Science deals only with finite events in
finite time and space, and the farther we pass onward in space or time,
the more uncertain becomes the scientific reasoning, until, in trying to
approach the infinite, we are lost in the fog of unreasonable
contradiction, "beyond science"--that is, "transcendental".
Thus, we may never know and understand the infinite, whether in nature,
in the ultimate deductions from the laws of nature in time and in space,
or beyond nature, on such transcendental conceptions as God and
immortality. But we may approach these subjects as far as the
limitations of our mind permit, reach the border line beyond which we
cannot go, and so derive some understanding of how far these subjects
may appear nonexisting or unreasonable, merely because they are beyond
the limitations of our intellect.
There appear to me two promising directions of approach--first, from the
complex of thought and research, which in physics has culminated in the
theory of relativity; and, second, in a study of the gaps found in the
structure of empirical science and what they may teach us.
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