Lecture I

The second thing, done by the man of today in scientific research, is that he tries by experiment, or by conceptual elaboration of the results of experiment, to arrive at what he calls the “causes” of phenomena. Speaking of causes, our scientists will have in mind forces or substances or even more universal entities. They speak for instance of the force of electricity, the force of magnetism, the force of heat or warmth, and so on. They speak of an unknown “ether” or the like, as underlying the phenomena of light and electricity. From the results of experiment they try to arrive at the properties of this ether. Now you are well aware how very controversial is all that can be said about the “ether” of Physics. There is one thing however to which we may draw attention even at this stage. In trying, as they put it, to go back to the causes of phenomena, the scientists are always wanting to find their way from what is known into some unknown realm. They scarcely ever ask if it is really justified thus to proceed from the known to the unknown. They scarcely trouble, for example, to consider if it is justified to say that when we perceive a phenomenon of light or colour, what we subjectively describe as the quality of colour is the effect on us, upon our soul, our nervous apparatus, of an objective process that is taking place in the universal ether—say a wave-movement in the ether. They do not pause to think, whether it is justified thus to distinguish (what is what they really do) between the “subjective” event and the “objective”, the latter being the supposed wave-movement in the ether, or else the interaction thereof with processes in ponderable matter.