"The Analysis Of Mind " - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Bertrand)

me very timely; and the number of important works promised for
the Library in the very near future augur well for the continued
fulfilment, in this and other ways, of the expectations of the
original editor.
H. D. Lewis

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.