44 DOC.
7
MOTIVES FOR RESEARCH
226
CONTRIBUTIONS
TO SCIENCE
can
be
brought
within
the
domain of
our experience;
all
events
of
a more complex
order
are
beyond
the
power
of the human
intellect
to reconstruct
with the subtle
accuracy
and
logical
perfection
which the
theoretical
physicist
demands.
Supreme
purity,
clarity,
and
certainty at
the
cost
of
completeness.
But
what
can
be the
attraction
of
getting
to
know such
a
tiny
sec-
tion
of
nature thoroughly,
while
one
leaves
everything
subtler
[4]
and
more
complex shyly
and
timidly
alone? Does
the
product
of such
a
modest effort deserve
to
be called
by
the
proud
name
of
a
theory
of the
universe?
In
my
belief
the
name
is
justified;
for
the
general
laws
on
which
the
structure
of
theoretical
physics
is
based claim
to
be
valid for
any
natural
phenomenon
whatsoever. With
them,
it
ought to
be
possible
to
arrive
at
the
description,
that
is to
say,
the
theory,
of
every
natural
process,
including
life,
by means
[5]
of
pure
deduction, if
that
process
of
deduction
were
not
far
beyond
the
capacity
of
the
human
intellect. The
physicist’s
renunciation
of
completeness
for his
cosmos
is
therefore
not
[6]
a matter
of
fundamental
principle.
The
supreme
task of the
physicist
is
to
arrive
at
those
uni-
versal
elementary laws
from which
the
cosmos can
be
built
up
by
pure
deduction.
There is
no
logical
path
to
these
laws;
only
[7]
intuition,
resting
on
sympathetic
understanding
of
experience,
can
reach them. In this
methodological
uncertainty,
one
might
suppose
that there
were
any
number of
possible
systems
of
theoretical
physics
all
equally
well
justified;
and
this
opinion
is
no
doubt
correct,
theoretically.
But the
development
of
physics
has shown
that
at
any given
moment, out
of
all
con-
ceivable constructions,
a single
one
has
always proved
itself
[8]
decidedly
superior to
all the
rest.
Nobody
who has
really gone
deeply
into
the
matter
will
deny
that in
practice
the
world
of
phenomena uniquely
determines the theoretical
system,
in
spite
of the fact that
there
is
no logical
bridge
between
phenomena
and their theoretical
principles;
this
is
what
Leibnitz
described
[9]
so
happily
as a
“pre-established
harmony.”
Physicists
often
accuse epistemologists
of
not
paying
sufficient
attention
to
this
fact.
Here, it
seems
to
me,
lie
the
roots
of the
controversy
car-