hnology. It has been appended here as conveniently summing up and
applying the doctrine of the book for an audience with one definite type
of outlook.
This volume on 'the Concept of Nature' forms a companion book to my
previous work _An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural
Knowledge_. Either book can be read independently, but they supplement
each other. In part the present book supplies points of view which were
omitted from its predecessor; in part it traverses the same ground with
an alternative exposition. For one thing, mathematical notation has been
carefully avoided, and the results of mathematical deductions are
assumed. Some of the explanations have been improved and others have
been set in a new light. On the other hand important points of the
previous work have been omitted where I have had nothing fresh to say
about them. On the whole, whereas the former work based itself chiefly
on ideas directly drawn from mathematical physics, the present book
keeps closer to certain fields of philosophy and physics to the
exclusion of mathematics. The two works meet in their discussions of
some details of space and time.
I am not conscious that I have in any way altered my views. Some
developments have been made. Those that are capable of a
non-mathematical exposition have been incorporated in the text. The
mathematical developments are alluded to in the last two chapters. They
concern the adaptation of the principles of mathematical physics to the
form of the relativity principle which is here maintained. Einstein's
method of using the theory of tensors is adopted, but the application is
worked out on different lines and from different assumptions. Those of
his results which have been verified by experience are obtained also by
my methods. The divergence chiefly arises from the fact that I do not
accept his theory of non-uniform space or his assumption as to the
peculiar fundamental character of light-signals. I would not however be
misunderstood to be lacking in appreciation of the value of his recent
work on general relativity which has the high merit of first disclosing
the way in which mathematical physics should proceed in the light of the
principle of relativity. But in my judgment he has cramped the
development of his brilliant mathematical method in the narrow bounds of
a very doubtful philosophy.
The object of the present volume and of its predecessor is to lay the
basis of a natural philosophy wh
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