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.

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    interval of some years during Avhich it has been possible to settle down to steady progress. Recently the most striking developments have been on the experimental side. In quick succession the artificial transmutation of the elements, the discovery of the neutron and the discovery of the positive electron have startled the scientific world and opened up new realms for exploration. But I count this as normal prosperity rather than revolution. In contemplating the gradually developing scheme of scientific knowledge which never seems to reach fmahty in any direction, there are times when we are tempted to doubt the substantiahty of our gains. Questions, which seem to have been settled, become unsettled: Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was Hght. But not for long. The devil howHng, “Ho! Let Einstein be!” restored the status quo. In my own subject of astronomy it is particularly difficult to know how far we may feel certain of our ground. So many conclusions have to be guarded by an “if”. And it is some¬ times those results which have been most widely accepted that prove to have been most insecure. Finding ourselves unable to decide some of those simple fundamental questions, which to a large extent control the course of astronomical theory, we begin to doubt whether there has been any real progress. And then we reahse with a start that ten years ago we did not know enough even to formulate the doubts that now beset us. I sometimes think that the progress of know¬ ledge is to be measured not by the questions that it has answered but by the questions that it provokes us to ask. In writing of the new pathways in science it is natural that the changes should be emphasised rather than the continuity with the past. It may seem that this is an age when we have scant respect for tradition, and are puUing to pieces all that