Talk by G. Burniston Brown , Reader in Physics in the University of London
Recent years have seen great changes in the philosophy of science, many of them due to the writings of Sir Arthur Eddington. The philosophy that Eddington adopted he called Subjective Selectivism, but it is difficult to be sure what he meant by this. It is clear, however, that he believed that our theories of the universe were more affected by our peculiar human habits of thought than most scientists realised. In this talk Dr. Brown takes up this point and shows that a great deal of modem atomic physics and astronomy is of a hypothetical character.