Note 148 — Chapter IV · SPACE AND TIME

The ablest detailed account of the relativity of spatial position readily accessible to the English reader, will be found in Mr. Russell’s Foundations of Geometry, chaps. iiiA, iv. Mr. Russell has since, in Mind for July 1901, attempted to prove the opposite view, that positions in space and time are inherently distinct, but without discussing his own previous arguments for relativity. Into the purely mathematical part of Mr. Russell’s later contentions I am not competent to enter. I may, however, suggest that the question of Metaphysics cannot be decided merely by urging, as Mr. Russell does, that fewer assumptions are required to construct a geometry on the hypothesis of absolute than on that of relative position. The superior convenience of an assumption for certain special purposes is no proof of its ultimate intelligibility. And when Mr. Russell goes on to admit that points in space are indistinguishable for us, he seems to me to give up his case. For is not this to admit that, after all, the space with which we deal in our geometrical science is relative from beginning to end? How differences of quality of which we, by hypothesis, can know nothing, can help or hinder our scientific constructions, it is indeed hard to see.