Notes
James R. Newman, “William Kingdon Clifford,” Scientific American, (188), February, 1953, 78.
It should be noted that the valuable remarks made by Bernard Lightman in his book on The Origins of Agnosticism (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, x-249 p.) are an important contribution to a better understanding of Clifford.
There is a ruthless caricature of Clifford in W. H. Mallock’s The New Republic, or Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House (1877), in which Clifford is painted as always disconcerting his fellow agnostics by expressing shocking ideas, notably in the domains of morals and religion. Cf. B. Lightman, op. cit., 161.
He wrote that “I can find no evidence that seriously militates against the rule that the priest is at all times and in all places the enemy of all men – Sacerdos semper, ubique, et omnibus inimicus.” W. K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Religion,” in Lectures and Essays (abbr. LE in these notes), London: Macmillan, 1901, vol. 2, 237-8. See also W. K. Clifford, “The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious Belief,” LE, vol. 2, 255-6.
“The dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure – of Him who made all Gods and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depth of every soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says, ‘Before Jehovah was, I am !’ ” (W. K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Religion,” LE, vol. 2, 245). Cf. B. Lightman, op. cit., 136.
Quoted in B. Lightman, op. cit., 93 and 95.
Matthew Arnold, God and the Bible, New York: Macmillan and Co., 1883, xiv.
A. O. J. Cockshut, The Unbelievers, English Agnostic Thought, London: Collins, 1964, 67-8, 122-3. See also p. 123: “Clifford is the extreme point of Victorian atheism.” Bernard Lightman disapproves of these expressions (B. Lightman, op. cit., 195, n. 63). Alfred W. Benn also seems to consider Clifford an atheist (Alfred William Benn, The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, London, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green and Co., 1906, vol. 2, 374 and 388).
W. K. Clifford, “The Philosophy of the Pure Sciences,” LE, vol. 1, 308. Clifford explains that “[i]t is convenient to use the word sensation as meaning the whole phenomenon, not only the immediate experience, but also the supplement” (Ibid., 314).
“Whereas, therefore, I think I see a solid scene, having depth, and relief, and distance in it, reflection tells me that I see nothing of the kind ; but only (at the most) two distinct surfaces, having no depth and no relief, and only a kind of distance which is quite different from that of the solid figures before me.” (Ibid , 303).
Ibid, 304.
Ibid., 315.
Ibid., 316.
Ibidem.
“With Euclid’s system elevated to an immobile, transcendental heaven, it was thought, not merely that spatial relations with a limited range are thus and so, as Euclid said, but that they must be thus and so, everywhere and for ever.” J. R. Newman, in W. K. Clifford, The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, xxxii.
Ibid., xxxiii.
W. K. Clifford, “The Philosophy of the Pure Sciences,” op. cit., 319.
J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, London: Parker, Son and Bourn, 5th ed., 1862, vol. 1, 265. Also quoted in W. K. Clifford, “The Philosophy of the Pure Sciences,” op. cit., 329.
J. S. Mill, Ibid.
W. K. Clifford, “The Philosophy of the Pure Sciences,” op. cit., 330 (original emphasis).
“It seems to me, then, that in admitting the universality of certain statements Mr. Mill knows something which on his own principles he has no right to know.” Ibid., 331.
“The universal law that, other things equal, the cohesion of psychical states is proportionate to the frequency with which they have followed one another in experience, supplies an explanation of the so-called “forms of thought,” as soon as it is supplemented by the law that habitual psychical successions entail some hereditary tendency to such successions, which, under persistent conditions, will become cumulative in generation after generation.” H. Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, London: Williams and Norgate, 2nd ed., vol. 1, 1870, 466; also quoted in W. K. Clifford, “The Philosophy of the Pure Sciences,” op. cit., 332-3.
H. Spencer, op. cit., vol. 1, 470-1 ; also quoted in W. K. Clifford, op. cit., 334.
W. K. Clifford, “The Philosophy of the Pure Sciences,” op. cit., 335.
“But if a man felt absolutely sure that two straight lines perpendicular to the same line would never meet, however far produced, he could not maintain against Kant that all knowledge is derived from experience. He was obliged to admit the existence of knowledge a priori, that is, knowledge lying ready in the mind from the first, antecedent to all experience.” Ibid., 320-1.
Ibid., 325-6.
“Now the doctrine of evolution itself forbids me to admit any transcendental source of knowledge; so that I am driven to conclude in regard to every apparently universal statement, either that it is not really universal, but a particular statement about my nervous system, about my apparatus of thought; or that I do not know that it is true.” Ibid., 335-6.
“Clifford made Kant’s transcendental deduction of space and time stand or fall with Euclidean geometry […] and it was Clifford’s adherence to non-Euclidean geometry which led him to dismiss Kant hastily.” B. Lightman, op. cit., 163; cf. F. Pollock, in W. K. Clifford, LE, 18.
J. R. Newman, in W. K. Clifford, The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, xxiii.
Riemann’s work was posthumously published in 1867 and translated by Clifford in 1873. Cf. W. K. Clifford’s Mathematical Papers, edited by R. Tucker, [1882], reprinted in 1968, New York: Chelsea Publishing Company, 55-69 (quotation from pp. 55-6; my italics).
G. F. B. Riemann, translated by W. K. Clifford, in Mathematical Papers, op. cit., 56; my italics.
Ibidem. Clifford fully endorsed Riemann’s views, as the following passage shows : “And the conclusion to which these investigations lead is that, although the assumptions which were very properly made by the ancient geometers are practically exact – that is to say, more exact than experiment can be – for such finite things as we have to deal with, and such portions of space as we can reach; yet the truth of them for very much larger things, or very much smaller things, or parts of space which are at present beyond our reach, is a matter to be decided by experiment, when its powers are considerably increased.” (W. K. Clifford, “On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought,” LE, vol. 1, 155).
B. Lightman, op. cit., 162.
“What Vesalius was to Galen, what Copernicus was to Ptolemy, that was Lobatchewsky [sic] to Euclid.” (W. K. Clifford, “The Philosophy of the Pure Sciences,” op. cit., 356).
Ibid., 358-9. Clifford even writes: “In both of these the knowledge of Immensity and Eternity is replaced by knowledge of Here and Now. And in virtue of these two revolutions [Copernicus’s and Lobatchevsky’s] the idea of the Universe, the Macrocosm, the All, as subject of human knowledge, and therefore of human interest, has fallen to pieces.” (W. K. Clifford, “The Philosophy of the Pure Sciences,” op. cit., 359; cf. W. K. Clifford, “Cosmic Emotion,” LE, vol. 2, 277-8).
Cf. J. R. Newman, in W. K. Clifford, The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, op. cit., xxx. On the contrary, it is interesting to note that a physicist like James Clerk Maxwell was no advocate of the German mathematician’s work: “The Riemannische Idee is not mine,” he wrote in 1874. (Cf. P. M. Harman, The Natural Philosophy of James Clerk Maxwell, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 196).
On the difference between Clifford’s and Einstein’s ideas on the Kantian notion of space, cf. B. Lightman, op. cit., 163.
W. K. Clifford, “The Philosophy of the Pure Sciences,” op. cit., 384.
W. K. Clifford, “On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought,” LE, vol. 1, 157, my italics.
Ibid.
B. Lightman, op. cit., 163.
Obituary notice, in the Athenaeum, quoted in W. K. Clifford, The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, lviii, n. 58. “[…] one of the most promising of the British mathematicians of his day.” ([D. E. Smith], “Clifford’s Genius Shown as a Boy,” American Mathematical Monthly, (29), 1922, 157). Leslie Stephen considered Clifford “a real man of genius,” and John Tyndall spoke of him as the “gifted Clifford” (cf. B. Lightman, op. cit., 95).
“His mathematical work was prophetic, and its merit is still untouched after three quarters of a century of immense progress in mathematics;” (J. R. Newman, “William Kingdon Clifford,” Scientific American, (188), February 1953, 78).
In W. K. Clifford, The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences, p. ix. As a young man, Bertrand Russell enjoyed reading this book of Clifford’s (cf. My philosophical development, French translation, Histoire de mes idées philosophiques, Paris: Gallimard, [1959] 2001, 43).
Haut de page