The limitations of science / by J. W. N. Sullivan.

  • Sullivan, J. W. N. (John William Navin), 1886-1937.
Date:
[1938]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The limitations of science / by J. W. N. Sullivan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    But although Kepler’s philosophy led him into innumer¬ able fantastic speculations, he was always stubbornly faithful to the facts. His anguish at finding that some wild and beautiful idea was not confirmed by observation was, as we know, sometimes very considerable, but he never hesitated to abandon it. He was spurred on, indeed, to look for an even more subtle and recondite harmony. And he succeeded in finding it. His three laws of planetary motion are not only of the first importance scientifically, they are also beautiful. And this quality of his imagination led him also to exceptionally beautiful ideas in the realm of pure mathe¬ matics. Kepler, more than any other man, conveys to us the breathless excitement that must have attended the open¬ ing of the great scientific movement. The poetry of science and its sense of unlimited adventure are conveyed by Kepler in the most magnificent prose that any scientific man has ever written. When we come to Newton the sun is fully up. The scientific outlook has, in him, reached full consciousness. It would be fair to say that science, in the hands of Newton, has become a completely autonomous activity, for, although Newton had a philosophy and a religion, they did not play any part in his science. The basis of science, according to Newton, was observation and experiment. From this basis mathematical deductions could be made. These deductions were then to be checked by further experiment. Thus science formed an independent and self-enclosed system, borrowing nothing, as it had done formerly, from metaphysics or theology. This outlook was not understood by Newton’s contemporaries. It was, as it were, too austere for them. But it has become the dominating outlook of the scientific world.