A number of recent papers or monographs have examined Susan Stebbing’s criticisms of Arthur Eddington’s scientific-philosophical writing. These papers focus on Stebbing’s critique of Eddington’s attempt to infer philosophical conclusions from developments in modern physics, his view that there is a discrepancy between the world of science and the world of common sense (best encapsulated by his famous ‘two tables’ metaphor), and his use of “inexact language” to try and convey modern scientific insights to his readers. On November 10th, 1938, (...) Eddington presented a paper at the Moral Sciences Club in Cambridge entitled “Prof. Stebbing’s ‘Philosophy and the Physicists’.” Eddington did not go on to publish this paper and it is not discussed in relevant scholarship. However, the details of Eddington’s talk are outlined in the minutes of that meeting. I argue that these minutes provide new insights into both the Stebbing-Eddington debate and developments in Eddington's late philosophical views. A full transcription of the minutes are included as an Appendix to this paper. (shrink)

The theory of quantum mechanics has often been thought to show an affinity with logical empiricism: in both, observation plays a central role, and questions about what is unobservable are dismissed. However, there were also strong tensions between the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle and implications drawn from quantum physics. In the 1920s and 1930s, many physicists thought that quantum mechanics revealed a limit to what could be known scientifically, and this opened the door to a wide range of (...) speculations, in which quantum mechanics was connected with free will, organic life, psychology, and religion—speculations in which many leading quantum physicists were engaged. Members of the Vienna Circle, such as Frank and Schlick, looked at quantum mechanics for a confirmation of their empiricist views, but they were at the same time critical about these wider implications drawn from quantum mechanics, which in their eyes were connected with broader mystical and irrational trends in society. They engaged in particular with the views of Bohr and Jordan, both of whom expressed a sympathy for logical empiricism while at the same time arguing for claims that proved hard to reconcile with the scientific world conception of the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

This article examines how British philosophers of the 1930s grappled with the relationship between reason, emotion, and democratic citizenship in the context of a perceived “crisis of democracy” in Europe. Focusing especially on Bertrand Russell, Susan Stebbing, and John Macmurray, it argues that philosophers working from diverse philosophical perspectives shared a sense that the crisis of democracy was simultaneously a crisis of reason and one of emotion. They tended to frame this crisis in terms of three interrelated concerns: first, as (...) a problem of balancing or integrating reason and emotion; second, as a problem of the relationship between emotions and democratic citizenship; and third, as a problem of how to properly train or educate the emotions. Significantly, British philosophers addressed these issues most directly in writings for a non-professional audience, as they sought to translate their professional expertise into popular works that might rejuvenate democratic citizenship. This historical episode is a reminder of how philosophers were deeply engaged in the cultural politics of the interwar period and is a telling example of how personalist concerns were central to philosophy even as the “analytic revolution” was gathering steam. (shrink)