Science and the Unseen World (1929)
Context: However closely we may associate thought with the physical machinery of the brain, the connection is dropped as irrelevant as soon as we consider the fundamental property of thought—that it may be correct or incorrect.... that involves recognising a domain of the other type of law—laws which ought to be kept, but may be broken.<!--V, p.57-58
Source: The Society of Mind (1987), Ch.2
Context: The "laws of thought" depend not only on the property of brain cells, but also on how they are connected. And these connections are established not by the basic, "general" laws of physics... To be sure, "general" laws apply to everything. But, for that very reason, they can rarely explain anything in particular.... Each higher level of description must add to our knowledge about lower levels.
Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 15, Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science, p. 277
The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1799)
Clifford & Pearson, Ch IV, Position, §19 On the Bending of Space
The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)
Context: We may... be treating merely as physical variations effects which are really due to changes in the curvature of our space; whether, in fact, some or all of those causes which we term physical may not be due to the geometrical construction of our space. There are three kinds of variation in the curvature of our space which we ought to consider as within the range of possibility.
(i) Our space is perhaps really possessed of a curvature varying from point to point, which we fail to appreciate because we are acquainted with only a small portion of space, or because we disguise its small variations under changes in our physical condition which we do not connect with our change of position. The mind that could recognise this varying curvature might be assumed to know the absolute position of a point. For such a mind the postulate of the relativity of position would cease to have a meaning. It does not seem so hard to conceive such a state of mind as the late Professor Clerk-Maxwell would have had us believe. It would be one capable of distinguishing those so-called physical changes which are really geometrical or due to a change of position in space.
(ii) Our space may be really same (of equal curvature), but its degree of curvature may change as a whole with the time. In this way our geometry based on the sameness of space would still hold good for all parts of space, but the change of curvature might produce in space a succession of apparent physical changes.
(iii) We may conceive our space to have everywhere a nearly uniform curvature, but that slight variations of the curvature may occur from point to point, and themselves vary with the time. These variations of the curvature with the time may produce effects which we not unnaturally attribute to physical causes independent of the geometry of our space. We might even go so far as to assign to this variation of the curvature of space 'what really happens in that phenomenon which we term the motion of matter.' <!--pp. 224-225
Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007), Chapter 4: 'Cosmic Evidence', p.129
volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", page 101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=114&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)
“We are bound by the law, so that we may be free.”
