Page:IntroductionToMathematicsWhitehead.pdf/53

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

anyone in particular, or to any special modes of perception. The result is that the chair becomes in thought a set of molecules in space, or a group of electrons, a portion of the ether in motion, or however the current scientific ideas describe it. But the point is that science reduces the chair to things moving in space and influencing each other's motions. Then the various elements or factors which enter into a set of circumstances, as thus conceived, are merely the things, like lengths of lines, sizes of angles, areas, and volumes, by which the positions of bodies in space can be settled. Of course, in addition to these geometrical elements the fact of motion and change necessitates the introduction of the rates of changes of such elements, that is to say, velocities, angular velocities, accelerations, and suchlike things. Accordingly, mathematical physics deals with correlations between variable numbers which are supposed to represent the correlations which exist in nature between the measures of these geometrical elements and of their rates of change. But always the mathematical laws deal with variables, and it is only in the occasional testing of the laws by reference to experiments, or in the use of the laws for special predictions, that definite numbers are substituted.

The interesting point about the world as

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.