Abstract
IN the December number of Adult Education, Prof. L. Susan Stebbing subjects Sir James Jeans's recent presidential address to the British Association to searching criticism. She complains that he has rated the intelligence of his hearers and readers too low by presenting them with contradictory statements concerning Nature, space and time, and knowledge. Some of the questions raised were referred to in our leading article on the address which was published in NATURE of September 8 last, but Prof. Stebbing makes no attempt to penetrate to the vital ideas which were expressed, however imperfectly, by Sir James Jeans; she contents herself with pointing out the imperfections. As destructive criticism, the paper is of value, though, in the absence of counter-balancing constructive thought, it achieves less than its full potentialities. Prof. Stebbing fortunately does not make the common error of supposing that a single statement, by however distinguished a physicist, represents the unanimous view of ‘physics'. “The point to be maintained here,“she says, “is that these cloudy speculations cannot properly be regarded as ‘philosophical implications' of the new ‘physics'.“This goes far to justify what might otherwise be construed as a philosopher's attack on the philosophical tendencies of modern physics.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Philosophy of Sir James Jeans. Nature 135, 466 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135466c0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135466c0