it should be true, but it must also be such as we can discover to be true. Thus verifiability depends upon our capacity for acquiring knowledge, and not only upon the objective truth. In physics, as ordinarily set forth, there is much that is unverifiable: there are hypotheses as to (α) how things would appear to a spectator in a place where, as it happens, there is no spectator; (β) how things would appear at times when, in fact, they are not appearing to anyone; (γ) things which never appear at all. All these are introduced to simplify the statement of the causal laws, but none of them form an integral part of what is known to be true in physics. This brings us to our second answer.
(b) If physics is to consist wholly of propositions known to be true, or at least capable of being proved or disproved, the three kinds of hypothetical entities we have just enumerated must all be capable of being exhibited as logical functions of sense-data. In order to show how this might possibly be done, let us recall the hypothetical Leibnizian universe of Lecture III. In that universe, we had a number of perspectives, two of which never had any entity in common, but often contained entities which could be sufficiently correlated to be regarded as belonging to the same thing. We will call one of these an “actual” private world when there is an actual spectator to which it appears, and “ideal” when it is merely constructed on principles of continuity. A physical thing consists, at each instant, of the whole set of its aspects at that instant, in all the different worlds; thus a momentary state of a thing is a whole set of aspects. An “ideal” appearance will be an aspect merely calculated, but not actually perceived by any spectator. An “ideal” state of a thing will be a state at a moment when all its appearances are ideal. An ideal
