262 DOC. 71 PRINCETON LECTURES
PRE-RELATIVITY PHYSICS
that certain
sense
perceptions
of
different individuals
correspond to
each
other, while for
other
sense
perceptions
no
such
correspondence
can
be
established.
We
are
accustomed
to regard
as
real
those
sense
perceptions
which
are common
to
different
individuals,
and which therefore
are,
in
a
measure,
impersonal.
The natural
sciences,
and
in
particular,
the
most
fundamental
of
them,
physics,
deal
with
such
sense
perceptions.
The
conception
of
physical
bodies,
in
particular
of
rigid
bodies, is
a
relatively
constant
complex
of such
sense
perceptions.
A clock
is
also
a body,
or a
system,
in
the
same
sense,
with the additional
property
that the
series of
events
which
it
counts
is
formed of
elements
all of which
can
be
regarded
as
equal.
The
only
justification
for
our
concepts
and
system
of
concepts is
that
they
serve
to
represent
the
complex
of
our
experiences; beyond
this
they
have
no legitimacy.
I
[2]
am
convinced that the
philosophers
have had
a
harmful
effect
upon
the
progress
of scientific
thinking
in
removing
certain fundamental
concepts
from the
domain
of
empiri-
cism,
where
they
are
under
our
control, to
the
intangible
heights
of the
a
priori.
For
even
if it should
appear
that
the universe of ideas
cannot
be
deduced
from
experience
by logical means,
but
is,
in
a
sense,
a
creation
of the
human
[3]
mind,
without which
no
science
is possible,
nevertheless
this universe of ideas
is just
as
little
independent
of
the
nature
of
our experiences as
clothes
are
of
the
form of
the
human
body.
This
is
particularly true
of
our con-
cepts
of time
and
space,
which
physicists
have been
obliged
by
the facts
to
bring
down
from
the
Olympus
of
the
a priori
in
order
to adjust
them and
put
them
in
a
serviceable
condition.
We
now
come
to
our
concepts
and
judgments
of
space.
It
is
essential
here
also
to
pay
strict attention
to
the rela-
[2]
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