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Sir James Jeans – The Mysterious Universe

Anyone who has written or lectured on the finiteness of space is accustomed to the objection that the concept of a finite space is self contradictory and nonsensical.  If space is finite, our critics say, it must be possible to go outside this finite space, and what can we possibly find beyond it except more space and so on ad infinitum? – which proves that space cannot be finite.  And again, they say, if space is expanding, what can it possibly expand into, if not into more space? – which again proves that what is expanding can only be part of space, so that the whole of space cannot expand.

The twentieth century critics who make these comments are still in the state of mind of the nineteenth century scientists; they take it for granted that the universe must admit of material representation.  If we grant their premisses, we must, I think, also grant their conclusion – that we are talking nonsense – for their logic is irrefutable.  But modern science cannot possibly grant them their conclusion; it insists on the finiteness of space at all costs. 

This of course means that we must deny the premises which our critics unknowingly assume.  The universe cannot admit of material representation, and the reason, I think, is that it has become a mere mental concept.