Metaphysics

The metaphysicians will have the last word and defy you to disprove their absurd propositions. I always rested upon the following argument which I devised for myself many years ago. We look up in the sky and see the sun. Our eyes are dazzled and our senses record the fact. So here is this great sun standing apparently on no better foundation than our physical senses. But happily there is a method, apart altogether from our physical senses, of testing the reality of the sun. It is by mathematics. By means of prolonged processes of mathematics, entirely separate from the senses, astronomers are able to calculate when an eclipse will occur. They predict by pure reason that a black spot will pass across the sun on a certain day. You go and look, and your sense of sight immediately tells you that their calculations are vindicated. So here you have the evidence of the senses reinforced by the entirely separate evidence of a vast independent process of mathematical reasoning. _ I am also at this point accustomed to reaffirm with emphasis my conviction that the sun is real, and also that it is hot—in fact as hot as Hell, and that if the metaphysicians doubt it they should go there and see.

1930. (MEL 131-2.)

The opposing strands of Metaphysics that fascinated Churchill were Plato s idea that what exists lies beyond experience; and the theories of Hume and Kant, who held that experience constitutes the only reality. Had Churchill had all three of them in a Cabinet, he probably would have formed a coalition.