Physical science and the objectives of the scientist
DOI: 10.1063/1.3067366
The history of western thought since the seventeenth century leaves little doubt as to the practical validity of the method of controlled quantitative analysis discovered by Galileo, interpreted by Descartes, and variously generalized by Newton and Einstein. The impact of its success on every level of human activity—religious, political, industrial, and educational (to mention only the more obvious ones)—has awakened the most diverse and even contradictory speculations as to the specific character of the science it yields and the precise intentions of those who engage in it. Often enough, one gathers the impression that these speculations are founded on an arbitrary and quite uncritical conception of the nature of modern science; a conception formulated in terms of what one thinks or wishes to think science is from its effects upon the extrascientific domain (which, in the present context, includes philosophy) rather than in terms of a patient and sustained critical analysis of its characteristic structure.
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References
1. P. W. Bridgman, The Nature of Physical Theory, p. 59. Princeton University Press, 1936.
2. A. Einstein and L. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, p. 33. Simon & Schuster, 1938.
3. P. W. Bridgman, Op. Cit., p. 65.
4. Ibid., p. 67.
5. Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, pp. 6–7. Cambridge University Press, 1939.
More about the authors
John J. FitzGerald, Notre Dame University.
