Excerpt from Perception, Physics, and Reality: An Enquiry Into the Information That Physical Science Can Supply About the Real The present essay has as its object an attempt to discover how much natural science can actually tell us about the nature reality, and what kind of assumptions it has to make before we can be sure that it tells us anything. By natural science, for the present purpose, I mean physics. When a certain way of looking at the universe meets with the extraordinary success with which that of physics has met it becomes the duty of the philosopher to investigate it with care; for it is likely to offer a very much better Cosmology than his own unaided efforts can do. And, if philosophy is to take into account empirical facts - and it is extremely difficult to see what it will be able to tell us about the existent unless it does - it can hardly neglect the most fruitful and thorough investigation of certain large branches of empirical facts that has yet been made. But natural science starts with certain assumptions, and, as it goes on, it developes certain general conclusions about the real world. For instance, it starts with a position not far removed from naif realism, and, in its progress, it draws a distinction between the reality of primary and secondary qualities, and developes a causal theory of perception. Now the distinction between primary and secondary qualities as to their reality is a metaphysical question, and science seems historically to have taken over its answer to it from Descartes. This has led quite reasonably to an attack on science from later philosophers who have not agreed that it was possible to stop at the point at which Descartes and natural science stopped in this matter. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.