Boris Sidis

“ Force as cause of motion is exactly on the same footing as a tree god as cause of growth―both are but names to hide our ignorance of the why in the routine of our perceptions. The necessity in a law of nature has not the logical must of a geometrical theorem, nor the categorical must of a human law-giver ”

“ The phrases, 'No matter without force, no force without matter,' which are all but abortive attempts to remove a self incurred contradiction, become superfluous on our recognizing only constancies of connection. ”

“ What is observed is simply an invariable sequence, so much stone momentum, so much glass breakage. No strain or enforcement are ever observed between causes and effects. No strain is observed in the falling stone to produce the effect, nor is it ever detected that the glass resists and is forced into the broken state by the power of the stone. ”

“ If by activity is understood the sequence of antecedents and consequents, the position taken by some psychologists in declaring the mental stream as inactive is unacceptable. There is activity in the psychic process, if by activity is meant not the popular belief in actual bonds between cause and effect, but mere sequence of antecedents and consequents. ”

“ When I say that a body A exerts a force on a body B, I mean that B, on coming into contraposition with A, is immediately affected by a certain acceleration with respect to A. The singular illusion that the substance A is the absolutely constant vehicle of a force which takes effect immediately' on B's being contraposed to A is easily shaken. ”

“ The cause does not beget the effect in labor, in strain. To conceive causes as straining agencies is due to the fact that the popular mind has a tendency to mythological creations, to regard natural phenomena as products fashioned by living agencies. ”

“ That the stone moving with a certain speed must bring about the destruction of the window is, I think, the idea involved in thus speaking of the moving stone as the cause of the breakage. But were our perceptive organs sufficiently powerful, science conceives that we should see before the impact particles of window and particles of stone moving in a certain manner, and after the impact the same particles moving in a very different manner. ”

“ The common-sense man in fashioning his material works with his muscles and experiences muscular sensation of strain, of push and pull, hence in regarding the changes in the course of natural processes, he projects into them his subjective muscular experiences. ”

“ Science, however, has succeeded in freeing itself from all animism, and does not invoke the will and labor of deities and spirits as the causes of physical phenomena, nor does it regard causes themselves as little deities and sprites with will and strain in the production of effects. ”