Preface

PREFACE

This book has grown out of an attempt to harmonize two different

tendencies, one in psychology, the other in physics, with both of

which I find myself in sympathy, although at first sight they

might seem inconsistent. On the one hand, many psychologists,

especially those of the behaviourist school, tend to adopt what

is essentially a materialistic position, as a matter of method if

not of metaphysics. They make psychology increasingly dependent

on physiology and external observation, and tend to think of

matter as something much more solid and indubitable than mind.

Meanwhile the physicists, especially Einstein and other exponents

of the theory of relativity, have been making "matter" less and

less material. Their world consists of "events," from which

"matter" is derived by a logical construction. Whoever reads, for

example, Professor Eddington's "Space, Time and Gravitation"

(Cambridge University Press, 1920), will see that an

old-fashioned materialism can receive no support from modern

physics. I think that what has permanent value in the outlook of

the behaviourists is the feeling that physics is the most

fundamental science at present in existence. But this position

cannot be called materialistic, if, as seems to be the case,

physics does not assume the existence of matter.

The view that seems to me to reconcile the materialistic tendency

of psychology with the anti-materialistic tendency of physics is

the view of William James and the American new realists,

according to which the "stuff" of the world is neither mental nor

material, but a "neutral stuff," out of which both are

constructed. I have endeavoured in this work to develop this view

in some detail as regards the phenomena with which psychology is

concerned.

My thanks are due to Professor John B. Watson and to Dr. T. P.

Nunn for reading my MSS. at an early stage and helping me with

many valuable suggestions; also to Mr. A. Wohlgemuth for much

very useful information as regards important literature. I have

also to acknowledge the help of the editor of this Library of

Philosophy, Professor Muirhead, for several suggestions by which

I have profited.

The work has been given in the form of lectures both in London

and Peking, and one lecture, that on Desire, has been published

in the Athenaeum.

There are a few allusions to China in this book, all of which

were written before I had been in China, and are not intended to

be taken by the reader as geographically accurate. I have used

"China" merely as a synonym for "a distant country," when I

wanted illustrations of unfamiliar things.

Peking, January 1921.

Read next: Lecture I - Recent Criticisms of "Consciousness"


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