"I want... to glance... at the development of the theoretical method, and... especially to observe the relation of pure theory to the totality of the data of experience. Here is the eternal antithesis of the two inseparable constituents of human knowledge, Experience and Reason, within the sphere of physics. We honour ancient Greece as the cradle of western science. She for the first time created the intellectual miracle of a logical system, the assertions of which followed one from another with such rigor that not one of the demonstrated propositions admitted of the slightest doubt—Euclid's geometry. This marvellous accomplishment of reason gave to the human spirit the confidence it needed for its future achievements. ...But yet the time was not ripe for a science that could comprehend reality... until a second elementary truth had been realized, which only became the common property of philosophers after Kepler and Galileo. Pure logical thinking can give us no knowledge whatsoever of the world of experience; all knowledge about reality begins with experience and terminates in it."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Method_of_Theoretical_Physics
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
On the Method of Theoretical Physics
16 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by On the Method of Theoretical Physics →
Related Quotes
"If you wish to learn from the theoretical physicist anything about the methods which he uses... Don't listen to his w…"
"Conclusions obtained by purely rational processes are, so far as Reality is concerned, entirely empty. It was because…"
"A complete system of theoretical physics consists of concepts and basic laws to interrelate those concepts and of con…"
"[I]f we conceive Euclidean geometry as the science of the possibilities of the relative placing of actual rigid bodie…"
"We have now assigned to reason and experience their place within the system of theoretical physics. Reason gives the …"
"It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and…"
"The conception... of the purely fictitious character of the basic principles of theory was in the eighteenth and nine…"
"Newton felt by no means comfortable about the concept of absolute space, which embodied that of absolute rest; for he…"
"[S]cientists of those times were for the most part convinced that the basic concepts and laws of physics... were deri…"
"Have we any right to hope that experience will guide us aright, when there are theories (like classical mechanics) wh…"