Symposium The Self: Concept and Fact

Anyone Interested in the history of ideas will have observed that nothing is quite as certain as that a theory which is widely accepted today will be modified or discarded tomorrow. Occasionally, however, the reverse comes true: a theory that was refuted or generally rejected in its day may be resurrected, possibly many centuries later, and henceforth taken for granted. Aristarchus (310-230 B.C.) advanced the view that all the planets, including the earth, revolve around the sun, and that the earth revolves on its axis once in twenty-four hours. His successors on the whole adhered to the geocentric view. Copernicus's famous work, De Revolutionibus Orbis Coelestium, appeared in 1543, the year of his death. (He knew of and acknowledged the Greek astronomers). Another example: Eratosthenes, born 276 B.C., basing himself on certain alleged facts, calculated the diameter of the earth with astonishing accuracy. His successors’ hypotheses that it was very much smaller prevailed—a fact which allowed Columbus to die in the belief, based on existing globes, that his long journey had led him to discover a western route to the East Indies.

Gradually Eratosthenes was vindicated as the discovery of a new continent brought about new measurements.

The history of psychology (arising out of philosophy) is much shorter than that of mathematics, astronomy and physics. We have no measurements and no proof in the sense that physics has. Yet we claim to be a ‘modern science’—see Stein (4). The main difference, apart from measurements and repeatability, is that this science is based on concepts (theoretical entities) which are not observable as such but are ‘put there to do a job’. According to Bertrand Russell (3) the main difference between Greek astronomy and, say, Newton's is that the Greeks had no concept of force. Forces are invisible, like archetypes, you can recognise them by their effects. If the phenomena seem to bear out the postulated force in the dynamic system then the contrapt