Space, Time, and Deity Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... for each plan would suffer distortion as it was transferred.1 The world would consist of nothing but particulars, not even of individuals, for there would be no meaning in the contrast of individual and particular without the idea of a plan of configuration. But if we seek to understand the deeper meaning of the constancy of Space and Space-Time we may refer to the relations set out in a previous chapter between Space and Time, though with the same feeling of modesty in our assurance as beset us there. Time as we saw was not an addition to Space, but the characters of" Space were conformable to those of Time. It is the conformity of Space to the one-dimensional Time, which is uniform--flows uniformly as Newton said--that involves with it the uniformity of Space. Universality is thus, in 1 More than one friendly critic has urged that if we can think of a Space of varying curvature, there must be at least one universal, that is the concept of the class of such curvatures ; and consequently my contention that there are universals because there is uniformity or constant curvature breaks down in this instance. The answer which will be clearer from the 'objections and elucidations' which follow is from my point of view fairly clear. The notion of a variable curvature of Space is got from experience of Space with a constant one by a construction of thought, like four-dimensional Space. Because, being familiar with universals, we can universalise Spacecurvature in thought, we are not therefore free to deny that universality as we know it in experience depends on constancy of curvature. Moreover, while there is a good meaning in the universal contained in the varying curvatures of curves in our Space, it is difficult to see what is the universal...