New pathways in science / by Sir Arthur Eddington.

  • Eddington, Arthur Stanley, Sir, 1882-1944.
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: New pathways in science / by Sir Arthur Eddington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    62/362 (page 44)
    It succeeds better because it attempts less. It does not pretend to tell us where the electron is going next; but it does claim to tell us as much about its foture position as is actually involved in the recurrencies of sensory experience. Errors and omissions excepted, wave mechanics enables us to predict sensory experience so far as we have any reason to suppose that sensory experience is predictable; but it does not predict more about the future of the external world than is necessary for this special purpose. How should we now describe the physical universe or “the universe as it is conceived in modem physics”? It is difficult to speak consistently. I suppose that we ought to mean that conception or formulation which has been generally adopted as giving the most complete agreement with observation. The formulation assigns certain contents and laws, and we are satisfied that by tracing mathematically the consequences of these laws we reproduce the diversity of phenomena, or more strictly the recurrencies of experience, which it is the purpose of physics to analyse; or at least we consider that the failures are not such as to cause uneasiness, bearing in mind that development of the theory is con¬ tinually proceeding. With that understanding, it cannot be said that the content of the universe as it is conceived in modem physics consists of a number of particles called protons and electrons together with waves of radiation. It is no use assigning contents without laws governing them; and we have not succeeded in formulating a system of law on this basis. In the formulation which must have the credit for the most far-reaching success in scientific prediction, the content of the universe is the “fog”, and the basal laws of physics are the laws of propagation of waves of fog—the wave equations. Now that it has become the actual stuff of the universe as it is conceived in physics it is awkward to have to refer to it colloquially as fog. I shall sometimes call it ‘V that being the symbol by which it enters into our equations.