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Rigidity, Force and Physical Geometry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Carlton B. Weinberg
Carlton B. Weinberg*
Affiliation:
Dept. of Physics, The City College, New York
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Extract

From the desire to find support and confirmation for our personal sensory observations, and from the human interest in sharing our experiences with others, there emerges a basic principle of scientific method: We demand the possibility of intelligible communication and agreement concerning individuals' sensory perceptions in particular and their experiences in general. This requirement is made both for the natural and social sciences. The raw material offered for logical organization must be capable of exhibiting an inter-subjective character—such material, or protocols, must be acceptable in common to all concerned. And it must be acceptable for logical organization or systematization in some science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , October 1941 , pp. 506 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1941

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References

1 Statements about “visual keenness,” used as intersubjective protocols, concern what 1 have called “conditioning protocols.” Cf. Journ. of Philos., Vol. 35, No. 24, p. 655.

2 See also H. Dingle on cosmological geometry (Nature, Jan. 1, 1938, Supple., p. 26).

3 Science and the Modern World, p. 179.

4 E. Nagel has remarked, with regard to alternative correlative definitions of rigidity, that “of the many distinct pure geometries which are logically possible, one system is a more effective means than another for organizing the materials of an empirical subject matter.” (Internat. Encyc. of Unif. Sc, Vol. I, No. 6, pp. 38-39.)

5 See P. Duhem, La Théorie Physique, pp. 434-35.