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SPACE AND TIME
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SPACE AND See also:TIME , in See also:philosophy. The metaphysical problems connected with Space and Time are so similar and have been so closely conjoined in the See also:history of thought that they may well be treated together. They are clearly distinguishable from the psychological, which relate to the modes whereby our spatial and temporal conceptions have been formed and to the See also:analysis of the materials of which they are composed (see See also:PSYCHOLOGY). In an exhaustive treatment of Space and Time by far the largest See also:share of the See also:work rests with the psychologist. The business of the metaphysician is to determine what reality outside our minds corresponds to our temporal and spatial conceptions. The first tendency of thought is to treat Space and Time as having See also:objective existence in the same way as the See also:ordinary things that compose our See also:world, and this we may See also:call the objective method. See also:Simple as it appears to be, it discloses formidable difficulties, which may be illustrated by a See also:consideration of See also:Newton's famous See also:account of " See also:absolute, true and mathematical time " as something which " in itself and from its own nature flows equally " and with no liability to See also:change. Now, if mathematical time as thus described is merely an See also:abstraction used to facilitate mathematical calculations, no objection can be taken to it. But if Newton meant to assert that Time is a flowing stream no less actual than the See also:Thames, his assertion is open to fatal objections. All admittedly real streams, such as the Thames, have a definite beginning and an ending. But where is the source of Time and where is its outlet? Every real stream has boundaries at its sides. What are the boundaries of Time? Every real stream has certain definite qualities: See also:water is rather heavy and translucent, and produces certain effects upon bodies plunged into it. What are the specific qualities of Time? How are things in time affected by their See also:immersion in time so as to be different from things not in time? And if it be asserted that time has such specific qualities, by what senses do we perceive them? We may fairly assume that none of these questions can be answered intelligibly by one who holds the Newtonian position. And thus we are justified in the conclusion that time is not a real stream at all, but something which is said to behave like a stream only in some metaphorical sense. Similar difficulties arise if we try to attribute a like objective reality to Space. We can imagine no boundaries to Space; it seems to have no active specific qualities and we have no sense-See also:organ for perceiving it. The thinkers of antiquity saw these difficulties without solving them. Their whole treatment of philosophic problems was objective; and, so See also:long as Space and Time are treated objectively, not much can be done with them. See also:Plato has See also:great difficulty in explaining the relation between Space and his Ideas: See also:Aristotle contents himself with defining space as " the first unmoved limit of the containing See also:body, " a See also:definition which See also:helps us very little: nor do we get more See also:light from later See also:Greek philosophy. As to Time, there was always a tendency in Greek thought to treat it as in some sense unreal. Time was seen to be intimately connected with change, and it was just their liability to change that made ordinary mundane things unreal, as contrasted with the unchanging steadfastness of the Platonic Ideas. And the pantheistic One-and-All of See also:Plotinus is plainly incompatible with the reality of Time. In all pantheistic systems Time belongs to mundane existence and Eternity to the transcendent Reality. See also:Modern philosophy is distinguished from See also:ancient mainly by its greater subjectivity; and thus it was not long after the rise of modern philosophy that thinkers began to turn to the subjective method of explaining Space and Time, that is, to regard them as real only to our minds. Its use begins effectively with See also:Berkeley, though prepared for to some extent by earlier writers such as See also:Hobbes. Berkeley's treatment is most definitely clear in the See also:case of Space; for his attack upon See also:materialism made it necessary for him to affirm the ideality of Space as well as of See also:Matter. But he takes a similar See also:line of See also:argument with Time, declaring it to be nothing but the See also:succession of See also:idea's. The merit of the subjective method was that it made men see the importance of psychology. If Space and Time exist only in the human mind we must analyse the human mind to explain them. The work of the See also:English psychologists such as the See also:Mills and See also:Bain attaches itself to subjectivist principles. A distinct See also:epoch in the history of the subject was made by the work of See also:Kant, whose See also:solution of the problems may be classed as transcendental. He argued that Space and Time are not given by experience, but are rather conditions of all our experience, being in his terminology a priori, that is, supplied by the mind from its own inward resources. They do not belong to thingsin-themselves, but to things-as-we-know-them, or phenomena. Their validity consists in the fact that all men have them and that they are absolutely necessary conditions of human intelligence. As he expresses it from his See also:peculiar point of view, Space is the See also:form of See also:outer sense, Time of inner sense. The prevalence of See also:German philosophy in Great See also:Britain during the last See also:quarter of the loth See also:century has given these Kantian principles a great currency, interrupting the more truly characteristic psychological tendency of See also:British thought. That prevalence is now passing away. No one now holds the full Kantian position; which, in the case of Space, is refuted by the simple consideration that our spatial conceptions depend upon our sensuous perceptive See also:powers; and that, consequently, the spatial conceptions of the See also:blind, for example, are quite different from those of ordinary men. If Kant is right, and Space is a pure form unaffected by all specific See also:differences of content, it would follow that a See also:man See also:born with one sense only, say that of See also:taste, would have the same space-conception as the See also:rest of us; a conclusion too plainly absurd to need refutation. What an apriorist can still maintain is that in our conception of Space and Time there are elements which cannot be explained by the psychologist as having See also:developed out of anything else, and must therefore be regarded as innate endowments of the mind. This is a position not unreasonable in itself, and one, at least, which does not interfere with the detailed work of the psychologist. The way with these problems which commends itself to thepresent writer and seems fully in See also:harmony with the See also:general See also:tone of contemporary thinking may, if a distinctive catchword be desired, be termed the humanist method. By this is meant that the study of the human mind comes first; that we put no metaphysical questions till we have learnt what the psychologist has to See also:teach us; and that in our explanations of See also:meta-See also:physical realities we should be as anthropomorphic as possible. In the case of Space this leads to a result which is largely negative. When we ask what objective reality corresponds to our conception of Space, the See also:answer must be analogous to that which we give respecting the various sensible qualities of the See also:external world. We cannot suppose that See also:Colour, for example, exists objectively as we experience it; evidently it is altogether relative to the See also:organs of See also:vision which we happen to possess. But we must believe that the objective world has a quality in some way correspondent to the quality of Colour. So with Space. Space as we know it is altogether relative to our tactual, See also:muscular and visual powers of See also:perception. But the fact that our spatial perceptions and conceptions enable us to See also:deal successfully with See also:objects requires us to believe that the objective world has an arrangement of its own corresponding in some way to spatial arrangement, though we are unable to imagine what it can be. Space cannot be objectively real, because of the difficulties disclosed above in the See also:criticism of the " objective " method, and we are unable to put anything definite in its See also:place. With Time the case is somewhat different. Our conception of Time is based on our experience of Change, combined with memory and anticipation. Now Change is an experience which we feel directly in our See also:personal consciousness: consciousness is not spatial, but it is mutable. This See also:direct experience is a See also:guarantee of the realness of Change, and justifies us in attributing it in some degree to ultimate objective reality. See S. H. See also:Hodgson, Space and Time; H. Bergson, Essai sur See also:les donnees immediates de la See also:conscience; J. E. MacTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian See also:Dialectic. (H. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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