ncommitted and can be construed as merely lacking due explanation and
the guarding emphasis. But in Aristotle's exposition the current
conceptions were hardened and made definite so as to produce a faulty
analysis of the relation between the matter and the form of nature as
disclosed in sense-awareness. In this phrase the term 'matter' is not
used in its scientific sense.

I will conclude by guarding myself against a misapprehension. It is
evident that the current doctrine of matter enshrines some fundamental
law of nature. Any simple illustration will exemplify what I mean. For
example, in a museum some specimen is locked securely in a glass case.
It stays there for years: it loses its colour, and perhaps falls to
pieces. But it is the same specimen; and the same chemical elements and
the same quantities of those elements are present within the case at the
end as were present at the beginning. Again the engineer and the
astronomer deal with the motions of real permanences in nature. Any
theory of nature which for one moment loses sight of these great basic
facts of experience is simply silly. But it is permissible to point out
that the scientific expression of these facts has become entangled in a
maze of doubtful metaphysics; and that, when we remove the metaphysics
and start afresh on an unprejudiced survey of nature, a new light is
thrown on many fundamental concepts which dominate science and guide the
progress of research.

CHAPTER II

THEORIES OF THE BIFURCATION OF NATURE

In my previous lecture I criticised the concept of matter as the
substance whose attributes we perceive. This way of thinking of matter
is, I think, the historical reason for its introduction into science,
and is still the vague view of it at the background of our thoughts
which makes the current scientific doctrine appear so obvious. Namely we
conceive ourselves as perceiving attributes of things, and bits of
matter are the things whose attributes we perceive.

In the seventeenth century the sweet simplicity of this aspect of matter
received a rude shock. The transmission doctrines of science were then
in process of elaboration and by the end of the century were
unquestioned, though their particular forms have since been modified.
The establishment of these transmission theories marks a turning point
in the relation between science and philosophy. The doctrines to which I
am especially alluding are the theories of light and sound.