Book Description

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. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ... aspect, so subjectivity signifies, on the negative side, doubt, uncertainty, personal equation, as a disturbing factor in the situation, while, on the positive side, it is represented in the feeling of success and that pleasurable sense of smoothness and ease which control gives. 27. SPACE, TIME, AND CAUSATION From the point of view of such a pragmatic or functional idealism it is possible to give a meaning to the categories of space, time, and causation which avoids the antinomies in which these concepts are involved when treated from the point of view of a purely realistic or idealistic metaphysics. The nature of space and time is one of the oldest and most perplexing problems of human thought. Are they ultimately real, or only appearances -- illusions -- due to our limited modes of perception? When the baby struggles to its feet by the help of a chair and takes its first tottering steps alone, it has no consciousness of the Spaoeaild space category implied. When later the Tlm01 boy knocks a ball across a diamond-shaped field to his playmate, he still lacks any clear consciousness of the space relations involved. It is much later, when he makes his first, acquaintance with metaphysics as a student in college, that he first clearly recognizes what he calls space and time as distinct from other things. Many persons never reach this reflective stage at all. What is here stated for the individual is true also of the race. Men made instinctive and practical use of spatial and temporal relations long before they generalized them in the form of abstract concepts. What shall we say concerning the nature of space and time in the light of this fact that our consciousness of them as clear and distinct object-matter of thought is a...