The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science Science and Method Part 21

What does it matter then whether the simplicity be real, or whether it covers a complex reality? Whether it is due to the influence of great numbers, which levels down individual differences, or to the greatness or smallness of certain quant.i.ties, which allows us to neglect certain terms, in no case is it due to chance. This simplicity, real or apparent, always has a cause. We can always follow, then, the same course of reasoning, and if a simple law has been observed in several particular cases, we can legitimately suppose that it will still be true in a.n.a.logous cases. To refuse to do this would be to attribute to chance an inadmissible role.

There is, however, a difference. If the simplicity were real and essential, it would resist the increasing precision of our means of measure. If then we believe nature to be essentially simple, we must, from a simplicity that is approximate, infer a simplicity that is rigorous. This is what was done formerly; and this is what we no longer have a right to do.

The simplicity of Kepler's laws, for example, is only apparent. That does not prevent their being applicable, very nearly, to all systems a.n.a.logous to the solar system; but it does prevent their being rigorously exact.

THE RoLE OF HYPOTHESIS.--All generalization is a hypothesis. Hypothesis, then, has a necessary role that no one has ever contested. Only, it ought always, as soon as possible and as often as possible, to be subjected to verification. And, of course, if it does not stand this test, it ought to be abandoned without reserve. This is what we generally do, but sometimes with rather an ill humor.

Well, even this ill humor is not justified. The physicist who has just renounced one of his hypotheses ought, on the contrary, to be full of joy; for he has found an unexpected opportunity for discovery. His hypothesis, I imagine, had not been adopted without consideration; it took account of all the known factors that it seemed could enter into the phenomenon. If the test does not support it, it is because there is something unexpected and extraordinary; and because there is going to be something found that is unknown and new.

Has the discarded hypothesis, then, been barren? Far from that, it may be said it has rendered more service than a true hypothesis. Not only has it been the occasion of the decisive experiment, but, without having made the hypothesis, the experiment would have been made by chance, so that nothing would have been derived from it. One would have seen nothing extraordinary; only one fact the more would have been catalogued without deducing from it the least consequence.

Now on what condition is the use of hypothesis without danger?

The firm determination to submit to experiment is not enough; there are still dangerous hypotheses; first, and above all, those which are tacit and unconscious. Since we make them without knowing it, we are powerless to abandon them. Here again, then, is a service that mathematical physics can render us. By the precision that is characteristic of it, it compels us to formulate all the hypotheses that we should make without it, but unconsciously.

Let us notice besides that it is important not to multiply hypotheses beyond measure, and to make them only one after the other. If we construct a theory based on a number of hypotheses, and if experiment condemns it, which of our premises is it necessary to change? It will be impossible to know. And inversely, if the experiment succeeds, shall we believe that we have demonstrated all the hypotheses at once? Shall we believe that with one single equation we have determined several unknowns?

We must equally take care to distinguish between the different kinds of hypotheses. There are first those which are perfectly natural and from which one can scarcely escape. It is difficult not to suppose that the influence of bodies very remote is quite negligible, that small movements follow a linear law, that the effect is a continuous function of its cause. I will say as much of the conditions imposed by symmetry.

All these hypotheses form, as it were, the common basis of all the theories of mathematical physics. They are the last that ought to be abandoned.

There is a second cla.s.s of hypotheses, that I shall term neutral. In most questions the a.n.a.lyst a.s.sumes at the beginning of his calculations either that matter is continuous or, on the contrary, that it is formed of atoms. He might have made the opposite a.s.sumption without changing his results. He would only have had more trouble to obtain them; that is all. If, then, experiment confirms his conclusions, will he think that he has demonstrated, for instance, the real existence of atoms?

In optical theories two vectors are introduced, of which one is regarded as a velocity, the other as a vortex. Here again is a neutral hypothesis, since the same conclusions would have been reached by taking precisely the opposite. The success of the experiment, then, can not prove that the first vector is indeed a velocity; it can only prove one thing, that it is a vector. This is the only hypothesis that has really been introduced in the premises. In order to give it that concrete appearance which the weakness of our minds requires, it has been necessary to consider it either as a velocity or as a vortex, in the same way that it has been necessary to represent it by a letter, either _x_ or _y_. The result, however, whatever it may be, will not prove that it was right or wrong to regard it as a velocity any more than it will prove that it was right or wrong to call it _x_ and not _y_.

These neutral hypotheses are never dangerous, if only their character is not misunderstood. They may be useful, either as devices for computation, or to aid our understanding by concrete images, to fix our ideas as the saying is. There is, then, no occasion to exclude them.

The hypotheses of the third cla.s.s are the real generalizations. They are the ones that experiment must confirm or invalidate. Whether verified or condemned, they will always be fruitful. But for the reasons that I have set forth, they will only be fruitful if they are not too numerous.

ORIGIN OF MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS.--Let us penetrate further, and study more closely the conditions that have permitted the development of mathematical physics. We observe at once that the efforts of scientists have always aimed to resolve the complex phenomenon directly given by experiment into a very large number of elementary phenomena.

This is done in three different ways: first, in time. Instead of embracing in its entirety the progressive development of a phenomenon, the aim is simply to connect each instant with the instant immediately preceding it. It is admitted that the actual state of the world depends only on the immediate past, without being directly influenced, so to speak, by the memory of a distant past. Thanks to this postulate, instead of studying directly the whole succession of phenomena, it is possible to confine ourselves to writing its 'differential equation.'

For Kepler's laws we subst.i.tute Newton's law.

Next we try to a.n.a.lyze the phenomenon in s.p.a.ce. What experiment gives us is a confused ma.s.s of facts presented on a stage of considerable extent.

We must try to discover the elementary phenomenon, which will be, on the contrary, localized in a very small region of s.p.a.ce.

Some examples will perhaps make my thought better understood. If we wished to study in all its complexity the distribution of temperature in a cooling solid, we should never succeed. Everything becomes simple if we reflect that one point of the solid can not give up its heat directly to a distant point; it will give up its heat only to the points in the immediate neighborhood, and it is by degrees that the flow of heat can reach other parts of the solid. The elementary phenomenon is the exchange of heat between two contiguous points. It is strictly localized, and is relatively simple, if we admit, as is natural, that it is not influenced by the temperature of molecules whose distance is sensible.

I bend a rod. It is going to take a very complicated form, the direct study of which would be impossible. But I shall be able, however, to attack it, if I observe that its flexure is a result only of the deformation of the very small elements of the rod, and that the deformation of each of these elements depends only on the forces that are directly applied to it, and not at all on those which may act on the other elements.

In all these examples, which I might easily multiply, we admit that there is no action at a distance, or at least at a great distance. This is a hypothesis. It is not always true, as the law of gravitation shows us. It must, then, be submitted to verification. If it is confirmed, even approximately, it is precious, for it will enable us to make mathematical physics, at least by successive approximations.

If it does not stand the test, we must look for something else a.n.a.logous; for there are still other means of arriving at the elementary phenomenon. If several bodies act simultaneously, it may happen that their actions are independent and are simply added to one another, either as vectors or as scalars. The elementary phenomenon is then the action of an isolated body. Or again, we have to deal with small movements, or more generally with small variations, which obey the well-known law of superposition. The observed movement will then be decomposed into simple movements, for example, sound into its harmonics, white light into its monochromatic components.

When we have discovered in what direction it is advisable to look for the elementary phenomenon, by what means can we reach it?

First of all, it will often happen that in order to detect it, or rather to detect the part of it useful to us, it will not be necessary to penetrate the mechanism; the law of great numbers will suffice.

Let us take again the instance of the propagation of heat. Every molecule emits rays toward every neighboring molecule. According to what law, we do not need to know. If we should make any supposition in regard to this, it would be a neutral hypothesis and consequently useless and incapable of verification. And, in fact, by the action of averages and thanks to the symmetry of the medium, all the differences are leveled down, and whatever hypothesis may be made, the result is always the same.

The same circ.u.mstance is presented in the theory of electricity and in that of capillarity. The neighboring molecules attract and repel one another. We do not need to know according to what law; it is enough for us that this attraction is sensible only at small distances, and that the molecules are very numerous, that the medium is symmetrical, and we shall only have to let the law of great numbers act.

Here again the simplicity of the elementary phenomenon was hidden under the complexity of the resultant observable phenomenon; but, in its turn, this simplicity was only apparent, and concealed a very complex mechanism.

The best means of arriving at the elementary phenomenon would evidently be experiment. We ought by experimental contrivance to dissociate the complex sheaf that nature offers to our researches, and to study with care the elements as much isolated as possible. For example, natural white light would be decomposed into monochromatic lights by the aid of the prism, and into polarized light by the aid of the polarizer.

Unfortunately that is neither always possible nor always sufficient, and sometimes the mind must outstrip experiment. I shall cite only one example, which has always struck me forcibly.

If I decompose white light, I shall be able to isolate a small part of the spectrum, but however small it may be, it will retain a certain breadth. Likewise the natural lights, called _monochromatic_, give us a very narrow line, but not, however, infinitely narrow. It might be supposed that by studying experimentally the properties of these natural lights, by working with finer and finer lines of the spectrum, and by pa.s.sing at last to the limit, so to speak, we should succeed in learning the properties of a light strictly monochromatic.

That would not be accurate. Suppose that two rays emanate from the same source, that we polarize them first in two perpendicular planes, then bring them back to the same plane of polarization, and try to make them interfere. If the light were _strictly_ monochromatic, they would interfere. With our lights, which are nearly monochromatic, there will be no interference, and that no matter how narrow the line. In order to be otherwise it would have to be several million times as narrow as the finest known lines.

Here, then, the pa.s.sage to the limit would have deceived us. The mind must outstrip the experiment, and if it has done so with success, it is because it has allowed itself to be guided by the instinct of simplicity.

The knowledge of the elementary fact enables us to put the problem in an equation. Nothing remains but to deduce from this by combination the complex fact that can be observed and verified. This is what is called _integration_, and is the business of the mathematician.

It may be asked why, in physical sciences, generalization so readily takes the mathematical form. The reason is now easy to see. It is not only because we have numerical laws to express; it is because the observable phenomenon is due to the superposition of a great number of elementary phenomena _all alike_. Thus quite naturally are introduced differential equations.

It is not enough that each elementary phenomenon obeys simple laws; all those to be combined must obey the same law. Then only can the intervention of mathematics be of use; mathematics teaches us in fact to combine like with like. Its aim is to learn the result of a combination without needing to go over the combination piece by piece. If we have to repeat several times the same operation, it enables us to avoid this repet.i.tion by telling us in advance the result of it by a sort of induction. I have explained this above, in the chapter on mathematical reasoning.

But for this, all the operations must be alike. In the opposite case, it would evidently be necessary to resign ourselves to doing them in reality one after another, and mathematics would become useless.

It is then thanks to the approximate h.o.m.ogeneity of the matter studied by physicists that mathematical physics could be born.

In the natural sciences, we no longer find these conditions: h.o.m.ogeneity, relative independence of remote parts, simplicity of the elementary fact; and this is why naturalists are obliged to resort to other methods of generalization.

CHAPTER X

THE THEORIES OF MODERN PHYSICS

MEANING OF PHYSICAL THEORIES.--The laity are struck to see how ephemeral scientific theories are. After some years of prosperity, they see them successively abandoned; they see ruins acc.u.mulate upon ruins; they foresee that the theories fas.h.i.+onable to-day will shortly succ.u.mb in their turn and hence they conclude that these are absolutely idle. This is what they call the _bankruptcy of science_.

Their skepticism is superficial; they give no account to themselves of the aim and the role of scientific theories; otherwise they would comprehend that the ruins may still be good for something.

No theory seemed more solid than that of Fresnel which attributed light to motions of the ether. Yet now Maxwell's is preferred. Does this mean the work of Fresnel was in vain? No, because the aim of Fresnel was not to find out whether there is really an ether, whether it is or is not formed of atoms, whether these atoms really move in this or that sense; his object was to foresee optical phenomena.

Now, Fresnel's theory always permits of this, to-day as well as before Maxwell. The differential equations are always true; they can always be integrated by the same procedures and the results of this integration always retain their value.

And let no one say that thus we reduce physical theories to the role of mere practical recipes; these equations express relations, and if the equations remain true it is because these relations preserve their reality. They teach us, now as then, that there is such and such a relation between some thing and some other thing; only this something formerly we called _motion_; we now call it _electric current_. But these appellations were only images subst.i.tuted for the real objects which nature will eternally hide from us. The true relations between these real objects are the only reality we can attain to, and the only condition is that the same relations exist between these objects as between the images by which we are forced to replace them. If these relations are known to us, what matter if we deem it convenient to replace one image by another.

That some periodic phenomenon (an electric oscillation, for instance) is really due to the vibration of some atom which, acting like a pendulum, really moves in this or that sense, is neither certain nor interesting.

But that between electric oscillation, the motion of the pendulum and all periodic phenomena there exists a close relations.h.i.+p which corresponds to a profound reality; that this relations.h.i.+p, this similitude, or rather this parallelism extends into details; that it is a consequence of more general principles, that of energy and that of least action; this is what we can affirm; this is the truth which will always remain the same under all the costumes in which we may deem it useful to deck it out.

Numerous theories of dispersion have been proposed; the first was imperfect and contained only a small part of truth. Afterwards came that of Helmholtz; then it was modified in various ways, and its author himself imagined another founded on the principles of Maxwell. But, what is remarkable, all the scientists who came after Helmholtz reached the same equations, starting from points of departure in appearance very widely separated. I will venture to say these theories are all true at the same time, not only because they make us foresee the same phenomena, but because they put in evidence a true relation, that of absorption and anomalous dispersion. What is true in the premises of these theories is what is common to all the authors; this is the affirmation of this or that relation between certain things which some call by one name, others by another.