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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    Thus in saying that wave mechanics corresponds to a pro¬ founder level of conception I do not mean that it takes us closer to the objective world behind the phenomena; I mean that it reveals more fully the source of the regularities in our experience, which are conditioned as much by our mode of acquaintance with the objective world as by the constitution of that world. Six years ago* I described wave mechanics as “not a physical theory but a dodge—and a very good dodge too If I have changed my view at all, it is in regard to the aim of physical theory. If it is still held that the aim of physical theory is to describe objective reality, wave mechanics is not a physical theory in that sense. The nearest we have got to objective reality is the world of protons and electrons; that is to say, such a world corre¬ sponds to the level of conception which physics had reached before it was forced to deviate towards a different aim. Between the universe of our experience and the universe of objective reahty probabihty interposes like a smoke screen. I will give an example to show that for some purposes an atom constructed out of fog (or 0) is a more practical con¬ ception than an atom constructed out of particles. We know that the light waves emitted by an atom have a periodicity which is characteristic of the atom. It is natural to suppose that this periodicity exists within the atom itself and that something concerned in the structure of the atom is oscillating with that period. In the atom constructed of particles (the Bohr model) there is no trace of the period; there is no condition or configuration which goes through a cycle in the period of the emitted Hght waves. But in the atom con¬ structed out of 0 the period plainly appears; it is the period of the “beats” formed by two sets of *{/ waves. I do not want to overstress the significance of this. I mention it as showing that even from a commonsense point of view the change of conception is not wholly a change for the worse. As Heisen-