matter, space, time and so on as mental concepts introduced to make this co-ordination easier, is not characteristic of the new physics unless we are prepared to date the latter from the eighties of last century. Analyses on these lines were given quite explicitly by Mach then, and were further developed by Karl Pearson in “The Grammar of Science”. Full acknowledgment to Mach was made by Einstein in his earlier papers, but both these pioneers seem to have got overlooked in later developments.