display all the ideas for this combination of texts
1 idea
6470 | Matter is the limit of appearances as distance from the object diminishes [Russell] |
Full Idea: We offer the following tentative definition: The matter of a given thing is the limit of its appearances as their distance from the thing diminishes. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics [1914], §IX) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as empiricism gone mad. Russell is famous for being a 'realist', but you would hardly know it at this point. Personally I put emphasis on 'best explanation', which fairly simply delivers most of our commonsense understandings of reality. |