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This new short book by Professor Schrodinger treats of a very old question- Who are we? this, he would say, is the first great question; and every serious search after knowledge is in the end directed by it. All science aims, eventually, at getting nearer to an answer. Then he turns us to the current conception of matter and shows how profoundly it is modifying philosophy as it drives men to recognize that Form, not Substance, is the fundamental; and that, because of limitations, adequacy rather than truth is the most that we can ask for in our mental 'models'. He drives home the difficulty for the human mind of recognizing the
This new short book by Professor Schrodinger treats of a very old question- Who are we? this, he would say, is the first great question; and every serious search after knowledge is in the end directed by it. All science aims, eventually, at getting nearer to an answer. Then he turns us to the current conception of matter and shows how profoundly it is modifying philosophy as it drives men to recognize that Form, not Substance, is the fundamental; and that, because of limitations, adequacy rather than truth is the most that we can ask for in our mental 'models'. He drives home the difficulty for the human mind of recognizing the impossibility (which modern physics foreshows) of continuity of observation. The principle of causality is based upon it; but physics now shows that the continuity so long assumed can never be confirmed by observations. Thus he brings his reader to the problem of free will, and our conviction that we have the power, though physics cannot say we have it, of acting by choice, of being causers not merely 'causes'. Schrodinger's mastery of the knowledge he deals with, his clear and logical (yet lively) way of wrinting, his humanity, and his just sense of the importance of the ideas he discusses, make this book of great and controversial interest.
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