"What I have to add serves merely to complete this picture.

Directly the work of science refers to

nature, not to man; and so does the Nothing But in terms of which science tends more and more to
express what it regards as its modern attitude. But there are two ways in which this attitude must
influence the view which man has of himself. First, the shadow of Nothing But will soon- fall upon man
simply because he has a place within nature. Secondly, in his work on nature the scientist discards a
great many characteristics of experience because, according to him, they do not represent the
properties of nature, but merely those of human perception or even imagination. Whenever thus some
attribute of our experience is rejected by those who build the edifice of objective physics, this attribute
seems justly labeled as nothing but a subjective ingredient, as a disturbance in the path of science.

"Copernicus' discovery is a good example of the way in which man's location in nature makes Nothing
But applicable to himself. This celebrated change in the description of astronomical facts had the very
strongest emotional effects on mankind: The home of man is not the center of the universe. This planet
is but a tiny speck of matter in an altogether unimportant astronomical position. He crawls along its
surface. It is therefore sheer anthropomorphism to attribute any particular value to the aims of
mankind. If Nothing But is a good term to use in reference to the earth, then it is even more so in
reference to its little inhabitant. I do not remember how many times I found modern and consequently
disillusioned writers alluding to the miserable place which man has on the map of astronomy. I read:
'We told you so’ between their lines, even if they did not print it.

"Of the sensory qualities of perception we speak in terms of Nothing But tor the other reason: the very
first attempts to think about nature in the spirit of science led to their elimination. Although outstanding
features of our environment, as it naturally appears to us, and altogether essential for its aesthetic
character, they have nonetheless, no place in the scientist's world. They are nothing but subjective
phenomena. No physics is possible until this veil is removed. Among man's belongings this was the first
to lose its value because it had no value in science. Observe how sure we are to hear from science
statements which from a human point of view are negative under all circumstances. Objective nature is
a world of Nothing But; because such are its actual properties. A good deal of human experience, on the
other hand, tails under the same category, because it fails to resemble that objective world; in other
words, just because in this respect it is not Nothing But enough. 'Nature is a dull affair, soundless,
scentless, colorless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly,' (I found recently that
these words are quoted from A. N. Whitehead, who does not of course share the opinion which they
express) and thus it is no good. Human experience is not dull, it is hill of sounds, scents and colors; it has
ends and it has meanings. But then it, too, is no good; such things disturb the physicist, because they are
not objective; they are nothing but human.

"Space and time, as we conceive them, had soon to share the fate of the sensory qualities. What the
physicist calls space and time is, so he warns us, an abstract and an enigmatic scheme to which we
cannot transfer the rules of spatial and of temporal experience. Like the sensory qualia such experience
is nothing but a subjective phenomenon.

"It almost goes without saying that the so-called tertiary qualities of our environment have, if possible,
even less value. How should there be any power in lightning and in thunder? How any tenderness in a
spring day? How sadness in a rainy afternoon? The scientists do not even take the time to formulate it
expressly; so obvious does it seem to them: there are no .such things in nature. To be sure, properly
speaking there are no such things even in human perception; people are foolish and cannot resist the
temptation to project upon their wholly indifferent environment what is so clearly nothing but their own
emotional reaction to such neutral percepts.”