Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2093

Annotation in Percy W. Bridgman, The Nature of Physical Theory (Dover Publications, 1936), page 92.

May 22, 1951

Original is missing.

/”Summarizing the whole situation with regard to the general theory” (relativity) “it may well be that the few specific results and the detailed equations may stand, at least as first approximations and for large-scale phenomena, but it seems to me that the arguments which have led up to the theory and the whole state of mind of most physicists with regard to it may some day become one of the puzzles of history. The arguments, I believe, clearly involve an uncritical acceptance of many of those traditional methods of thought which we are just beginning to discover are not universally applicable.”/   /Emphases by Heath/

To formulate in symbols uniformities of experience is valid.  The conception is homolog to the fact, event, operation, experience. The subjective is coordinate and harmonious with the objective. The subjective, as a functioning organization, achieves a higher durationality — stronger, longer life.

Symbols, mathematical or other, without counterpart in objective experience have no meaning, symbolize nothing.

Spencer Heath

 May 22, 1951